From Rebel Disunity to Segmented Peace in Sudan

If you follow Sudan or American diplomacy you've heard about Khartoum's deal with the Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) signed in Doha. Wow, it sounds terrific, that peace is upon the region. And yet fighting between Khartoum and other Darfur rebel groups like the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) persists even while those talks continue.

How does this bode for the future of diplomacy in Africa? Doesn't this scream déjà vu?

Last year, reflecting on when some colleagues and I were on lock down during the JEM attack on Khartoum, I wrote about how peacemaking is often slowed by the splintering of political voices and lack of clarity on information, in a story called "Cutting Through the Fog of War in Sudan (scroll down to the second story on the page)." I made sure to include links to video taken of the attack on the ground, as well as links to the Khartoum news reporting on the subject.

The JEM was portrayed as a terror organization. Many experts, like my colleague Suliman Giddo, who wrote an article called, "The Chadian Civil War in Darfur," described the JEM as a tool in Sudan's covert war with Chad. So it's a huge deal for the government and the group to sign a peace deal, not only for Sudan but also for Chad. Trouble is, the Khartoum-JEM fight was only one of many branches of the Darfur War.

Tragically, there is overwhelming documentation of patterns to seriously allege that the Sudanese government by intent, and Chad by result, contributed to the split of the Darfur rebel movements along clan/ethnic lines from two to fifteen groups in order to make it easier to fight them. The Darfur rebels themselves did a huge disservice to the people they claimed to fight to protect by allowing themselves to break down and fight with each other.

To put it brutally, the Bashir administration is proving to be a masterful conductor with the many Darfur rebel groups, as well as certain militias in Chad and the Central African Republic, with Western diplomats as their puppets.

An expert close to the fighting parties told me that only a process of building unity and peace among the Darfur rebel groups,  and undoing the splintering encouraged by Khartoum, is the way to bring a sustainable peace deal to Khartoum. But apparently, the U.S. has been so hungry for signs of progress they were willing to get Khartoum to sign peace deals with rebel groups one at a time.

Sounds good except that now the remaining rebel groups, still being shot at by Khartoum, will see the JEM as a Khartoum ally, thus aggravating the internal fighting and providing reasons for them to reject additional peace agreements. Meanwhile, fighting continues in Darfur.

Photo credit: Ryan Pacheco