Does Qatar’s ceasefire agreement put an ultimate end to the war in Darfur

Ahmed Khawaja
MENA Financial expert

Following last week’s signing of a ceasefire between the Sudanese Government and a major rebel group, the joint United Nations-African Union mission in the war-ravaged Darfur region has announced that it plans to increase its capacity to monitor the agreement to end hostilities.
The ceasefire agreement between the Sudanese government & the Justice Equality Movement (JEM), fortify the chances to put an end of the war in Darfur, was signed in Doha last week the 23rd February 2010, despite a few rebel groups who have refused to enter talks and join negotiations.
The pact was signed in the presence of the Emir of Qatar Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa & others. During the ceremony Mr. Khalil Ebrahim, leader of the JEM announced an immediate ceasefire
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Wednesday 24th February that the crisis in the Sudanese war-torn western region of Darfur has ended.
“The Darfur crisis is now over, the war in Darfur is over. The armed battle has ended and here started the battle for development and rehabilitation,”
However, numerous ceasefire agreements in the past have been short-lived, so will upcoming elections and increased international pressure give this initiative a better chance of survival?

According to documents setting out the terms of the deal, the Sudanese government would offer government positions for the JEM, who will also be transformed into a political party.
But this time, agreement could indeed be, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has hailed the pact reached in Doha, Calling it an “an important step towards an inclusive and comprehensive peace agreement” for Darfur, where nearly seven years of war between have killed at least 300,000 people and driven 2.7 million others from their homes
It should be stated that there have been deals before that have come unstuck but this one feels different. For a start JEM stayed out of the 2006 cease-fire Khartoum inked at Abuja with the then leading Darfur rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Movement. As is so often the way when one body of insurgents adopts a moderate position, smaller rejectionist grouping gains in support and power. So it happened with JEM which two years ago made an unprecedented assault on Omdurman, across the Nile from the Sudanese capital.
The latest agreement concluded in Qatar commits both sides to a cease-fire and talks on the inclusion of JEM leaders in state and provincial government.  Those talks need to make rapid progress with goodwill being shown on both sides. It is right that government negotiators have given themselves only until the middle of next month to reach an accord. The biggest danger would be delays that will play to radicals among both parties, allowing them to exploit disagreements by claiming that the other side is not serious about a lasting settlement. Ironically other Darfur rebel groups are taking JEM’s old position and disowning the Qatar agreement. They must not be allowed to gain traction in the coming weeks.
However the Sudanese government has already proved that it can make the necessary statesmanlike accommodations to achieve a peace, with its 2005 power-sharing deal with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army that ended 22 years of bloody rebellion. That deal which gave southern Sudan a level of autonomy with a promised referendum has survived despite several upsets. Although difficulties within the power-sharing administration have been partly to blame, the greater troubles have come because of fighting between rival clans in the south.
One potential sticking point is the elections slated for this April. JEM negotiators are demanding they be postponed. Their grounds, that organizing themselves for political hustling in what is still a conflict area, where in any event many voters are either unregistered or fled, are on the face of it reasonable.
But the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Saturday the 27th of February rejected demands to postpone the general elections.
He called on the Sudanese political forces to resort to the voting boxes, saying that “the Darfur issue was a pretext for some to demand postponement of the elections, but after the signing of the framework agreement with the Justice and Equality Movement ( JEM), Darfur will live in full peace and great stability.”
“Every body should let the Sudanese people decide through the voting boxes,” he added.
Multi-party elections, the first of its kind since 1986, are scheduled to be held in Sudan on April this year. The elections have been stipulated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), inked between north and south Sudan in 2005, which ended a two- decade civil war between the two sides.
In fact, several observers estimate that an imperfect election is better than no political process at all. JEM leaders should know better than anyone else how rivals could exploit a political vacuum, since they themselves did it four years ago.
The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed under African Union (AU) auspices on 5 May 2006 between Sudan’s government and the faction of the insurgent Sudan Liberation Army led by Minni Arkou Minawi (SLA/MM) was also seen as first step toward ending the violence. The document has serious flaws, and two of the three rebel delegations rejected it.
Two parties to the negotiations in Abuja – the SLA faction of Abdel Wahid Mohamed Nur (SLA/AW) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – have refused to sign. Abdel Wahid demands more direct SLA participation in implementation of security arrangements and is also dissatisfied with the DPA’s provisions for political representation and a victim’s compensation fund. JEM maintains that the protocols on power and wealth sharing do not adequately address the conflict’s root causes: the structural inequities between Sudan’s centre and its periphery that led to the rebellion in 2003. Indeed, the DPA has accelerated the break-up of the insurgency into smaller blocs along loose ethnic lines.
Current scenarios envisage the success of the new Doha agreement should take at least five to six weeks to overcome disparities in field, However international community should show the goodwill and assist the Sudanese parties to go forward for final configuration of the agreement, and this may  require at first the suspend of  the international arrest warrant issued against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court.
There are furthermore numerous local complications that are rarely noted in generally simplistic analysis on Darfur. The government will have to convince the local Arab communities that they will not lose out in any settlement. Generous aid, such as that already promised by Qatar may help with reconstruction, but the essential building block for peace will undoubtedly be goodwill, from both sides.

Background on Darfur peace process

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