Darfur's hopes and fears

There is new hope for Darfur thanks to a landmark UN resolution and signs of solidarity in the rebel ranks.  But peace prospects hinge on whether the rebels manage to stick together and talks with Khartoum result in a working agreement.  

On the plus side, there have been two important signs of progress:   

• The UN Security Council passed a new resolution authorising the deployment of a 26,000-strong AU/UN hybrid peace-keeping mission in Darfur.
• Following this, talks in Arusha, Tanzania produced apparent agreement between most of the Darfur rebel factions about preparations for new peace talks with the Sudanese government.

Trouble ahead

Yet trouble is likely to spring from two areas. The first is Khartoum's intransigence.

Publicly, Khartoum is committed to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) that it signed with one Darfur rebel faction in May 2006. It has already voiced concerns about the platform that the factions appeared to agree on at Arusha, as it has long insisted that the DPA is not up for renegotiation.

Khartoum will not relent: it knows that the international community and the AU/UN mediation team also want to see the DPA preserved. At the same time, it will continue sub-rosa activities to persuade rebel factions to switch sides, thereby undermining the rebels' "common platform" and reducing the likelihood that it will be forced to make substantial new concessions or revisions to the DPA.

Khartoum will also throw up bureaucratic and political obstacles to the deployment of the joint AU/UN mission in Darfur (UNAMID). It will probably complain, for example, about troop nationalities.

But the deployment will definitely go ahead. The mission is required to start initial operations by October and to be fully functional by the end of the year.

Nur and Fur

The second obstacle stems from the rebels themselves. A key weakness in the Arusha talks was the absence of Abdul Wahid Mohammed al-Nur, leader of the largest faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), who refused to attend, thereby risking his political credibility and testing the patience of the AU/UN mediators. Nur enjoys considerable popularity among the Fur, Darfur's largest tribe.

Suleiman Jamous, the SLM/A Humanitarian Co-ordinator, also missed the Arusha talks because he is effectively detained under UN protection inside Sudan.  

Nur will now come under new pressure to join the common platform, though divisions over its details may diffuse this pressure before the peace talks with Khartoum, provisionally  in October or November.

Tough talking

The outcome of the peace talks will hinge on the skills of the AU/UN mediation team, led by Salim Ahmed Salim and Jan Eliasson, respectively the AU and UN special envoys for Darfur. They must find a solution that meets both the rebels' substantive demands and Khartoum's wish to see them simply sign up to an unchanged DPA. This will involve guarantees for the rebels about the general elections slated for 2009, as well as guarantees over protection and land rights. It will call for extraordinary diplomatic skills -- and an unlikely suspension of deep-seated enmities on both sides.