Press Release/Commentary by ESPAC posted on
December
23, 2004 at
09:59:30: EST (-5 GMT)
SEVEN MYTHS HINDERING PEACE IN DARFUR
The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council
Date of Publication: 15 November 2004
Myth: "a fiction or half-truth"
The American Heritage Dictionary
(1)
Introduction
In February 2003 two armed groups, the 'Justice and
Equality Movement'
(JEM) and
the 'Sudan Liberation Army' (SLA),
started
a war in Darfur, a
region in the west of Sudan.
These groups launched
attacks on policemen,
government garrisons and civilians in the area.
Darfur is an
ecologically-fragile area and had already seen
growing - and often armed
- conflict over natural
resources
between some 80
tribes and ethnic
groups loosely divided between nomads and sedentary
communities.
Many
of
the rebels appear to have been identified within two
or three "African"
communities such as the
Fur and the Zaghawa tribes.
Some of their
civilian targets have included tribal leaders and
tribesmen from several
"Arab" tribes.
The systematic murder by the rebels
of several hundred
policemen and the destruction of over eighty police
stations created a
security
vacuum that has led to an explosion of
inter-communal violence.
It is clear that a variety of armed groups have been
active in Darfur
over the past year or so, either as
participants in
the war
or taking
advantage of the turmoil the conflict has caused.
This has clearly
included heavily-armed criminal gangs from both
sides of the Chad-Sudan
border.
The conflict has spiralled out of control
and has caused a
growing humanitarian crisis.
(2) On 19 April 2004,
the government and
rebels signed a humanitarian ceasefire agreement as
a first
step towards
a lasting peace.
In November 2004 the Government and
rebel movements
extended ceasefire and aid access agreements.
(3)
The African Union will
be providing both a forum for peace talks and
ceasefire supervision.
It
is essential that agreements are honoured,
monitored
and followed
through as the international
community attemptsboth
to address the
humanitarian aid needs of those hundreds of
thousands of civilians
who
have been displaced by
the war and to facilitate a
political solution to
the conflict.
While the ceasefire has been violated
from time to time by
all parties to the conflict the bulk of events now
in focus
happened
before the April ceasefire.
Darfur presents a very complex situation with very
complex problems.
As
much has been admitted by noted anti-Khartoum
critics such as Alex de
Waal.
(4) While there can be no simple analysis of
the conflict, the
issue has also been caught up in the inevitable
propaganda war
invariably
associated with all war, and particularly
civil war.
Simply
put, this propaganda war is clouding and distorting
international
perspectives on Darfur.
This in turn is
unjustifiably pushing
governments into corners and hindering international
attempts to
negotiate an end to the crisis.
Challenging these
myths does not in any
way downplay the seriousness or the extent of the
humanitarian crisis in
Darfur or the seriousness of the human rights abuses
that have taken
place.
It has been a human catastrophe. To the
contrary, the challenging
of these myths serves to provide a clearer
picture
of the reality ofevents in Darfur, something that can only make a
resolution easier.
