A new report by the International Crisis Group: 'Darfur: Revitalising the Peace Process' finds that almost a year after Sudan’s government and one of three rebel factions signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), the humanitarian and security situation has deteriorated in the troubled western region of Sudan. Despite a recent lull, the post-DPA period has seen increased combat, including further government reliance on aerial bombardment and its allied Janjaweed militia.

On 22 March 2007, the worst fighting that Kinshasa has ever seen broke out between government forces and supporters of the opposition. Hundreds of people lay dead in the streets and opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba announced his departure into exile. Yet some diplomats in the capital played down the violence as a hiccup in the peace process. In this article, Jason Stearns evaluates the prospects for lasting peace.

The latest International Crisis Group report examines the ten month old peace process between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. Both sides have agreed to renew their cessation of hostilities agreement and restart the Juba negotiation that stalled early this year.

Joseph Yav is a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He works with a network of African research institutes in support of the African peace and security agenda.

Saloman Kebede interviewed him on the upcoming 'Grand Debate on the Union Government' to be held at the June 2007 summit of the African Union.

The interview is part of a series of interviews, to be published by the Pambazuka AU-Monitor, with African citizens and civil society leaders on the AU proposal for continental government.

The interview was conducted by the Oxfam Pan-Africa Programme in the corridors of a civil society meeting organised by UN-CONGO and FEMNET in Addis Ababa in the week of the 13 March 2007. The interview was edited by Emily Mghanga of Oxfam’s Pan-Africa Programme.

Saloman Kebede: What form of continental government does Africa need?

Joseph Yav: Africa needs a continental government that depends on the people of Africa, not only their heads of state. Africa must forge its own direction, learning from the experiences of the US and the European Union.

Saloman Kebede: Why is continental union important to African citizens especially the poor and the marginalised?

Joseph Yav: Human emancipation and freedoms must be the focus of any union.

Saloman Kebede: How could integration be successful?

Joseph Yav: The focus must be based on a clear assessment of the progress of the African Union (AU) from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). How have we overcome poverty and conflict? What are the new ideas, opportunities and challenges for the African Union in future? How can we push the national and regional mechanisms? This would create a clear strategy for change.

Saloman Kebede: What one policy would you propose to be adopted in the continental organisation?

Joseph Yav: The Institute for Security Studies works mainly for a stable and peaceful Africa. We would want to see a clear focus in the area of peace and security. Because if there is no peace, there is no security. By security, I mean not only the security of states but human security as well.

Saloman Kebede: What milestones would you like to see achieved within the first two years?

Joseph Yav: Our heads of state and governments should focus first on the integration of people. Secondly, we should question the current structures - both positive and the negative. Finally, assess all the forms of integration, federational and others.

Saloman Kebede: What meaningful decisions would make this process people driven, rights based and publicly accountable to African citizens?

Joseph Yav: There is an urgent need to consult the civil society. Our leaders must depart from the experience of the OAU. Otherwise it will end up as a club of heads of states. We must change the idea of the union as a club of heads of state to an idea that is championed by the people of Africa. Heads of state have a right to make decisions, but the focus must be on people. Civil society has the right to also engage and contribute to this debate.

Saloman Kebede: Do you think the timing is right?

Joseph Yav: Yes and no. No, because it is coming too late in Africa’s history. The former President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah and others championed this idea 40 years ago. Secondly, this idea was re-proposed by heads of state as far back as 1999 in Sirte, Libya. Yes, if the idea is driven by African peoples: the time for a union is now!

The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. Joseph Yav can be reached at: [email][email protected]

Ethiopian tanks supporting the Somali interim government pounded insurgent positions in Mogadishu on Thursday, intensifying an offensive that has emptied half the city of its people. "We are under heavy artillery and tank shelling. The Ethiopians are using whatever forces and material they have," said a fighter belonging to the capital's dominant Hawiye clan. "This is the heaviest attack we've seen since the war started."

From the day he started school, François Ababehu-Utauta's short stature made him a laughing stock among other children, but still he persevered with his studies. Ababehu-Utauta is a member of the Mbuti community, sometimes known as pygmies, who live in the tropical rainforests of central Africa. He originally came from Oriental province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Civilians fleeing fighting between Congolese government troops and rebel militias in North Kivu Province have been forced to shelter in makeshift camps 100km from Goma town, aid workers said.Thousands of others are living in the bush, hiding during the day and going to their fields at night.

There were warning shots and arrests in Harare’s Kuwadzana high-density area when riot police used force to disperse a WOZA protest on Monday. About 60 people from the Women of Zimbabwe Arise and Men of Zimbabwe Arise were arrested as the pressure group continued with demonstrations demanding ‘power to the people’ at the offices of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa). WOZA said 36 women, 20 men and 10 babies were arrested.

Four MDC activists facing charges of allegedly petrol-bombing several targets in the country have been denied bail by a Harare magistrate. Bertha Chikururama, Friday Mleya, Raymond Baki and Washaya have been in police custody for the last four weeks. MDC MP for Budiriro, Emmanuel Chisvuure, said the four were denied bail when they appeared before a Harare magistrate on Monday.

Right activists in Burkina Faso have been raising concerns over the safety of the West African country’s young talented reggae king, Sam Samsk le Jah, who receives anonymous death threats. The revolutionary singer who anchors a music programme on Radio Ouaga FM is warned to either “stop your silly things on the radio or risk being killed.”

A car bomb killed four civilians in Mogadishu and a suicide attacker struck at Ethiopian soldiers on Tuesday as battles between government forces and Islamist insurgents raged for a seventh day.Nearly 300 people have died in the week of artillery duels and gun battles between allied Somali-Ethiopian forces and rebels frustrating the government's bid to restore central rule in the Horn of Africa country for the first time in 16 years.

The rattling sound of galvanized tins has become characteristic of Patience's* daily routine which starts at 4 am every day. Patience (43), a single mother, is one of the many who rush in the early morning to the Zimbabwean capital's Mbare Musika market to buy fruit and vegetables to hawk.

UNHCR and its partners on Monday resumed distribution of urgent aid supplies to thousands of Somalis fleeing a sixth day of heavy fighting in Mogadishu. Describing a scene of growing chaos, a UNHCR staff member in Afgooye, 30 kms west of Mogadishu, said a road linking the two areas had reopened on Monday morning and was filled with a continuous flow of displaced people.

Beyond the complex “ethnic, regional and tribal dimensions” to the conflict in Darfur there is also a national and international political aspect that is not always acknowledged particularly in the Western media. Ayesha Kajee explains some of the domestic influences and the role of resources such as oil in the conflict.

Despite a few laudable attempts by serious political analysts to defray the often naïve and sometimes infantile portrayals of the Darfur conflict in the mass media, lazy writers persist in defining the war in Sudan’s westernmost region purely as an ethnic cleansing of Africans by Arab pro-government militias. Some even go so far as to conflate the conflict with the North-South civil war that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005. That conflict has also often been simplistically defined purely in terms of Muslim Northerners and Christian southerners. While there are complex ethnic, regional and tribal dimensions to the Darfur conflict, there has been minimal acknowledgement that, in appearance at least, all the combatants are Black Africans and almost all are Muslim.

Beyond that, the Darfur conflict has a great deal to do with politics, both domestic and international, an aspect that again, has been systematically ignored or downplayed in the mainstream media. Historically, Darfur has been both marginalised and politically manipulated by the power elites in Khartoum, resulting in severe underdevelopment. With poverty levels exacerbated by cyclical droughts and recurring famine over the past two decades, the nomadic pastoralist ‘Arabs’ in the region competed with the agrarian ‘Africans’ for land; marking the start of conflict between them.

It is worth noting that until the late 1960’s, ‘African’ and ‘Arab’ in Darfur were not ethnic designations but were primarily used to differentiate between the more settled agrarian farmers and the cattle-herding nomads. Generations of intermarriage have made physiognomic distinction between ‘African’ and ‘Arab’ Darfuris virtually impossible. Until politics intervened in 1968, both were equally despised by the Khartoum urbanites as ‘people of the West’, an appellation that stigmatised them as ill-educated, uncouth, poverty-stricken peasants. Organisations such as the Darfur Development Front (DDF) arose as regional bodies striving for socio-economic justice in Darfur.

Domestic Political influences

Although Darfuris contributed to the Ummah Party’s victory at Sudan’s independence in 1956, it was forgotten and neglected until the Ummah Party split before the 1968 elections. Needing a large voting bloc from the west, one faction courted the Darfuri ‘Africans’, including the DDF, while the other wooed Darfur’s ‘Arab’ vote. Electioneering included ethnicised blame games to encourage political allegiance, and promises of government appointments for Darfuri ‘Arabs’ by their rediscovered ‘brothers’ in the capital. Ever since, Darfur has been a pawn manipulated by successive Sudanese governments.

This is still true today. Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP), led by President Omar al-Bashir, is desperate to prevent the independence of the south, which will be decided by referendum in 2011. After all, Sudan’s oilfields, currently al-Bashir’s cash cows, lie in the south. Al-Bashir badly needs Darfur as part of the northern voting bloc in the next national elections, scheduled for 2009, a political consideration that partially explains his reluctance to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur.

But his brutal scorched earth policy in Darfur has exploded out of NCP control and may backfire in a net loss of Darfuri support in 2009. Initially pre-occupied with the civil war between north and south, this government first ignored the rumblings of discontent in Darfur, as far back as the late 1990s. When attacks on government positions intensified, it recruited, mounted and armed disaffected ‘Arab’ militias to suppress the uprisings in Darfur through extreme violence and brutality. Many of these ‘Janjaweed’ militias have rampaged out of control and there are reports that some even operate as cross-border bandits in Chad.

The extreme brutality of the government’s retaliation is partially explained by its desire to eradicate political competition. In particular the NCP fears the influence of its former mentor and spiritual guru, Islamist cleric Hassan al-Turabi, who has been linked to one of Darfur’s three major insurgent groups, the Justic and Equality Movement (JEM). Al-Turabi’s large following not only in Darfur, but in other poor and marginalised regions such as Eastern Sudan, seriously threatens NCP hegemony.

The al-Bashir government’s image has been badly tarnished within Sudan by both the Darfur conflict and its many breaches of the peace agreement with the south. Even with repressive media rules and a widespread network of patronage and clientelism that could facilitate electoral fraud, it may have a tough time garnering the support it needs (from Darfur and other neglected areas) to retain control of government come 2009.

Regional and International Political Influences

Successive aspirant leaders from neighbouring Chad have historically abused Darfur as the staging ground for their power bids. In some cases this was welcomed by whichever regime was in power in Khartoum at the time. When politically expedient, Chadian uprisings initiated from Darfur have variously been supported by Libya, France and the USA respectively. Libyan involvement in Darfur served to heighten ethnic tensions in Darfur, since the Libyans espoused Arab Nationalism, favoured Darfuri ‘Arabs’ and were despised as ‘Arab foreigners’ by locals. During the Cold War, western countries paid Khartoum to use Darfur as a base for supporting Hissan Habre’s regime in Chad. Conversely, the military junta which seized power in 1985, bartered Darfur in exchange for Libyan support in both the 1986 election and the civil conflict with the south. Libya used Darfur to attack the US-supported Habre regime in Chad, which retaliated by arming the nascent Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel group in Darfur. Habre was eventually ousted by current Chadian president Idriss Deby in 1990, who, following the established tradition, used Darfur as his springboard to N’djamena.

The legacy of Darfur’s abuse as an insurgency base surfaced in the heightened ethnic tensions, distrust of foreigners and a proliferation of small arms in the region. This, combined with rising insurgency, provided fuel for the disastrous civil conflict that has displaced up to two million people and killed at least 200,000 others. Though the ready availability of weapons across porous borders has fed the growing appetite of both rebels and Janjaweed in Darfur, government supplies to the Janjaweed have heavily weighted the odds in favour of the latter.

From the start, refugees fleeing the Darfur war have sought refuge among Chadians with whom they share ethnic and economic ties. But recently the conflict has spread into both refugee camps and local villages in Chad and the Central African Republic, rocking the political stability of the entire region. March 2007 saw over 400 casualties from attacks ascribed to cross-border Janjaweed, and aid workers say the incidence and intensity of attacks are increasing.

The Politics of Resources

No consideration of the political underpinnings of the Darfur situation can be complete without a consideration of international interest in Sudan’s immense natural resource base and indeed, that of the region. Given the political environment in the Middle East and the insatiable demand for oil by nations such as the US and China, substantial oil reserves in both Chad and Sudan make them vulnerable to political manipulation from outside. Sudan’s Muglad Basin alone reportedly contains three billion barrels of crude. Both Chad and Sudan have used oil revenues to purchase arms that sustain conflicts within their countries and across borders, a factor that is ignored by most consumers of oil in the region.

The US and Malaysia are the major oil investors in Chad, while China, Russia, France, Malaysia, India and the UK all have interests in Sudan’s oil sector. In addition to oil, Sudan also has gold reserves and arable land suitable for commercial exploitation. Darfur possibly has undiscovered reserves of uranium, bauxite and copper. Geological surveys also imply that Darfur has unexploited oil reserves, which may go some way to explaining the intense and sustained global interest in Darfur over the past few years. There is indubitably a massive humanitarian disaster in Darfur, and the mobilisation of civil society around the globe is warranted and welcome. But it is worth questioning why this tragedy receives concentrated attention from the world’s media and why advocacy for multilateral intervention in Darfur has managed to mobilise millions, including celebrities from every sphere, when similar situations in northern Uganda or Central African Republic get far less coverage.

Politics Within Darfur

While initially the Darfur rebels were able to unite or act in tandem on the basis of common goals (such as socio-economic development for the region), the sustained conflict has led to the split of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) into two major factions. Led by Minni Minnawi and Abdel Wahid al-Nur respectivelty, these factions were split along mainly ethnic lines but often worked cooperatively. Abdel Wahid, an ethnic Fur, command widespread support among the Fur tribes who comprise about quarter of the region’s population. His faction has been pitted against Minnawi’s since Minnawi signed the May 2006 Abuja peace agreement and Abdel Wahid refused to do so. Minnawi, from the Zeghawa tribe, received a senior government position in Khartoum after signing the deal, which has drawn criticism from various rebel factions.

The third major rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Khalil Ibrahim, was also not party to the Abuja agreement. JEM united with SLM splinter groups who were not at Abuja, to form the National Redemption Front (NRF) which continues to fight the government.

Thus, the peace agreement ironically exacerbated divisions among the rebels and in some areas caused intensified conflict between rebel forces, with many civilians caught in the crossfire. Consequently, the civilians who initially supported the rebels with shelter and provisions, now fear the rebel groups as well as the government-backed Janjaweed, particularly if the rebels are ethnically different from themselves.

The Abuja agreement has also been used by al-Bashir’s government as a pretext for bringing numerous police and army personnel and equipment into Darfur, ostensibly to implement the ceasefire provisions, which to date, have been observed in the breach. The government and Minnawi prevented non-signatories from full participation in the Darfur Ceasefire Commission, virtually guaranteeing that it would fail. Attempts by the African Union Mission in Darfur to comply with provisions of the Abuja deal, have compromised the perceived neutrality of the peacekeepers and increased distrust of them. In the last two months, seven peacekeepers have been killed in Darfur.

There is growing international pressure to persuade al-Bashir to allow the implementation of a 2006 United Nations Resolution that calls for a trebling of the under-equipped peacekeeping force, which would see it passing from AU to UN control. Although Khartoum, after much pontificating on Sudan’s sovereignty, agreed to the deployment of a hybrid AU-UN force in November 2006, they have balked at the details and thus far, no UN troops have been allowed into Darfur. This may be due to fears that senior Sudanese officials could be indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes perpetrated in Darfur. It could also be attributed to anxiety that Darfur would use the UN presence to secede, depriving al-Bashir of this constituency in the 2009 elections. Such a situation would likely result in the eventual independence of the south in 2011. That this would pave the way for foreign interests to invest in an independent south and in Darfur, should not be discounted.

Given the complex internal and external political implications of the Darfur conflict, the biggest losers are the Darfuris who have been killed, maimed and driven from their homes and livelihoods. They are the ‘dispensable’ pawns of political manipulators from within and outside Sudan. There is a crying need for multilateral intervention in Darfur, and an enhanced peacekeeping force with a strong mandate to protect citizens would bring much needed stability to the region as a whole. But the potential ramifications of such an intervention merit careful consideration as to the composition of the deployed force and its mandate.

Concomitant with the deployment of more peacekeepers, the international community should be obligated to continue support for a political solution that includes all the major players in Darfur. This is a conflict that requires sustained negotiation and dialogue across the political spectrum in order to produce a lasting peace. The track record of certain western governments with regard to human rights and ethics would render them unsuitable as the primary facilitators of such a dialogue. Therefore the most appropriate brokers would be respected Africans whose eminence inspires confidence in their integrity, leaders who truly care that those who are paying the price of this war are fellow Africans with the inalienable right to the most basic freedoms of peace and security.

* Ayesha Kajee: Programme Head: Democracy and Political Party Systems in Africa at the South African Institute of International Affairs

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The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) invites applications for the position as Programme Manager (PM) for its program dealing with population displacement in Mogadishu, Somalia. Interviews are expected to take place in Nairobi during the last 2 weeks of May 2007.

President Yoweri Museveni has blamed the Police for allowing the anti-Mabira demonstration that led to the death of an Indian national and two Ugandans last week. The President has also re-assured the Asian community that such incidents will not happen again. Addressing over 500 Asians at Hotel Africana in Kampala yesterday, Museveni castigated the rioters for the racist sentiments.

At least 15,000 Somalis who fled violence in the capital, Mogadishu, are facing disease and uncertainty in Dobley town, near the Kenyan border, local sources have told IRIN. "Our estimate is that since February, some 2,500 families [15,000 people] have arrived in Dobley," Ali Hussein Nur, the Dobley District Commissioner, said.

Women and children begging on the streets of the Ugandan capital of Kampala are being returned to their troubled home region of Karamoja in the northeast under a government initiative to resettle the pastoralists back home. Aid and human rights workers however say that with cattle raiding, gun violence and food insecurity still major problems in Karamoja, plans need to be properly agreed to ensure that the returnees find enough to keep them from migrating again. The region is Uganda's least developed.

Executions and rape of civilians have continued in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo DRC) according to a report published by the United Nations detailing human rights abuses during the month of March. Among the abuses was the arbitrary execution on 10 March of 15 civilians who were shot in the head in a North Kivu village by soldiers of DRC’s national army.

For the past two years the media has reported on growing unrest in eastern Chad and the northern Central African Republic (CAR) as "a spillover from the Darfur conflict". Although partly true, this vision is misleading. Both Chad and the CAR suffer from problems of their own which the Darfur conflict has exacerbated but not created. OpenDemocracy's Gérard Prunier dissects the Chadian crisis.