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Siimon Roughneen, www.opendemocracy.net,
26th June 2006
The failure of the Darfur Peace Agreement to improve conditions
on the ground will jeopardise the lives of already displaced and
hungry people, writes Simon Roughneen from Fata Borno camp in northern
Darfur.
Harian, a 28-year-old mother of five, smiles and chats amicably
as nutrition staff from the Dublin-based charity GOAL wrap a measuring
tape around 14-month old Insaf's arm. Harian takes the indicator
cards entitling her family to supplementary feeding at the nearby
clinic at the Fata Borno camp for conflict-displaced people in north
Darfur. Insaf is underweight, and the whole family is technically
malnourished. This camp has been their home for two and a half years.
On 5 May 2006, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed between
the Sudanese government and one faction of the Sudan Liberation
Movement/Army (SLA), led by Minni Minawi. Minawi's faction is militarily
more potent than the rest of the SLA, but is itself splintering
in the wake of the DPA. The more popular faction of the SLA, led
by Abdul Wahid Mohamed Nur, remains outside the agreement; so too
does the Justice & Equality Movement (JEM), militarily powerless
and lacking grassroots support in Darfur, but with a pan-Sudanese
agenda and links to opposition forces in other regions of Sudan.
The Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir is more aware than most
of the structural flaws in the agreement. Most recently, it has
ordered a suspension of the work of the United Nations in Darfur
after protesting that a dissident commander of Minawi's SLA (Suleiman
Jamous) was transported in a UN helicopter; and al-Bashir reinforced
the message on 26 June when he voiced trenchant opposition to the
planned replacement of the 7,000 African Union (AU) forces currently
working in Darfur with UN peacekeepers.
It is another of the Darfur Peace Agreement's telling gaps that
it makes no provision for the handover from the AU to the UN. The
DPA does mandate the Sudanese government to disarm the janjaweed
militias who have wreaked havoc on the people of Darfur by November
2006. However, the Khartoum authorities have always maintained its
lack of involvement with or responsibility for the armed gangs responsible
for much of the death, sexual violence and displacement in Darfur,
so it remains unclear how it can oversee their demobilisation. In
any case, people in this region do not trust the government to do
so.
The African Union's peace and security council voted on 10 March
to extend its mission in Darfur until 30 September 2006 and to "support
in principle" its transformation into a United Nations force.
The position of Omar al-Bashir that a UN mission will not be allowed
into Darfur – certainly not with the necessary mandate under
Chapter VII of the UN charter that would enable effective civilian
protection – raises large doubts about whether this is attainable.
None of this bodes well for Harian, Insaf, and the hundreds of
displaced people crowded into Fata Borno camp – part of an
estimated total number of 1.8 million people displaced by the Darfur
conflict.
On the horizon
The cramped Fata Borno camp – measuring about 2.4 kilometres
by 4.4 kilometres – sits on a sun-baked plateau a few miles
from a lush wadi (riverbed). Before the outbreak of fighting in
2003, the camp-dwellers were farmers, growing sorghum, onions and
fruit.
Such camps are supposedly safe havens, but members of the janjaweed
militia prowl outside – and sometimes inside. The Arab militia
is accused of being the vanguard of an ethnic-cleansing campaign
which has seen one-third of Darfur's population driven from their
homes. On the forty-minute drive from the nearby town of Kutum,
a couple of dozen janjaweed could be seen astride their camels less
than fifty metres from the road – the same road that African
Union peacekeepers patrol.
Harian's father Abdullah tells me: "It is not safe to go outside
the camp – even though there is firewood just a two-minute
walk away, and our farms are only an hour's walk from here."
On market day in Kutum, people from the camps try to get into the
town to buy essential items, while those still with access to their
farms go to sell their produce. However, as Abdullah reminds me,
"we need an AU escort to go to Kutum. It is not safe otherwise."
Meanwhile, the Sudanese government has implemented a national polio
vaccination campaign. An adjacent small clinic in the Fata Borno
camp is the next stop-off point for mothers and children; there,
dozens of mothers from the camp queue up to have their children
measured and weighed to assess their nutritional health, before
receiving much-needed wheat and vitamin-enriched oil from the GOAL
team.
A member of the medical team describes how camp conditions cause
an increase of communicable diseases – not to mention the
social-psychological stresses exacerbated by living in a cramped
environment: "Before, people had a room each. Now in the camp,
you have ten people in one small hut, in the heat. More people are
getting sick, and the food problems contribute to this."
If security is not improved, the displaced will be increasingly
vulnerable, both to the direct impact of the fighting and to the
indirect effects of insecurity on vital food and healthcare provision.
The rainy season is imminent – what is known in aid parlance
as "the hunger period" for Africa's more vulnerable regions
and populations.
The consequence of the DPA has been increased military fragmentation
on the ground and a decrease in aid agencies' ability to reach the
vulnerable. As long as insecurity prevails, food aid cannot be delivered
irrespective of the effects of the rain on Darfur's roads –
which are little more than rock-strewn tracks in dry weather. This
means reduced access to the hundreds of thousands surviving in camps,
and no access at all to the estimated 750,000 who are beyond the
reach of any humanitarian relief.
The combined effects of three factors – the defective peace
agreement, UN troops a minimum of six months away, and an unstable
situation on the ground – spell potentially even greater tragedy
for Darfur. In the areas where anarchy does not already hold sway,
security and humanitarian conditions in the region may deteriorate
further.
Just two hundred meters from the edge of the camp, a row of bare
trees marks the borderline Abdullah refers to. "We see janjaweed
there every day, yet we cannot do anything but look beyond those
trees. Our future is there", he says.
The villages and farms of the people of Fata Borno are close by,
but the distance to the future Abdullah speaks of still seems immense.
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