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Darfur Crisis: Towards An Ever Greater Tragedy

Amit Pyakurel - 4/24/2007

The situation in Darfur seems to be bleaker day by day, notwithstanding the abundance of media coverage and ostensible international attention. May the cause is easily acknowledgeable: it's due to the inadequate international attention, let alone the international efforts, alongside the Sudanese government's indiscriminate offensive against its civilians rather than looking concretely towards the reason of the crisis, that Darfur is rapidly drowning deeper into the humanitarian catastrophe.

What has been a brutal specification of the crisis in Darfur is the alleged genocide perpetuated by the Sudanese government against the generalized "rebel" groups. The groups those are systematically targeted by the Sudanese armed forces (which is aided by Arab Janjaweed militias) are from the ethnic communities known as Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit.

Most of the residents in Darfur are Muslims and the Arab Janjaweeds. As the local rebel groups emerged to fight against the government since 2003, the Sudanese government is being blamed for backing the Arab Janjaweed militias, and the government's action against the rebels and their professed supporters has resulted into more than 200,000 villagers dead and as many as 2.5 million of them homeless. It's been reported that burning and looting of villagers' houses, rapes, and killings has increased in the region since 2004.

But the calculation of the number of deaths hugely varies from different sectors. Though the Sudanese government's data shows the nominal 9,000 deaths, most of the international NGOs have anticipated that the number of people died could be as high as 400,000. Still, the revelation of deaths and massacres are conservative and of inadequate estimation, according to the international humanitarian groups. While a huge reported testimony of massacre, forced displacement, and rape has portrayed an extremely ugly face of the crisis in Darfur, it's even more brutal to acknowledge that most of the victims targeted by the government and its Arab militia supporters are known to be the mere innocent rural populace.

It would be easy for us to ascertain that the most persistent obstacle for the crisis in Darfur, for it to see any apparent rescue yet after so long, is the complex form of the crisis in itself. Since 2003, the Sudanese government troops have been inconsistently fighting, killing, and chasing away the people who are or perceived to be the members of the two rebel groups in the Darfur region. The rebel groups, those chiefly include African tribes who smacked against the government calling that the remote Darfurian region remained undeveloped because of the government's indifference towards the need of the region, have been allegedly fighting to make the government listen to and tackle the underdevelopment of the region.

As the complexity of the crisis largely speaks for the inability of the international stakeholders as well as the Sudanese government to make some reasonable progress to solve the crisis, what the Sudanese government is doing is elaborately killing and intimidating the large rural populace in the region. For this, the Bush administration could have rightly termed it as a "genocide" by claiming that the government's action against its own people is "wrong."

So what could be a concrete revelation of the crisis? Are these rebel groups really the threat to the constant peace and stability in Darfur? Here, it would be more relevant if the Sudanese government dig deep inside the public interest of its rural and underprivileged citizens of Darfur and unearth the complex root of the conflict. It's certainly indispensable that the government stop generalizing the rebels and declare war against the yet-to-be concretely identified "enemies," as this is increasingly victimizing the poor innocent villagers, including women and children.

Pertaining to some genuine demands raised by the different rebel factions, if not all of them, Sudanese government need to address them with courtesy, alongside the international involvement like UN and its associates. This could benefit the Sudan's stability in a long run and, most pertinently, it would help to cease the growing conflict and pace the recovery of the currently worsening crisis.

Engaging the very people from the real situation of the crisis, besides dealing with the diplomatic means along with the international camaraderie, could be highly vital way for a solution. Without specific understanding of the rebellion and without targeting any appropriate goals, superficial explanations such as labeling the Darfurian conflict as Africans vs. Arabs or Muslims vs. Christians, and dealing the conflict solely on the basis of insurgency-counterinsurgency strategy wouldn't be beneficial. If the government's offensive will keep growing, alongside the violent backlash from the dissatisfied rebels, it will add up to the confusion and cumulate the deaths and intimidation of the poor Darfurians, which eventually would push the situation beyond any fruitful repair.

The situation in Darfur largely remains to be unfolded before the international jurisdiction of law and human rights. It's highly reported that Darfur lags far behind in terms of regulating law and order and its government is blamed to have nurtured impunity. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has recently revealed two war crimes suspects in Darfur, one the former interior minister Ahmad Muhammad Harun and other the Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, claiming them for involvement in mass rape, torture, killing, and looting.

This has pertained to a little hope for installing law and order and human rights prospects in this long dilapidated region. However, we may still have to wait for a long time to see a significant breakthrough in solving the crisis in Darfur, as some analysts has already termed the recent allegation about the war crimes being only like scuffing the surface of a complex problem.

There have been a splendid number humanitarian aides working in Darfur. But, judging the perplexity, grimness, and lengthiness of the crisis, the sole humanitarian efforts may not rescue the Darfurians from the basic problem. Ending-up of the impunity is crucial, for which a fair international intervention for judicial proceedings based on the international rule of law, that would provide justice to the innocents, is rightly the demand of the current situation in Darfur.

Foreign Intervention may sound distasteful concerning the sovereignty of a nation and its people, moreover regarding the current bitter backlash perpetuated by the Iraq war due to the American led invasion. But there is no option other than such an intervention, if there is no stoppage in the ruthless killing and violence against the mass populace, moreover when the Sudanese government itself hasn't been able to do enough to contain the violence but instead has allegedly propagated the violence and impunity by itself.

Concerning this ugliest picture of human catastrophe of the modern days, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has once again called for "dialogue and negotiation" from all sides, as the UN has recently reported more abductions, hijackings and tribal fighting throughout the region. The Secretary-General's latest report on Darfur released on March 3rd said that "much still needs to be done to follow-up on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended 21 years of separate civil conflict between north and south Sudan."

What has conveyed little optimism is the commitment expressed by the Sudan's president to deploy several thousand U.N. peacekeepers to help end the violence in Darfur, in his letter to the Secretary-General. The deployment of the strong peacekeeping mission, that would include both the UN and African Union forces making total of 22,000, would be the second step of a three-state UN plan to salvage the crisis in Darfur.