At last we have it. Five months after the United States promised to unleash “Plan B against the Sudan government unless it agreed to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, President George W. Bush has finally announced a package of economic sanctions. Plan B is on the road.
In announcing the sanctions against 31 companies and three individuals, Bush listed a number of other “steps the US is taking to force Sudanese President Omar Bashir to meet his obligations to stop the killing in Darfur: “consultations on a new Security Council resolution that would, among other things, impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan; “continued pressure for a hybrid force of UN and African Union troops; “insistence on full implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement.
No one who wants to see an end to the terrible suffering of Darfur can quibble with any of these things. Stop the flow of arms? Yes. Beef up the shrinking, struggling AU force in Darfur with UN troops? Why not? Implement a peace agreement that would, in theory, end the fighting and disarm the Janjaweed? Of course.
There’s only one problem: do-ability. The Security Council is not going to approve an arms embargo. China, which has a seat on the Security Council, is one of Sudan’s main arms suppliers and will nix it. Full agreement on an AU-UN force will take years to reach and then to implement (if agreement is achievable, which at present seems unlikely). The Darfur Peace Agreement is unworkable as it is. The rebel commanders who control rural Darfur reject it and will continue to reject it.
Senior American officials are convinced that the sanctions announced on May 29 will hurt Sudan’s economy in ways of which Khartoum is still unaware. Salva Kir, the first vice president of Sudan and president of South Sudan, says they will hurt the people more. The jury is out. What sanctions will not do, however hard they bite, is affect the Sudan government’s ability – or will – to inflict harm on the people of Darfur.
Perhaps this is why the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, upped the ante nine days later, warning Khartoum on June 7 that “the United States and some of its friends and allies will move forward with additional sanctions, including posing a no-fly zone over Darfur, unless the regime agrees to the hybrid force.
The US and its friends should reconsider. In the last three and a half years, humanitarian aid has stabilized conditions for the more than 4 million people who currently depend on relief. Mortality and malnutrition have fallen, significantly. If a no-fly zone were imposed, Khartoum would not go belly up. It would in all likelihood retaliate by grounding humanitarian flights. Its proxies in the Janjaweed militias would show their displeasure in the only way they know. Relief workers might be expelled or forced to evacuate the region. People who are now being kept alive would die.
The current emphasis on coercive measures conceals the fact that the US and its friends have no clear plan of political action, no sensible project for peace to go hand in hand with pressure on the Khartoum regime. Bush’s sanctions announcement made that very clear. As well as demanding full implementation of the DPA, he promised to “continue to promote a broadly supported and inclusive political settlement that is the only long-term solution to the crisis in Darfur. If we have the DPA, and believe it can be implemented, why do we need to separately promote a “broadly supported and inclusive political settlement?
Ignore the face-saving rhetoric about implementing the DPA in its present form as a solution to the crisis. There is a general recognition, even in Washington, that the least the agreement needs to save it is an additional protocol – most critically, to strengthen the provisions for disarming the Janjaweed. There is already a schedule for the modification of the agreement. Sudan’s neighbors must fall in line behind the US and its friends by the end of this month. Darfur’s rebels must unify behind a common negotiating position by the end of July. A new protocol must be negotiated by the end of August, through shuttle diplomacy between the government and the rebels.
None of this will happen. The schedule is completely unrealistic.
There is no quick fix to the conflict in Darfur, no three bullet points that will guarantee peace. The war in Darfur is not the same thing that it was in 2003-2004, when Khartoum and its proxies unleashed a firestorm of genocidal violence against civilians accused of supporting the rebels. We did nothing then, when Darfurians were dying in droves. Why the frantic haste now, when they are not? The conflict in Darfur today is less lethal, but more complicated and in many ways more insidious. Deadline pressure caused the death of the Darfur Peace Agreement, which was born before it was fully formed. Are the US and its friends going to make the same mistake again, or are they prepared to put in the time and effort needed to get it right this time?
Bashir is betting that they aren’t. Julie Flinthas written extensively on Sudan. She is the author, with Alex de Waal, of “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
