Monday 30 April 2007

The Dangers of Peacekeeping in Darfur

The world is waiting on Darfur. It is expected that UN peacekeepers, under the heavy package deal agreed with Khartoum, will be dispatched soon. It is believed that their presence will substantially reduce violence between rebel and government forces. It is believed that they will protect the displaced and the defenceless from Janjaweed raids. Finally, and perhaps most dangerously, it is believed that their presence will create the conditions for a post-Abuja political settlement and the deployment of large UN-AU hybrid force. In other words, it is assumed that the deployment of UN forces is the first step towards a sustainable and equitable peace in Darfur.

But what will happen if these assumptions are false, or worse are merely political theatre designed to pacify the street rallies calling for 'something' to be done.

Today in Darfur fighting between rebels and government has almost ceased. Instead we are confronted with a complex layer cake of localised conflicts and banditry. This situation is certainly lethal for Darfur’s residents but it is equally treacherous for any outside force, unlikely to understand the highly localised conflicts currently raging in Darfur. Look at the current international force in Darfur: April has been the deadliest month for the African Union since their deployment, with seven soldiers killed in three attacks. Five it is believed were killed by gun-men from one of the rebel factions.

The failures of the AU are blamed on their expertise and capacity, which are certainly limited. But what if the reality is that no military force, regardless of mandate or capacity can end this conflict, what role will peacekeepers then serve?

Instead of bringing stability to Darfur, there is a real danger than any new peacekeeping force will upset the delicate balances of power that have brought a measure of stability to certain areas of Darfur and trigger new violence both against itself and against the population. The current situation in Darfur has been created by Khartoum. Its decisions in 2004 to pull police and military forces out of rural areas and to arm the Janjaweed militia has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands, and left millions destitute. However, Khartoum’s decision was not to fight a war by other means but, particularly since its massive defeats during the September campaign of 2006, it was to make Darfur ungovernable by any party. It chose to create a hell that neither it nor any one could control. Since it achieved this it has sat and watched Darfur burn. At present Khartoum has the strategic upperhand - it has checked the rebels advance - hence there apparent willingness to bend to international pressure at the moment. But it has lost tactical control on the ground, and the danger is that it the UN peacekeepers will be forced to play this role as they seek to protect civilians and humanitarian agencies alike. Thus, they will be doing the government's work.

Peacekeepers were necessary in 2003 and in 2004. They were necessary in 2005 and probably in 2006. But we are too late. ‘Never again’ has become, ‘once again’. We must not compile our mistakes with another. Introducing UN peacekeepers into Darfur is a fools errand. To bring security in the middle of any war, normally means consolidating the authority of the actors that are already present – at present the dominant actor is the government in Khartoum. Peacekeepers faced with a baffling array of rebel groups, factions and militia risk seeking support from the one actor able to offer it, the government. The only solution now of any real effectiveness is to unify the rebels, pressure Khartoum to protect its citizens, and strengthen the African Union.

This is not a good choice, in fact it is a hard, dirty and unpleasant choice. But politics is not about good choices. It is about recognising and taking possibilities. We must not let our dreams cost lives.

Saturday 21 April 2007

Irony

I won't point out the irony of having written a post apologising for the prolonged absence, closely followed by another prolonged absence. Productivity follows the guilt cycle for the modern Northern European. Forget the lapsed Catholic complex, we are dealing with an entire society suffering from lapsed Protestant complex

I wanted to respond to a comment from a friend about the introspectiveness of the previous post. 'Surely', he cried out, 'what is personal frustration in comparison to the good works that must be done', 'the world is an evil place, and if you didn't know this you were naive.' Or something along those lines (he was neither as facile nor as judgemental as I make him sound). Don't read this post as a justification for the previous post. Read it separately as a reflection on frustration here.

In this sector many people have "taken control" of their lives. They have given up many things, relationships, families, stability and often money in exchange for a life that gave them excitement and adventure. But also, and more than this, they asked for a life that gave them meaning, a sense of accomplishment that extends beyond the personal. These people are not in any way adjusted to the amount of governmental control that is exerted over individual lives in contexts like Sudan. When, as in Darfur, aid work is bogged down in a government constructed minefield of delays, procedural obstructionism and moral ambiguity very quickly people begin to think about what they gave up and can become extremely frustrated with their inability to act or change the situation.

This personal frustration is, for many, compounded by wider concerns, precisely because it was these wider concerns that led to people to aid work. A lot of people's frustration in Sudan at the moment, is that they feel the waters rising around this humanitarian Atlantis, and more and more they feel that their jobs and organisations are complicit in its sinking.

The core problem is that yes the world is a bad place, but in situations like Darfur, if you do not go in with a clear idea of what is Right, you will find your operations diverted by what is possible. Organisations have to choose moral barricades that they will fight for or risk having their operations eroded. Abandoning these barricades is a slippery slope on which means become ends. In other words we start counting how many bags of wheat were distributed rather than how many people ate, we start using all of our influence to send peacekeepers rather than asking how the hell they are might to solve the problem.

Some NGOs, like Save the Children or Oxfam, are highly reflective. They look dispassionately at their own operations and critically reassess their work. These organisations are the ones I look up to, not just for their technical expertise, but also for their ethos and leadership. Other organisations, the UN and the World Bank, are pathologically unreflective. Criticism is dodged by referring to the divisions of the Security Council, weak mandates or lack of coordination.

Here in Sudan, the UN has constructed from scratch a vast complex the size of three football fields to house its HQ. The UN has access to the highest ranks of the Sudanese bureaucracy and it has sources of information that NGOs dream of. And yet, with all of this, the UN suffers from a tremendous lack of moral courage. Everything the UN seems to do is a compromise in which it appears to be the losing party - it never fights, even when its staff is beaten, or its operations rendered subservient to government interests. It is a powerful beast that allows itself to be bound, in exchange for the right to posture. As a result, the single most powerful actor in humanitarianism is often the very actor that lets the lions into the coliseum.

Don't get me wrong, I am not calling for a crusader organisation, a multilateral Amnesty International which bears down on a crisis with frothing outrage. To understand the emergency situations of this world you must be a cynic. But you must be a cynic with moral clarity.

Monday 2 April 2007

My apologies

Dear all,

Sorry about the extended delay in posting. I returned to Sudan in the middle of February and simply found picking up the strings of my job, as well as a whole raft of other work took the energy I had been dedicating to blogging. This hopefully won't happen again.

I think their is another reason why I am blogging again - frustration.

When I first returned everything seemed possible and probable. Plans were made, next steps scheduled and strategies put into motion. I was enthusiastic and optimistic. A month and a half later I find that despite the paper created, the workshops attended and the flip chart/white boards filled nothing has changed. Even if our project had the impact on the ground that I would like, still this would not essentially change anything. People would still by dying or living destitute in Darfur. The rebels would still be criminally incompetent, and the government would still be intent on the destruction of all potential challengers to its own hypocritical authority.

I am beginning to believe that the naivety required to be a humanitarian, is in fact a deeply cynical adventure. By pretending that good actions in a bad world can make a difference we are in fact avoiding the much starker and darker reality that if we really want to stop events like Darfur we must be political, partisan and involved.

The problem with recognising this, is that I am confident that we cannot maintain our own moral purity if we do this.