Darfur: Fighting fire with water
The situation in Darfur is spinning further out of control. What should the international community do to stop the bloodletting?
The 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur can no longer handle the situation there, according to a top AU official. “The African Union force cannot cope with the circumstances that it finds itself in, and we have to be honest about it,” Sam Ibok, head of the AU team charged with implementing a peace agreement in western Sudan, told Reuters Television. “Anybody who wants us to succeed would need to work to give us the ability to be more effective and that can only be done … between the United Nations and the African Union.”
But are more peacekeepers enough to resolve the conflict in Darfur? And what kind of military intervention should the international community consider?
The first step to deciding the right approach is to build an accurate understanding of the situation. Writing in the London Review of Books, Mahmood Mamdani draws parallels with the civil war in Iraq:
The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. The estimate of the number of civilians killed over the past three years is roughly similar. The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms. The victims too are by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals.
There are, however, key differences. Sudan is dirt poor and does not sit on the world's largest oil reserves. In Iraq, there is a massive foreign occupation. In Darfur, the Khartoum government backs one paramilitary against the others.
Mamadani asks:
“What would happen if we thought of Darfur as we do of Iraq, as a place with a history and politics – a messy politics of insurgency and counter-insurgency? Why should an intervention in Darfur not turn out to be a trigger that escalates rather than reduces the level of violence as intervention in Iraq has done? Why might it not create the actual possibility of genocide, not just rhetorically but in reality?”
In my view, inaction is not an option, since the slaughter going on in Darfur is scandalous. But we need to make sure that whatever action we take does not release the genie we hope to dispel.
We need to put pressure on the government in Khartoum to stop backing the murderous janjaweed militia. And peacekeepers should be deployed under an international mandate to protect civilians, not to destroy the country as the US and its allies did in Iraq.
Ultimately, the solution to the problems of Darfur lies in politics and economics. The best intervention the international community can orchestrate is a long-term one that does not grab headlines but strikes at the root of the conflict: the breakdown in inter-tribal relations as they scramble to control precious water wells, triggered by the drought which has gripped Darfur since the late 1970s. In fact, Darfur could be seen as a test case of that most insidious and worrying of emerging 21st century conflicts, the ‘water wars'. Promoting reconciliation and sustainable development in the troubled region are crucial.
There are those who are calling for the world to fight fire with fire in Darfur. But the most effective weapon against fire is water.
