Security in Darfur: Donors' Conference in Brussels Fails to Take Action

Eric Reeves' latest full-length analysis is now available both on his site and on Sudan Tribune; here are the first two sections...

Yet again the international community seems determined in its refusal to take seriously the precipitous decline in human security throughout Darfur, both for civilians and humanitarian workers. The July 18, 2006, meeting of Western donors in Brussels was touted as a way to address the growing security crisis, but failed in all ways. Western donors failed to provide the AU force in Darfur with the resources it requires and can usefully absorb, even as the AU is the only force on the ground and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At the same time, these donors failed to acknowledge the radical shortcomings of even an augmented AU force, and the correspondingly urgent need for deployment of a robust international peacemaking force. And most abjectly, they failed to convince Khartoum’s National Islamic Front regime of any need to accept such a force, even under the aegis of the UN.

The consequences of these ongoing failures can be measured most fully in a survey of current conditions in Darfur: AU performance is declining rapidly while civilians are caught up in ever more violent conflict between factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), as well as ongoing Janjaweed predations; several aid workers have recently been shot and killed in Darfur and another badly wounded in eastern Chad; many thousands more civilians have very recently been displaced; no progress is being made by the AU in implementing the Darfur Peace Agreement, which has essentially collapsed; the political leadership within the AU is demoralized and badly divided, and is failing to speak out about the most consequential developments on the ground. This AU silence occurs even as all evidence strongly suggests that Khartoum’s regular military forces have taken the side of the SLA faction of Minni Minawi, instigating what many observers on the ground are calling a “new war”---between the Zaghawa-dominated SLA faction of Minawi and the relatively new SLA coalition called SLA/United or SLA/19 (after the 19 commanders who broke with former SLA chairman Abdel Wahid el-Nur).

As more of Darfur moves deeper into the heaviest part of the rainy season (which runs through September) humanitarian logistics are becoming increasingly difficult, even as insecurity has closed many humanitarian corridors to large and highly distressed populations. Almost two-thirds of a million people are beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance (Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, statement to Security Council, April 20, 2006). Hundreds of thousands of civilians have only the most tenuous humanitarian access. The cholera outbreak shows no signs of abating. Funding for humanitarian operations remains critically low, both for Darfur and eastern Chad, as well as for other traditionally marginalized areas of Sudan. Food rations for extremely distressed civilian populations remain at only about two-thirds of what the UN estimates is required to sustain human life. The Gereida region of South Darfur has a huge population of displaced civilians poised to experience catastrophic mortality. The humanitarian crisis in eastern Chad deepens, with a total lack of security in many areas. And amidst this vast humanitarian crisis, Khartoum continues to obstruct and impede humanitarian relief---actions that are directly responsible for large numbers of human deaths and widespread suffering.

This is the context in which to assess the Brussels donors’ conference, and its various failures.

WHAT DID AND DID NOT HAPPEN IN BRUSSELS: FUNDING THE AU

Donors in Brussels committed $220 million dollars to the African Union force in Darfur, enough to sustain current AU operations through the end of September, but certainly not until the end of the year. This permits no significant expansion of AU capacity, and leaves an already badly demoralized mission wondering about its future. At the same time, what went unspoken in Brussels was the widely recognized truth that the AU is hopelessly incapable of taking on full responsibility for security in the immense Darfur region, or of undertaking the various labor-consumptive tasks stipulated for the AU in the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), or of staunching the flow of ethnically targeted violence into eastern Chad. The refusal to fund the AU more generously is essentially a calculation that the AU can effectively absorb relatively little beyond what it presently has in the way of resources.

In an extraordinarily telling moment, a senior European Commission official told the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)---and only on condition of anonymity---that “the real problem was that ‘the AU is snowed under with the complexities of financial management’” (UN IRIN [dateline: Brussels], July 19, 2006). In fact, this is hardly news: many observers of the AU mission in Darfur have remarked the unorthodox nature of AU budgeting, the lack of administrative capacity, and even outright corruption in the appropriation of equipment. AU logistics in the field have also come in for extremely harsh criticism from those most familiar with AU operations, as have AU intelligence and communications abilities.

Many of these shortcomings have been detailed over the past year---by the International Crisis Group, Refugees International, and the Brookings Institution/Bern University (see my two-part overview of this substantial body of research [“Ghosts of Rwanda: The Failure of the African Union in Darfur,” November 13 & 20, 2005], http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=535&page=1 [and] http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=534&page=1)

For example, Refugees International reported that,

“One of [the AU mission’s] biggest weaknesses in terms of skills is in its Command, Control and Communications, and Intelligence (or ‘C3I’) functions. Sources in Darfur told Refugees International that [the African Union mission] suffers from language and cultural barriers between officers from various countries, confusion in procedures, limited future planning, and ineffective communications systems. Much of this stems from lack of peacekeeping experience. Many Military Observers do not have basic investigatory skills.” (“No Power to Protect: The African Union Mission in Sudan,” November 2005, at [http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/publication/detail/7222], page 9)

Similarly, a military assessment of the AU from the Brookings Institution/Bern University (“The Protecting of Two Million Internally Displaced: The Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur,” November 2005, at http://www.brookings.edu/fp/projects/idp/200511_au_darfur.pdf) highlighted a number of key deficiencies in AU communications abilities: the AU mission lacks “fast warning of imminent attack”; lacks “continuous, all-source, and real-time intelligence”; lacks “ability to distinguish among combatants”; and lacks “flexible command and control of distributed forces” (page 35).

The intelligence capabilities of the AU are disastrously weak. Human intelligence, aerial and ground surveillance, intercept capability, and analytic capacity are virtually non-existent. Refugees International (RI) noted,

“Even when [the African Union force] does collect valuable information, RI was told by [AU] officers and advisors that there is a lack of suitably trained personnel capable of analyzing this information for intelligence value, which hinders any given commander’s ability to react.” (page 10)

Even more bluntly, the Brookings Institution/Bern University assessment notes:

“Lack of planning and establishing an intelligence infrastructure within [the AU force] meant that there was no routine way to gather and analyze intelligence on either the government forces and their militias or the various rebel groups. Good intelligence is vital in Darfur, yet [the AU’s] capacity to gather, analyze and act on information has been very weak. ‘The AU does not understand the importance of having an “intelligence cell” and of having good information on the command structure, for example, of the Janjaweed.’ ‘AU force headquarters is blind when it comes to intelligence,’ according to a former advisor.” (page 37)

The International Crisis Group had even earlier reported on deep skepticism in European Union thinking about AU operations in Darfur:

“It is common thinking in Brussels [among EU officials] that increased troop numbers in [the AU mission] have been accompanied by declining efficiency. One EU official claimed [the AU] is operating at 40 to 50% capacity, while another asserted the mission conducted fewer patrols in September than in April and May when it had a least 2,000 fewer troops.” (“The EU/AU Partnership in Darfur,” October 25, 2005 [Brussels], page 12, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3766)

In understanding why this week’s donors’ conference in Brussels gave so little to the AU, essentially sustaining present operations through September 2006, these and many other fundamental, structural shortcomings weighed heavily in deliberations. For of course an appropriate intelligence capacity or operating efficiency cannot be “airlifted” to the AU; nor can they be “purchased” along with appropriate equipment. In this and other crucial areas, the AU mission will fail so long as it is solely responsible for security in Darfur.

This cannot be an excuse, however, for a failure by the countries of the EU and North America to provide the training, equipment (especially transport), and other resources that can indeed be effectively absorbed by the AU. To say that the AU is fundamentally incapable of providing adequate security in Darfur hardly precludes saying as well that the force can be significantly, if only incrementally improved. Given the overwhelming need for security, donors in Brussels had a compelling obligation to fund the AU in all ways that would increase its performance on the ground. These wealthy nations did not, and this is a conspicuous failure.