ENOUGH, associated with the American Center for Progress, is a project dedicated to ending genocide and crimes against humanity. All the authors work with the ENOUGH project in some form of capacity: John Prendergast is co-chair of the ENOUGH project, Omer Ismail is a general advisor and Colin Thomas-Jensen is a policy advisor.

The time has come to acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes in the Darfur peace process. The international community has finally recognized the inadequacies of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and has moved to significantly enhance civilian protection efforts in Darfur through a United Nations (UN)/African Union (AU) hybrid force called UNAMID. When fully deployed, UNAMID will be the largest UN-led peacekeeping mission in history. Though there is still a long way to go to get that force on the ground, the effort is finally directionally correct. It is critical to do the same for the Darfur peace process.

The timing for a renewed drive for peace in Darfur is auspicious, for the following reasons:

• U.S. President George Bush’s legacy: Bush’s administration was instrumental in negotiating a 2005 peace agreement between Khartoum and rebels based in the south, and he wants to protect that legacy. The president’s naming of a new special envoy, Richard Williamson, indicates renewed seriousness in the White House.
• China’s Olympics deadline: In advance of the Olympics, China is more willing to engage in an international drive for a peace settlement.
• Khartoum’s cross-border assault: The failed attempt by Sudanese government-backed Chadian rebels to overthrow President Idriss Deby in Chad provides fresh motivation for France and African governments to end this spreading crisis.
• UNAMID’s momentum: UNAMID’s deployment will provide a catalytic call for an actual peace to keep, as additional force without political progress is a recipe for disaster for both the UN and AU, as well as for the people of Darfur.
• Civilians’ increased peril: The fresh fighting in Darfur and Chad is threatening more lives and creating more refugees and internally displaced persons.

This moment of opportunity demands swift action by the moribund UN/AU mediation and its international backers. Although the current effort has created a single process that is largely supported by the rest of the world, that process is now broken. Opinions vary on how to fix it, and there is no silver bullet to steer the process in the right direction. But there are ingredients for a revitalized process that ENOUGH has identified through our fieldwork, our consultations with key actors, and our own experience in peace processes in Sudan and elsewhere.

This article attempts simply to frame the overall architecture of a revitalized process. Details will be debated fiercely and emerge through resulting negotiations, but if the process isn’t fixed quickly, there will be no peace in Darfur for a long, long time.

The Ingredients for Revitalization

There already exists a model for getting a peace deal done in Sudan: the process that produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). A variation on that theme would serve Darfur well.

It is our judgment that the following three elements are required to achieve a peace agreement for Darfur that ends the fighting and allows the displaced to return to their homes: revitalizing the process, getting the substance right, and building and applying the necessary leverage.

Revitalizing the Process

One strong lead mediator must replace the dual AU and UN mediators that presently lead the process. That UN/AU envoy should have strong negotiation experience, particularly in Africa and preferably in Sudan. The envoy should have a full-time support team with expertise in all relevant issues being negotiated. As a means of jump-starting the process, the new lead envoy should produce the outlines of a comprehensive draft agreement that addresses the bottom-line issues of the people of Darfur. After the lengthy consultation process that has occurred over the past year, these issues are well understood and outlined briefly below.

The draft should be circulated to key constituencies for peace, including traditional leaders and community leaders in camps for internally displaced persons and refugees, Darfurian civil society groups, women’s organizations, political parties, and diaspora organizations such as the Darfur Leaders Network. Broadening the peace process is essential to create a sense of ownership among Darfurians; the mediation team must establish a formal process to solicit regular feedback from these critical Darfurian actors. Further, the lead mediator must show quickly that the revitalized mediation will address the core issues. Otherwise, the rebels will almost certainly continue to reject the process.

Given how biased past mediation efforts have been toward the government’s well-developed positions, rebel factions have understandably been reluctant to engage, and their position is backed by significant segments of Darfur’s civilian population, who also have lost faith in mediation efforts. A critical flaw in the current peace initiative is that a clear vision for an end state that resonates with the victims of the conflict was not established before the efforts to unify the rebel groups. Circulating such a document will help generate pressure from key constituencies and from the displaced camps on the rebels to participate in the process.

Citations in the press of dozens and dozens of rebel factions obscure the fact that a handful of factions or factional alliances have emerged from what appears to the untrained observer to be chaos:

• The Sudan Liberation Army/Abdel Shafie, or SLA/Abdelshafie, is an alliance of five factions that attended consultations in Juba, southern Sudan, facilitated by the SPLM late last year.
• The SLA/Unity alliance ironed out differences among its respective factions and is led collectively by Suliman Jamous, Adam Shogar, and Sharif Harir.
• The SLA/Abdelwahid faction remains mostly as a political actor, with minimal military impact in Darfur.
• The Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, is divided among two factions, one led by Khalil Ibrahim and the other, called JEM Collective Leadership, by his former confidant, Bahar Abu Garda.

Many Sudan observers have called for a cessation of hostilities as the first step in a revitalized process. ENOUGH believes this is unrealistic. As evidenced by a recent rebel offensive and renewed attacks against civilians by Khartoum-backed militia, neither side feels any incentive to stop fighting right now. However, a demonstration that the peace process actually has legs will help create some incentive for forward movement. Within the context of a revitalized process, at some point a cessation of hostilities agreement can be tabled with a more realistic chance of success.

The mediation team — accompanied whenever possible by special envoys from the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom — needs to take the draft agreement on the road and conduct shuttle diplomacy with the various stakeholders. Clear timelines should be set, confidence-building measures and benchmarks established, and close coordination with efforts to achieve the implementation of the CPA should be prioritized.

Getting the Substance Right

After multiple failed peace efforts and meandering consultations, the issues at stake in Darfur are well understood. The draft agreement referenced above should include proposals for the following:

• A substantial sum for individual compensation to be paid by the government
• International monitoring of a cessation of all forms of state support for the janjaweed militia structure
• International monitoring and support for encampment of all forces in Darfur (government, rebel, and militia)
• Administrative arrangements for Darfur
• Power sharing for Darfurian constituencies
• A comprehensive plan to address the humanitarian, livelihood, environmental, and developmental challenges that Darfur will face in the aftermath of the conflict

There will be contentious debates over the specifics of the wealth, power, development, and security arrangements of any lasting Darfur deal. But the first step for the mediation is to jump-start the process by taking a stab at solutions, with an understanding that much negotiation lies ahead.

Building and Applying the Necessary Leverage

The peace process that ended the war in southern Sudan finally succeeded because an African lead mediator was backed by a “troika” of countries — the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway — that brought leverage with the parties that the mediator did not have. The mediator and the troika worked hand in glove in a process that should provide, at least in general terms, a blueprint for how to succeed in Darfur. Indeed, what is and has been missing in the Darfur process is real leverage. Creating a troika-like effort to back up the mediator, which in turn would be strengthened by clear and focused incentives and pressures, would help give peace a real chance in Darfur.

Instead of a troika, ENOUGH, the Save Darfur Coalition, the Genocide Intervention Network, and others have proposed a “quartet” of countries with maximal external leverage that could work with the mediator and regional states in pressing for an agreement. The quartet we propose would consist of China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each has individual leverage and interest, but the combination would be decisive.

The quartet should consult closely with regional states with great interest in Darfur, including Egypt, Libya, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Saudi Arabia. Together, the three external elements — the mediator, the quartet, and the regional states — can use their comparative advantages, and if they coordinate closely could effect the calculations of the warring parties.

In order to exert the greatest amount of influence and effectiveness, each of the quartet countries should have full-time staff in the region to continuously engage the warring parties and regional states while supporting the work of the lead mediator. In the case of the United States, Bush’s special envoy, Richard Williamson, should have two full-time deputies working the Darfur and CPA issues as well as a field-based team with personnel in Khartoum, Chad, and Juba. Additionally, the French government, working closely with China and the United States, should invest more through the European Union in diplomatic efforts to resolve the political crisis in Chad.

Field-based diplomacy would be dramatically enhanced if the international community builds greater leverage through targeted punitive measures. For the five years that the conflict has raged on, there have been very few multilateral costs imposed on the individuals most responsible for violence targeting civilians. The UN Security Council — led quietly by the United States — must impose a consequence for destruction and obstruction in Darfur, in the form of targeted sanctions, a comprehensive arms embargo, and additional support to the International Criminal Court. Until we begin to effect the calculations of the warring parties, those calculations will remain unchanged and the war will continue.

Conclusion

A successful peace process in Darfur is merely one component of a comprehensive approach to lasting peace in Sudan. The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has time and again taken advantage of the international community’s inconsistent focus and failure to articulate a clear path toward peace in Darfur and — as promised by the CPA — the democratic transformation of Sudan. With laser-guided international focus on ending the war in the south from 2003 to 2005, Khartoum bought itself time to pursue its scorched-earth campaign in Darfur. Since then, facing international condemnation for crimes against humanity and haphazard diplomatic efforts to end the Darfur crisis, Khartoum has predictably undermined the implementation of the CPA. Unquestionably, the NCP maintains the initiative, runs circles around the international community’s efforts to resolve both crises, and continues to grind the people of Sudan under its heel.

The only way for the international community to break out of this deadly rut is by revitalizing the Darfur peace process, refocusing on the core issues, and building the coordinated leverage necessary to achieve a peace agreement for Darfur and the full implementation of the CPA. Another failed peace process for Darfur and an unraveling of the CPA could plunge the Sudan into unprecedented misery. This is entirely avoidable, but will take the kind of leadership the Bush administration demonstrated on behalf of the North-South peace process. Whether Bush musters the will for such an effort will be in part driven by the continuing commitment of the Darfur advocacy movement to a comprehensive peace for Sudan, and ultimately, the extent to which he cares about his legacy in Sudan.