Alex De Waal, I know you can read

Quote: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF DARFUR “The Darfur Peace Agreement” What it Means for the People of Darfur Peace for Darfur The people of Darfur have suffered more than three years of terrible war, massacre, hunger and displacement at the hands of the Government of Sudan and others. The Darfur Peace Agreement is the first step for peace. We know that many more steps are needed. The Darfur Peace Agreement was signed in Nigeria on 5 May. It is the work of the African Union together with the United States of America, Great Britain, Canada, the European Union, the United Nations, and other countries. All these foreign governments and organizations agreed every part of it. Everybody in the international community supports it. It will allow Darfurians to return home in safety, to go about their daily lives again without fear for their families and loved ones, and to begin to see the end of their political and economic marginalization. Now that the Government has signed the Darfur Peace Agreement, the United Nations is able to consider sending soldiers to Darfur to protect the people. The Government of Sudan is even now talking to the United Nations and the United States about bringing a UN protection force in to Darfur. The Darfur Peace Agreement is 140 pages long and took teams of experts five months to negotiate. This is a short summary of the main points in the Agreement and an explanation of what it means for the people of Darfur. The Agreement has four main sections as well as a timetable for the different activities - most importantly, the total disarmament of the Janjaweed. The African Union, the Movements and international security experts will monitor this disarmament. Sharing Power Section one deals with how the Movements will share power with the National Congress Party, and how Darfurians will have their fair share of power in Sudan as a whole. The main points are: • The Movements can choose one of their leaders who will become the fourth most senior man in the Presidency. His title is “Senior Assistant to the President” and the President has to involve him in every decision for Darfur. • A new government body is set up, the “Transitional Darfur Regional Authority.” Its job is to do all the work to make the Peace Agreement real, including helping people return to their homes, providing money for rebuilding, providing compensation, sorting out land ownership, and organizing security. It will be headed by a nominee of the Movements. All the commissions - resettlement, compensation, land etc - will be headed by respected Darfurians nominated by the Movements. • The Movements will get one Governor and some other government posts in Darfur as well as one Cabinet Minister and 12 seats in the National Assembly. The Movements did not, and cannot, win the war. The government cannot be forced to give away its majority before elections. • Elections will be held in three years so the people of Darfur can choose their own government. A year later the people of Darfur can choose whether to have one Darfur Region or the three states of North Darfur, South Darfur and West Darfur. • Darfurians will not have to pay any education fees for five years. They will get preferential treatment in civil service jobs. Rebuilding Darfur Section two deals with making sure that Darfur gets its fair share of Sudan’s wealth and making sure there is enough money for compensation, relief and reconstruction. • Every person who suffered during the conflict will be able to claim compensation from a special fund. Someone chosen by the Movements will run this fund. The government has agreed to compensate the victims. Not just for their own lives and their children’s lives, but also for their animals, their possessions, their homes, their health and much besides. It has already paid a first installment of $30 million into the fund. More will follow soon. The compensation process is simple and quick. There is even provision for interim compensation payments without a full hearing. • A special assistance programme will be set up to help every displaced person return home and rebuild their lives in areas where international troops have ensured they will be safe. There will be packages to help people begin to farm again, to keep animals, and to rebuild their houses. There will be assistance to dig wells and provide schools and clinics. Someone chosen by the Movements will run this programme. • The Government and international donors have promised the biggest-ever programme of rebuilding, which is guaranteed for ten years. • A special group will study who owns which land in Darfur and sort out disputes. Hawakeer will be the basis for the settlement of land disputes. • Masars will be demilitarized and protected. Nomads will be able to move freely with their animals once again. Security Section three is about security. It aims to stop the fighting immediately and make it possible for people to be safe, so that we can move on to control and disarm the militias, build up a police force that the people trust, and make sure that the rebel fighters are either incorporated into the army or disarmed and helped to build new lives for themselves. • The most important issue is to stop the fighting. This is not easy. For almost three years the Government and Movements have promised a ceasefire and it has never happened. Because of this, the new Agreement is much tougher. Every army unit, militia or Movement force must confine itself to a particular place and will not be allowed to move. The African Union troops will monitor this closely, supported by international observers. After another six weeks, each military unit has to withdraw to a smaller area, and after another six weeks, to put its heavy guns in a special place where they can be monitored. • The Government has to control every single militia by restricting it to its own base or its own home community. Attacks are strictly forbidden and will not be permitted. • IDP camps and the areas around them will become “Demilitarized Zones” where no soldiers or militia are allowed. • In IDP camps, the people themselves will choose their policemen from the community. Later on, these “community police” will become part of the ordinary police. • The Janjaweed will be disarmed in stages. First they will not be allowed to roam about. Especially, they must be stopped in any area where there are civilians including people returning home from IDP camps. Then they must give up their heavy guns. Lastly they will be disarmed. • 4,000 fighters from the Movements will join the national army, with senior command posts from the very first day. • The PDF will be restricted to their bases and then reduced in size. The police force will be reformed so that policemen are trusted by everyone and can perform their job effectively. • The leaders of all communities will meet together to decide how they should control their village defence groups. Over time, when peace and stability is restored, everyone will hand over his gun. Now that the Peace Agreement is signed, the African Union is asking for more troops - including an airborne unit - and more equipment. Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Reconciliation Part four of the Agreement is the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Reconciliation. This is a conference in which tribal and community leaders, women and youth, and all possible groups from every part of Darfur can meet together to resolve their problems. They will set up a “Peace and Reconciliation Council” so that problems between tribes can be solved quickly. Guarantees Many people in Darfur are fearful that the Government will not honour the Agreement or that Darfur will return to war again. Not just the African Union but also every single western country and especially the United States of America back the Agreement. President Bush wrote to Abdel Wahid Nour and Minni Minawi giving them his personal assurance that he will do everything he can to make sure that the Agreement is properly honoured, and that Darfur returns to peace and security, that the land is rebuilt, and that democracy is achieved. International pressure has never been so great. It will not diminish. Any peace agreement is a compromise between people who have fought and killed one another. We realize that people in Darfur are still deeply afraid and worried about their future. We hope that the Darfur Peace Agreement is the first step towards rebuilding Darfur as a common home for all its people. Alex de Waal Consultant to the African Union Mediation © Copyright by SudaneseOnline.com Top of Page

Quote: many thanks for your message, which I have read carefully and considered. As a statement of the grievances and just demands of Darfurian people it is superb. As a proposal for a solution to the problem at hand, in which an armed Movement has failed to win a war, has extremely weak political structures, and is divided among itself, is facing an undefeated and powerful government that is recognized by the international community and has won legitimacy for its CPA with the South, it does not work.

Quote: Truce Is Talk, Agony Is Real in Darfur War Fatouma Moussa, 18, was raped by janjaweed militiamen as she returned from selling firewood. They killed another woman, she said. An infant, Menazir Abdullah Adam, was shot in the foot by Darfur militiamen. Hanan Ahmed Hussein, 20, was shot in the leg last week by militiamen, despite a new cease-fire. Her daughter, Menazir, 1, was shot in the foot. By LYDIA POLGREEN Published: May 14, 2006 MENAWASHEI, Sudan, May 12 — It took three months for Fatouma Moussa to collect enough firewood to justify a trip to sell it in the market town of Shangil Tobayi, half a day's drive by truck from here. It took just a few moments on Thursday for janjaweed militiamen, making a mockery of the new cease-fire, to steal the $40 she had earned on the trip and rape her. Speaking barely in a whisper, Ms. Moussa, who is 18, gave a spare account of her ordeal. "We found janjaweed at Amer Jadid," she said, naming a village just a few miles north of her own. "One woman was killed. I was raped." Officially, the cease-fire in the Darfur region went into effect last Monday. That was three days after the government and the largest rebel group signed a broad peace agreement, creating hope for an end to the brutal assaults that have left more than 200,000 dead and have driven two million from their homes, a campaign of government-sponsored terror against non-Arab tribes in Darfur that the Bush administration has called genocide. But the reality was on grim display in this crossroads town, where Ms. Moussa and other villagers were attacked Thursday as they rode home in an open-backed truck from Shangil Tobayi. The Arab militiamen who attacked them killed 1 woman, wounded 6 villagers and raped 15 women, witnesses and victims said. The attack played out like so many others in this vast, lawless region. Three men with machine guns stopped the truck on the road and fired into its cabin, shooting the driver and blowing out the tires. They ordered the passengers, about 50 men, women and children, to take the goods they were transporting — sacks of millet, two cows and five goats — to where their camels and the rest of their men were waiting in a dry riverbed a mile or two off the road. Once that labor was complete, the raiders set upon the women, raping them in turn, witnesses said. "They told us, 'You are slaves, we will finish you,' " said Hussein Ahmed Abdulla, who stood by helpless as the women were raped. "We will not allow you to move from Menawashie, not one kilometer.' " When the raping was done, the militiamen loaded their camels and rode off to the west. The passengers had to walk three hours in total darkness to reach here. Afterward, Isaac Ibrahim Muhammad, the driver of the truck, lay in a hut, his left foot caked with the blood from the bullet wound in his leg. In another hut was Hanan Ahmed Hussein, just 20 years old, delirious and murmuring with a gunshot wound to her knee. Her sister soothed Ms. Hussein's 1-year-old daughter, Menazir, in her lap. Menazir's tiny foot was encased in gauze, a red splotch of dried blood seeping through. She had been shot, too. "They say there is a peace, but yesterday they kill us," said Aisha Adam Moussa, Ms. Moussa's aunt. "They always say peace is coming. But we are still waiting." This skepticism about the new peace agreement is buttressed by the frequent and flagrant violation of the last cease-fire agreement, signed in 2004, by the rebels and the government in Darfur, the arid region in western Sudan that has been racked by a brutal ethnic and political conflict since 2003. Also feeding that skepticism is the fact that only one rebel faction signed the agreement. The leader of that faction is a Zaghawa, a small nomadic tribe, while most people here are Fur, members of the tribe of a rebel leader who did not sign. In Menawashie, sheiks insisted the peace agreement was meaningless without the Fur leader, Abdul Wahid al-Nur. "If Abdul Wahid doesn't sign, there is no peace," said Omar Muhammad Abakar, the chief sheik of the village. Between the capitals of North and South Darfur, Menawashie straddles perhaps the deepest fault line in this troubled region. In its latest report on the conflict, the International Crisis Group said this corridor — with its volatile mix of Arab nomads and non-Arab settled tribes, government controlled areas and rebel-held territory — was one of the most violent areas in all of Darfur. North of here, in rebel areas, the violence between rival rebel groups is similarly brutal. In Menawashie, that violence has taken the form of unceasing attacks by militias aligned with the government, even though Khartoum had agreed to rein in the fighters, village leaders said. "The Arabs come on horseback and they block the roads," Mr. Abakar said. "They enter our villages at night and steal our animals. They attack us on the roads." In a makeshift graveyard, Mr. Abakar walked among dozens of mounds, many of them fresh and covered with loose sand and gravel. He pointed out the graves of those most recently killed, including Fatma Yahyah Abdulla Sabeel, the woman killed in the truck attack, and the smaller mounds atop the graves of children who died of disease. This area is controlled by government troops, so protecting civilians from the attacks of militias is the job of the police, but they seldom respond, village officials said. African Union troops occasionally patrol the area, but their narrow mandate calls for them to monitor, not enforce, the 2004 cease-fire. An officer here, Maj. Essodina Kadangha, said the troops had received no new information about how to proceed now that a peace deal has been signed. The peace agreement outlines a plan to disarm the Arab militias and the rebel groups, and the United Nations plans to send in a force to replace the African Union one, which has struggled to police this region the size of France with just 7,000 troops, a weak mandate and few resources. Some Sudanese officials have said that the government does not object to a United Nations force now that a peace deal has been signed, but the government has not officially accepted the idea. In Menawashie, villagers said they were hemmed in by the attacks, trapped and helpless. "We cannot move even one kilometer from this village," Mr. Abakar said. "Why should it be so? We are suffering." Despite the danger, Ms. Moussa will soon be back collecting firewood, and back on the road to Shangil Tobayi, where firewood can fetch double the price it commands here, said her mother, Hawa Hissein Amin. Ms. Amin is unable to walk without a cane because she was shot in the leg by Arab militants when they attacked her village, Hamada, almost two years ago, and she fled here. Her husband was also killed in attack. "Of course she will have to go," she said of her daughter. "We have no other options. No one can help us."

Quote: As such he helped in the negotiations and the drafting of Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA

Quote: As such he helped in the negotiations and the drafting of Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA

Quote: He did not help negotiating for the common good for humanity

Quote: Yet, it is not clear to whom did Alex de Waal address his letter? can you shed some light on this matter?