Thank you both for this sharing your timely analysis with the public. It’s particularly useful for me to compare and contrast your insightful commentary with that of Jerry Fowler, John Prendergast, and other experts who recently released a report on the same topic of the Darfur peace process for the ENOUGH Project/Save Darfur Coalition (http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/creatingpeacedarfur). My comments and questions below mostly address the issue of who should be included in political negotiations.

As you say, the NCP will show up for any new round of talks. One additional reason for this beyond those that you mentioned, in my view, is that they are comfortable breaking any commitments that they agree to through negotiations with rebels or opposition parties. They are not the only actors guilty of this, but they have been the most egregious in using the deliberate obstructionism of processes they have agreed to as a political tactic.

I completely agree with you that engaging civil society, local leaders representing ethnic communities, and ordinary Darfuris is vital, and facilitating such participation should be a top priority of the international community. It will be particularly critical that women’s groups have a strong voice at the table, and the international community should build its support for such dialogue and representation at least partly on some of the progress made at the African Women’s Consultation on Darfur earlier this year in Addis Abada. In addition to resources, you mention political protection as one thing needed to support civilian participation. This is where UNAMID forces can really make a difference. If further deployments of troops and equipment can prompt patrols designed to increase stability around IDP camps and areas prone to conflict, this should facilitate the political dialogue, in turn making civilian protection more feasible in a mutually reinforcing process.

As for rebel factions, as the ENOUGH/SDC report notes "it is essential that meaningful input in the negotiation process be decoupled from merely having guns." What specific steps do you see that the international community can take to get those rebel/armed groups who are critical political actors to the table without giving obvious spoilers with no constituencies or solely personal motivation from acting as spoilers an opportunity to derail the process? Can the SPLM play a constructive role here, as they tried to do at the end of 2007? Negotiations around the electoral law and census procedures in Khartoum have marginalized even the SLM-Minawi faction, and other important groups such as the JEM have openly expressed their total disdain for the state of current CPA processes building up to the 2009 vote. What should be done to draw these actors back into the national political process, or can/should negotiations on Darfur proceed independently of CPA implementation? Unless the census breaks down nationwide and the entire CPA timetable must be reopened completely, it’s hard to see a scenario where Darfur is included in this census and therefore the upcoming electoral processes.

Either way, getting Khartoum, to acknowledge that the 2006 DPA is not (and was never) working in order to base new talks on a clean foundation seems like an important starting point. One risk in doing so is thrusting the Minawi faction from their current position of nominal influence into that role of a spoiler"¦ Perhaps a starting point from the perspective of international negotiators should be to first concentrate on supporting civil society and local ethnic leaders in getting dialogue going and then helping them to reach out to rebel factions, or at least concentrate priorities in that order while trying to engage all parties. I’m not sure where Arab factions or groups (correctly or incorrectly) identified with the Janjaweed fit into that process.

Michael Swigert
Africa Action
Washington, DC