DARFUR'S AGONY AND BASHIR'S PLAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KHARTOUM 002749 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR AF A/S FRAZER, AF S/E NATSIOS, AND AF/SPG NSC FOR PITTMAN AND SHORTLEY E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/27/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL AU SU UN US SUBJECT: DARFUR'S AGONY AND BASHIR'S PLAN Classified By: CDA Cameron Hume, Reason: Sections 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary: Darfur's agony is not ending. The territory is awash with weapons, including shipments of sniper rifles, assault rifles, and machine guns. Traditional social structures, already weakened, no longer keep the peace--even within internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. The new commander of the African Union (AU) peace-keeping force has told us his urgent concern is force protection, not protection of civilians, amid clear signs he does not welcome any UN support for his mission. Both the UN and the AU missions in Sudan are currently leaderless. It has taken two months for the AU and UN to sign an agreement on the UN's light support package for Darfur. The status of Kofi Annan's phase-two heavy support package is uncertain, and President Bashir has stated publicly, as recently as this week, that Sudan will never accept a hybrid AU/UN mission as proposed by the UN. President Bashir seems unperturbed by the chaos of Darfur, and he is adamant that no outside force will bring it under control. End Summary. -------------- SPREADING CHAOS -------------- ¶2. (C) Although donor funding and work by international humanitarian agencies have this year sustained Darfur's people, a third of whom are trapped in IDP camps, the human toll is mounting. More weapons in the hands of young men have eroded the authority of traditional leaders and made violence in the camps and against humanitarian workers more common. A rash of carjackings in West Darfur has caused the humanitarian workers in West Darfur to retreat to El Geneina (the provincial capital) and to impose on themselves a 16:00 curfew. IDPs are losing any hope that they will recover their lost landholdings. The picture that emerges from a recent visit to North and West Darfur is one of spreading chaos, uninhibited by the presence of African Union peace-keepers and stoked by the policies of the government in Khartoum. -------------- AMIS PRIORITY: FORCE PROTECTION -------------- ¶3. (C) In a meeting on November 25, CDA Hume asked AMIS force commander Major General Luke Aprezi what his main priorities were and how he looked at cooperation with the United Nations. Aprezi's answer was simple: his priority concern was force protection. He needed shovels and sandbags most of all. He refused to be drawn out on his views regarding cooperation with UN plans for phase one and two, but he is known to oppose any active UN role. Aprezi refused to discuss his plans for deploying the two battalions he requested urgently, even when CDA Hume assured him that the USG had already promised the AU significant funding for this purpose. (Note: So far the AU has had no/no discussion with PAE regarding its plans for this expansion. End note.) ¶4. (C) AMIS troops are under-performing in most sectors, reflecting their commanders' priorities. The main road between Nyala and El Fasher is not secure. Patrolling around IDP camps is sporadic. Protection for women on firewood patrols is unreliable. However, when the troops are well motivated and led, as is the case with the Senegalese battalion along the border with Chad north of El Geneina, they perform well. The civilian component of the mission is weaker--the deputy head of mission in El Fasher stays at home most days, and his staff of one is now on leave. Not much outreach or civic action happens. -------------- AU AND UN LEADERLESS -------------- ¶5. (C) The AU's mission in Khartoum is likewise in transition. The Sudanese government has yet to agree to a replacement for the former head of mission, who departed in September. Sam Ibok, head of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) implementation office, is more often than not in Addis; he has one capable deputy but no plan. The UNICEF officer seconded to organize the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation (DDDC) has lately arrived, but he has yet to head to the field. Lead AU mediator Salim Salim is visiting Khartoum until December 7 to consult on how to address the issue of DPA non-signatories. No one can expect these pieces to come together in a coherent plan of action this year. ¶6. (C) Likewise the UN lacks leadership since Khartoum KHARTOUM 00002749 002 OF 002 prevented UNSYG Special Representative Jan Pronk from carrying on with his mission. While the UN here has top-rated technocrats, it now has no leader. Worse, President Bashir has shown, without suffering any negative consequences, how little respect his government has for a special representative of the UN Secretary General. Incoming Secretary General Ban is forewarned. The current baseline SIPDIS for implanting UN plans to support the AU mission in Darfur is as follows: two months after President Bashir agreed with Annan's light package (approximately 100 personnel),30 have arrived in Khartoum and none have deployed to Darfur. Embassy Khartoum has no estimate how long it may take to agree on, let alone implement, the "heavy" package of support expected to follow in phase two. -------------- BASHIR'S PLAN -------------- ¶7. (C) President Bashir's plan for Darfur shows little concern for the dire condition of most people in Darfur, nor with the haphazard performance of AU peacekeepers. The plan he sent to UN SYG Annan on August 5 specified unilateral military action as the best means to address Darfur's agony. Since then, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have deployed additional brigades, distributed more weapons to auxiliary Janjaweed forces, and launched several offensives. The results have been mixed, and the SAF is no closer to victory over the forces of the National Redemption Front (NRF). The fighting has been confined to pockets in West and South Darfur and in North Darfur to an axis that runs from north of El Fasher to the border with Chad. ¶8. (C) Bashir's plan has a civilian component. The leader of his implementation team is Magzhoub al-Khalifa, a physician turned Islamist party operative. Although the Khartoum government gives lip service to the need for the international community to support a broad effort to get DPA non-signatories to join the peace, when local commanders gathered for a meeting encouraged by the international partners, the SAF bombed the site. Al Khalifa explains the path forward is to gather support from non-signatories one-by-one, using money to change minds. In the context of mounting insecurity, he prefers a divide and rule strategy. The international aspect of this strategy involves some accommodation to the desires of Eritrea and Libya to mediate, keeping the broader international community far from the action. Although President Bashir responded favorably to UN SYG Annan,s request to appoint former FM Mustafa Osman Ismail to deal with Darfur, Mustafa's writ seems limited to speaking with foreign officials. ¶9. (C) Bashir's plan has no place for UN forces in Darfur. He has announced his rejection of UN SYG Annan,s proposal for &hybrid8 AU/UN forces, including a UN command structure. Al Khalifa claims that UN Security Council Resolution 1706 is now dead, replaced by the SAF's unilateral plan for security, as observed by AU peace-keepers. In this context, Bashir, who seems to fear a successful UN peace-keeping mission more than the rising tide of anarchy in Darfur, may consider the arming of the Darfur rabble as another line of defense against a UN mission. ¶10. (C) Bashir wants any next steps by the international community to be little and slow. As he has drawn out the preliminaries before phase one of the UN plan, so he will slow down implementation of phase two, most likely for months. Bashir will lead the Sudanese delegation at the upcoming AU Peace and Security Commission meeting in Abuja. Although some officials assure us Sudan can be flexible on a hybrid force, Bashir's own statements reject the hybrid force specified for phase three, throwing into doubt the entire package and any prospect of UN assessed financing for the mission. Unlike the international community, he would be quite pleased to confront the alternative of either a weak AU peace-keeping mission threatened by lack of financing or a failed AU mission. After all, he has his own plan. HUME