The Embargo on Darfur: A Disappointing Experience
Brussels – Challenges met by the Panel of Experts on the Sudan throughout 2011 essentially show the inefficiency of the sanctions regime established by the United Nations Security Council, says Claudio Gramizzi*, appointed in February 2011 by Ban Ki Moon member of the UN Panel of experts in charge of monitoring the implementation of measures relating to Darfur. After seven month, Gramizzi decided to resign with two other colleagues of the Panel complaining about the standards of competence and neutrality on the UN experts Panel.
The voluntary resignation of Claudio Gramizzi (Italy), Jerome Tubiana (France) and Mike Lewis (Britain) from the UN Panel of experts was revealed last April by Africa Confidential. The AC dispatch provided important insights into the larger implications of the marked contrasts between two reports, both dated January 24, 2012.
The first report, “which is circulating clandestinalely at the UN headquarters, was written by three of the original members of the UN’s Panel of Experts” writes Africa confidential. It argues that the Darfur crisis, far from winding down as Khartoum and some press reports suggest, is worsening, with new incidents of ethnic cleansing, arms deliveries and aerial bombing. This unofficial report reveals that Sudan army ammunition has been found in Darfur and they appeared to be Chinese-made.
The report also documents the role of the government’s officials and Popular Defence Force militia in recruiting non-Arab militia for a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Zaghawa tribe”. These revelations, and many others, were largely ignored in the official report released by the UN Panel of Experts, which has never been published by the United Nations Security Council.
“There are any number of extremely serious questions that emerge from any side-by-side comparison of the two reports” says Eric Reeves, Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts who has spent the past thirteen years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally.
For the first time from the publication of both UN reports on Africa Confidential, a former member of the UN Panel of experts for Sudan – Claudio Gramizzi – has decided to break the silence. Not to review the differences between the official report and the one he wrote with Tubiana and Lewis, but to suggest an analysis on the impact the sanctions which were adopted by the UN seven years ago, had on the Darfur conflict.
Challenges met by the Panel of Experts on the Sudan throughout 2011 essentially show the inefficiency of the sanctions regime established by the United Nations Security Council. Seven years after resolution 1556 – shaping the scope of the embargo on Darfur – was voted, the assessment appears somehow negative. Reports submitted by the Panel under its different compositions since 2005, provide a wide sample of concrete examples of transfers of military equipment standing as clear breaches of the provisions contained in the embargo, by both the Sudanese Government and the rebel movements.
Despite the volume of evidences submitted to the Security Council, only a very limited number of follow-up measures were taken by the International Community as a whole or directly by the concerned Member States who share the responsibility to prevent such deliveries. Similarly, reports submitted to the Security Council insist with disarming regularity on the systematic use, by the Sudanese Army, of offensive aerial attacks. Aerial military operations not only violate the ban established by resolution 1591, but repeatedly result into indiscriminate attacks against civilians, hence contributing to massive displacements of population and dramatically affect the delivery of humanitarian assistance to entire regions.
All these elements, in conjunction with the recent development of the war in Darfur, strongly suggest to what extent the concrete outcomes generated by the embargo on the military evolution of the conflict have been limited and how the establishment of an arms embargo failed, in practice, to prevent fighting parties to activate supply channels for weaponry. The extensive use, in the first quarter of 2011, of 2010-manufactured ammunition probably stands as the most eloquent illustration of the failure of the sanctions regime on Darfur as a set of legal tools for conflict resolution.
Analysing the political repercussions of the embargo – indeed another crucial aspect, considering that sanctions are aimed to represent a diplomatic, although extreme, mean designed to facilitate the emergence of a favourable political environment for the peaceful resolution of the conflict, including through the implementation of targeted measures expected to generate a behaviour-change of those considered to be key-players in the conflict dynamics – one can only reach similarly disappointing conclusions.
The political stands of the regime in Khartoum do not appear to have been influenced by the 2005 embargo and the recent threat of a large-scale military confrontation along the southern borders of the Sudan might indicate that the Sudanese regime has no real intentions to modify its political strategies, nor genuine intentions to manage internal differences and tensions through more negotiated approaches. An additional illustration is also provided by three of the four individuals targeted by individual sanctions in 2006; as they state themselves, they could breach the sanctions on several circumstances and they never perceived sanctions as such as an incentive to change their behaviour, nor the scope of their conflict-related activities.
The persistence of the conflict in Darfur, the emergence of a new forms of armed rebellion in the States of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, in June 2011, and the quick disrepair of the relationship between Khartoum and Juba, possibly resulting into a large-scale war, underline the necessity, for the International Community, to re-adjust its approach to the different Sudan-related issues and might finally create the necessary political conditions for a review of the current Sanctions regime, possibly with an enlargement of the scope of the embargo to the rest of the Sudanese territory, including South Sudan. Should lessons learnt in the past seven years be taken into account, such an option might generate more concrete and constructive impacts than the ones observed so far in Darfur.
By Claudio Gramizzi
© Afronline.org
* Claudio Gramizzi, Italian citizen, is an independent researcher focusing his activities on weapon transfers, armed movements and conflicts. Over the last five year, he conducted extensive filed-research in several African regions, including West Africa, the Great Lakes and the Sudan (Darfur and Sudan/South Sudan border areas), where he served as a Member of UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on the embargo on Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC and the Sudan.