Sudan Peace Negotiator Returns

In 1984, Alexander de Waal lived briefly with the Janjaweed, a militia of Arab nomads in Sudan.

Twenty-two years later, de Waal found himself negotiating a peace settlement among his former hosts, the Sudanese government, and the rebel groups.

As a premier expert on Sudan, de Waal, a research associate at the Global Equity Initiative at the Harvard Asia Center, was an adviser to the African Union’s negotiations with the Sudanese government this past year.

‘IN THEIR HOUSEHOLD’

De Waal’s first contact with Darfur’s warring parties dates back to 1984, when he was doing Ph.D. research in Sudan.

For part of his stay, the British-born activist lived with Sheikh Hilal Mohamed Abdalla “in this very remote outpost, the middle of nowhere really, in a tent.”

Abdalla’s son was the head of the Janjaweed, funded by the government in the recent conflict, de Waal says.

“I was living in their household where the leaders of the Janjaweed were being, at that time, schooled,” de Waal recalls.

After completing his thesis, de Waal returned to Sudan multiple times.

In 1989, the night before he was to start working as an analyst for Human Rights Watch, the Sudanese government fell and no human rights activist was allowed into the country.

For the next 16 years, identifying de Waal as an “enemy,” the Sudanese government banned the activist from returning. He could only make occasional visits to the rebel-held territories.

ENEMY OF THE STATE

In 2004, when the African Union (AU) convened the Darfur peace talks, de Waal was approached about a position as an adviser to the mediation.

For a year, the Sudanese government wouldn’t allow de Waal to take the post—they still considered him an enemy of the government.

But in December 2005, he officially joined the negotiation team as a personal adviser to the chief mediator, Salim Ahmed Salim.

“If I was brought on as a personal adviser to him, they couldn’t object,” de Waal says.

De Waal says he had three primary responsibilities—communicate with the rebel groups, offer overall strategic advice, and negotiate the cease-fire and security arrangements.

‘AGONIZINGLY’ CLOSE

On April 12, 2006, the United Nations (UN) set an April 30 deadline for the negotiating team to reach an agreement.

De Waal says that he and most of his colleagues thought “this is completely unrealistic, it can’t be done.”

The team finally drafted a peace agreement on April 25 with de Waal as the principal writer of the security section.

A week later, the team entered its final negotiation, which lasted “24 hours, non-stop, overnight,” de Waal recalls.

The next day, Minni Minawi, one of the three rebel leaders, agreed to sign. The negotiators, who decided that his consent was sufficient, scheduled a signing ceremony for that afternoon.

But de Waal insisted that a second leader, Abdel Wahid al Nur, sign the agreement as well since his was the most politically powerful rebel group.

At de Waal’s request, Nur came to the signing ceremony.

Noticing Nur’s “rejectionist” demeanor, de Waal says he intercepted the rebel leader.

“Literally I grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him through the side door,” de Waal says, adding that the pair then ran into Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“You let me down,” Obasanjo told Nur, shaking his fist in the rebel leader’s face, de Waal recounts.

For the next three hours, they tried to convince Nur to sign the agreement—he refused.

The signing proceeded with Minawi as the only rebel signatory.

But convinced that it was imperative that the other rebel groups sign, de Waal carried on his own negotiations for the next several months.

“My real regret was that as we were, on the fifth of May, in the room we had presidents, foreign ministers, UN special envoys, the head of the AU,” de Waal says. “On the sixth of May, there was no one, only me.”

Over those next two months, de Waal says they came “agonizingly” close to an agreement.

“It is the failure to get Nur’s group as part of the peace agreement that is causing the current violence war and breakdown in Darfur,” de Waal says.

The AU mandate expires in late December. Since 2003, the violence in the western region of Sudan has killed around 200,000 people and resulted in 2.5 million fleeing their homes.

WALKING THE TALK

Since this summer, de Waal has remained marginally involved with the peace process and has returned to Harvard. This fall, he teaches Government 1211, “The Politics of African Humanitarian Emergencies.”

“It’s not just talk, it’s not just theory. He’s seen what’s actually happening,” said Ohnmar Khin ’07-’08, a social studies concentrator taking de Waal’s class.

—Staff writer Stephanie S. Garlow can be reached at sgarlow@fas.harvard.edu.