Darfur protagonists meet in Nigeria for a seventh, and hopefully final, round of peace talks, writes Gamal Nkrumah It is not the end, but the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, leaders of the main armed opposition groups and representatives of the Sudanese government met in the Nigerian capital Abuja for peace negotiations. The Darfur peace talks take place under the auspices of the African Union (AU), but the United States and other Western powers have taken a keen interest. The real issue in Abuja is genuine intent. Time and again Darfur protagonists told the AU and the US and other concerned parties who tried to broker a peace deal that certain critical questions could be dealt with further down the track. Questions of power and wealth sharing were often postponed indefinitely or papered over. Today there are growing signs that the warring groups in Darfur have come round to the idea that disputes can only be resolved at the peace table. The two main armed opposition groups are the secularist Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Islamist-oriented Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The SLA has split along ethnic and tribal lines. During previous rounds of Abuja peace talks, the leaders of the armed Darfur opposition groups and the representatives of the Sudanese government held hours of one-on-one meetings which, although they did not produce tangible results, were significant for the high-level participation reached and the sheer time spent talking. The warring parties in Darfur are now at least edging towards a commitment to peace in Sudan's war-torn westernmost province. Even if they did agree on a mutually acceptable formula for peace, the warring factions remained wide apart politically and ideologically. A few weeks on, against all the apparent odds, the standoff has been broken. Peace in Darfur no longer seems a pipedream. Although the armed opposition groups balked at calls from the AU and the Arab League to be more "flexible", there have been plenty of other signs this week of a new willingness to make headway. "We are sending this sincere call for all those carrying arms in all regions of the country, and those in Darfur in particular," said Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir at the inaugural sitting in Khartoum of the country's new unity parliament. The Sudanese parliament now includes members of the former southern Sudanese-based armed opposition group the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). "Let us work together for this noble objective," he added. The new round was initially scheduled to resume on 21 November, but was postponed because of a rift in the SLA. SLA Secretary-General Mani Arko Minnawi is challenging the authority of SLA Chairman Abdul-Wahid Mohamed Nur. Earlier in November, Minnawi organised a congress in the south Darfur town of Haskanitah at which he was elected president of the SLA, thereby unseating Nur as chairman. The AU, however, decreed that the two factions -- Minnawi's and Nur's -- be represented at the Abuja peace talks. AU officials pressed the two factions to iron out their differences. Both factions grudgingly agreed at a meeting in Chad last week to attend the Abuja talks with one common negotiating platform. But, of course, acting verbal promises would not be straightforward. It never was as far as Sudan is concerned. The only certainty being that the Minnawi and Nur factions of the ruptured SLA would have to work together if lasting peace in Darfur were to be guaranteed. And so both Minnawi and Nur turned up in Abuja for the seventh round of Darfur peace talks. "They have turned up in Abuja with an attitude problem and want to dictate terms," a Cairo-based Sudanese opposition figure speaking on condition of anonymity told Al-Ahram Weekly. "These so-called Darfur leaders are behaving like spoilt brats and they think they can get away with murder because the international community is turning a blind eye." All this might gall mightily the Sudanese government and the Khartoum political establishment. Many in Sudan and in the Arab world at large wonder why so much energy is directed at bolstering the credibility of a faction- ridden group like the SLA. In trying to understand why what is widely perceived as this international bias has happened, there is often a tendency to resort to the old clichés: perhaps there is an inherent anti-Arab agenda as far as the Sudan crisis is concerned, many Arab political pundits suspect. The international community consistently plays down the ramifications of internal dispute problems within the SLA, they argue. As surface explanations go, there is nothing wrong in this characterisation. But conspiracy theories fail to address the underlying problem: that there is a host of unresolved economic and social problems of underdevelopment in Sudan generally, and in Darfur, one of the country's poorest, in particular. Undoubtedly, it has been the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur that has galvanised the international community into action. "The horror of events unfolding in Darfur, to which my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II referred on many occasions, points to the need for a stronger international resolve to ensure security and basic human rights," Pope Benedict XVI said during an audience with Khartoum Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir Wako in the Vatican. Humanitarian relief organisations have sounded the alarm bells. "It is of urgent importance that all those involved in hostilities comply with the rules of international humanitarian law so as to spare the population additional suffering and fear," a recently released International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) statement read. "The ICRC calls on the parties to the conflict to refrain from indiscriminate attacks," it continued. The ongoing dispute in Darfur is multi-faceted. And the 6,700-strong AU peace-keeping force has proved hopelessly inadequate in stemming the terrifying tide of lawlessness currently engulfing the war-torn Sudanese province.
