After several years of prevarication and prolonged negotiations the United Nations Security Council has unanimously agreed to authorise a force of 26,000 troops and police for the Darfur region of Sudan, to protect millions of displaced civilians there. It is a welcome if limited decision reflecting new international political energy on this shamefully neglected issue, and the Sudanese government has pledged its co-operation.
According to most estimates 200,000 people have died in the conflict since 2003, two million have been displaced and four million are now receiving food aid in the region.
The force is sanctioned to use military means to protect its personnel and to carry out its mandate, although there are ambiguities about how that can be done, notably in protecting civilians from marauding militias. There is no mention of sanctions should the government fail to deliver on its commitments. Nor will the force be allowed to seize illegal arms caches but only to monitor them. These limitations arose in last minute bargaining which weakened the resolution but ensured it had the backing of the Sudanese government and of China, its main international ally.
The timetable for the resolution to be implemented between now and the end of the year looks doable, but a great deal depends on how much co-operation there is in fact between the Sudanese government and the United Nations. Peace talks between the government and rebel groups in the Darfur region are to be kick-started this week. Progress in them is essential if movement is to be made towards a political settlement which would allow people to return to their homes or be compensated for their losses. The UN force, although it will be the largest in the world, cannot hope to handle a humanitarian emergency on this scale unless it is bolstered to do so.
This is a timely reminder that the issues involved in Sudan are complex indeed. A huge country which straddles the divide between the Arabic and Muslim cultures of the northern part of the African continent and its black, Christian and animist central region, Sudan has nine neighbours, all of which have been involved to a greater or lesser extent in its prolonged conflicts. The most important of them was the civil war between the government based in Khartoum and the rebel southern part of the country. A comprehensive peace agreement was reached to settle it in 2005 involving new institutions, democratisation and national elections in 2009.
The political will to implement this agreement has been lost as a result of the Darfur conflict, in Sudan itself and internationally. Those who know the country well argue it is now imperative to revive the 2005 deal and link it up with a Darfur settlement. This would be a perilous course for the government in Khartoum, which has a vested interest in avoiding any such linkage. The alternative is bleak. If the overall framework for a peaceful Sudan is lost the country is likely to revert to a wider civil war that would draw in most of its neighbours.