‘Doha peace accord brought us more suffering’: Darfur displaced, refugees

According to Darfuri displaced and refugees, the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) did not bring the people anything other than destruction, devastation, displacement, more suffering, and no tangible improvements on the ground. They consider the current conflicts among the leaders of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) a “natural result of any incomprehensive peace accord”. The DDPD partners on Monday expressed their satisfaction about the implementation of development projects in Darfur.

Adam Suleiman, head of the Oure Cassoni refugee camp in eastern Chad, wondered what the Doha peace agreement, signed by the Sudanese government and the LJM in July 2011, has done for the people of Darfur. The people are “driven from their homes, and are now living in the open, and dying of hunger and thirst.

“At the same time, the LJM leaders are fighting over privileges, and money that nobody ever saw. No one knows where it went, or on which it was spent.”

The camp head accused the LJM leadership of “betraying and selling the Darfuris by signing this partial Doha agreement”, and of “participating with the Khartoum regime in the widespread crimes committed against the people of Darfur”.

He continued saying that “the accusations exchanged by the LJM leaders represent a betrayal to the Darfuris. The LJM leaders, of which many filled the leadership posts of the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA), are fighting for their interests and gains, not for the cause of the people whose situation seriously aggravated after the signing of the Doha peace agreement,” Suleiman said.

He appealed to all Sudanese to unite “to find a real solution to the Darfur issues through another platform”.

‘NCP kings’

The coordinator of the Central Darfur camps described the DDPD to Dabanga as “corrupted”, emphasising that “there can be no peace without security on the ground, and the disarmament of the militias”. He said that the current conflicts among the LJM leaders are a “natural result of this incomprehensive peace accord”.

“The LJM stakeholders have forged the will of the people of Darfur with the DDPD,” he said, asking what “the DRA has done with all the donor money”.

He stressed that “any peace agreement that does not lead to dismantling of the National Congress Party (NCP) will bring the same outcomes as the Doha Document, whose signatories have become more royal than the NCP kings”.

‘Satisfied’

On Monday, after the conclusion of a meeting of the Follow-up Committee on the DDPD Implementation in Nyala, capital of South Darfur, the Deputy Prime Minister of Qatar, Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud, told reporters that the Darfur peace partners had discussed the state of affairs of the reconstruction and development programmes. He said that the DDPD partners expressed their satisfaction of what has been achieved so far, “especially in regard to the early recovery projects”.

Responding to a question about the proposals of the united Sudanese opposition to reach an overall peace agreement for all armed conflicts in the country, the Qatari official confirmed that there is no possibility to adjust or to surpass the Doha Document, or linking it with “conflicts in other areas”.