There is insufficient detail about implementation and a reliance, in many areas, on a government which has not honoured a single commitment made since it unleashed its forces against the rebels, and the marginalised tribes from which they are drawn, early in 2003.In essence, the people of Darfur are being told to put aside their concerns and trust the international community to force Khartoum’s compliance. Until then, a nominee of the rebel movements will occupy the fourth-highest position in the land, senior assistant to the President, and will control a new regional authority with a first-year budget of more than half a billion dollars.But the agreement has a number of critical weaknesses, each of which could be fatal. Government forces must withdraw to barracks and there is, for the first time, a timetable for the disarmament of the Janjaweed Darfurians will have elections in three years. “Abdul Wahid is an innocent, but he has the solidarity of most of the tribes of Darfur.”The tragedy of the difficult birth of the Darfur Peace Agreement is that it is not a bad agreement, although it could, with patience and more pressure on Khartoum, have been so much better.

If either man has support outside his own tribe, it is Abdul Wahid. (Not one of Abdul Wahid’s key negotiators in Abuja was Fur; Minni’s were all Zaghawa.)”All the main tribes are against Minni,” a leader of the independent Darfur Forum told me last month. Their adherence to the agreement is reason enough for many Darfurians to refuse it.The United States, the key player in Abuja, always banked on Minni to bring peace home. In purely military terms, Minni’s is the strongest rebel faction in Darfur. But his Zaghawa tribe comprises less than 10 per cent of the population of Darfur, and the abusive, undisciplined behaviour of his forces has awakened old fears that the tribe has a hidden agenda – occupation of the more fertile lands of others.Abdul Wahid’s Fur, historic rulers of the Sultanate which gives Darfur its name, make up almost one-third of the population. Only two parties have endorsed it: the Sudan government and the faction of the SLA that is led by Minni Minawi. Both believe in domination through force; both are ruled by small and ruthless tribal elites.

The Darfur Peace Agreement, three weeks old today, is, for the moment at least, not worth the paper it is printed on. The Janjaweed militias, the Sudan government’s partner in crime in the first genocide of the 21st century, were not party to the inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja and are writing their rejection of it in blood. The ordinary people of Darfur, also shut out of the talks, have little idea what the agreement says and are demonstrating against it, even though the rainy season is approaching and conditions in the overcrowded camps of Darfur are about to deteriorate lethally.
Abdul Wahid Mohamed al Nur, leader of the largest faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, has refused to sign the agreement So has the smaller Justice and Equality Movement. A friend called by satellite telephone from Jebel Marra, the mountainous heartland of Darfur, yesterday.

Janjaweed were attacking barely a mile away and women and children were fleeing for their lives He was “in the middle of a war” Asked what could be done to help him, he said: “Pray”. But he faced up to what could not be done, and he couldn’t bloody do it!”. Probably unequalled, for instance, is this: “I twirled her round the dance floor She said: ‘I hate the way you’re doing it’. I said: ‘Why?’ She said: ‘I’ve got a wooden leg and you’re unscrewing it.’”And let’s hope no one makes too much of another Hill classic, They Said It Could Not Be Done: “They thought that it could not be done Some even said they knew it.