‘UNAMID Is Just Like Clouds in Summer, They Never Rain’^*

* Interview Darfurian refugee in Djabal Refugee Camp, Goz Beida, Chad, 25 May 2015.

: Local Perceptions of Conflict and the Effectiveness of UN Peacekeeping Missions

ABSTRACT

Based on fieldwork carried out as part of the Making Peace Keeping Data Work for the International Community Project, this article considers how local perceptions of conflict dynamics interact or fail to interact with incident reporting in UN peacekeeping missions. Interrogating encounters of the hybrid United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) with local populations through interview data collected among Darfurian refugees in Chad, the article posits that localized perceptions of conflict differ in important ways from interpretations by UNAMID. It further argues that in order to effectively carry out the core mandate of protecting civilians, the systematic inclusion of local knowledge into UN-produced data sets is vital for any UN peacekeeping mission.

Introduction

In the past two decades, the protection of civilians has become a central objective of UN peacekeeping operations.¹ In order to effectively protect civilians, an evidence-based understanding of conflict dynamics and root causes of violence is a prerequisite, not least to be able to distinguish victims from aggressors in the more often than not complex scenarios UN peacekeeping forces find themselves in.² Such an understanding relies, as already pointed out in the year 2000-report by the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations under its lead-author Lakhdar Brahimi, on improved systems for information gathering and analysis.³ The ‘Brahimi Report’ proposed the creation of a dedicated entity that would in future inform the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ECPS) that was tentatively named the ECPS Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (EISAS). EISAS should consolidate the ad hoc data sets created by missions in the field, provide strategic analysis, and ultimately allow the formulation of longer term strategies.⁴ EISAS was never built, partly due to resistance by those UN entities that might lose some of their functions, and partly due to political obstacles by UN member states who feared either increased surveillance of their human rights records, or were reluctant to share information with an entity like EISAS.⁵

In the wake of another report, the UN internal review panel report on the failure to protect civilians in Sri Lanka that among other issues pointed to a total breakdown in information management,⁶ the creation of a UN wide information management system on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law has gained prominence again within the ‘Human Rights Up Front’ Initiative.⁷ As was the case with previous efforts like EISAS, this agenda has encountered similar critiques not least by UN member states who reject such a comprehensive focus on rights-violations and the epistemologies behind it.⁸

In parallel, existing mechanisms for the recording of violent incidents of any kind within UN missions have come under renewed criticism and a need for improvement has been propagated.⁹ These critiques commonly centre on internal UN processes such as the lack of coordination between different UN agencies and internal competition between them, the different mandates of these agencies, the lack of standardized data collection and recording procedures, or the lack of adequate training in rights monitoring.¹⁰

This article argues that in addition to a more comprehensive, evidence-based understanding of conflict, it is equally important that how civilian populations themselves perceive threats to their security finds entry into UN data sets. In doing so, the article takes up one of the key themes in the latest comprehensive report on UN Peace Operations, the HIPPO report, that highlights the need for a more people-centred focus. This report recommends ‘shifting from merely consulting with local people to actively including them’ in the work of peacekeeping missions in order to devise better protection strategies, and stresses the need for ‘timely, reliable and actionable information’.¹¹

General critiques concerning the absence of local perceptions within UN peacekeeping missions have been voiced before. These have centred on a ‘peacebuilding culture’ forged at the level of international intervention, unable to understand causes of violence at local levels – and in turn failing to protect those exposed to such violence.¹² More nuanced analyses of the patterns of interactions between UN missions and local populations find that, contrary to common perceptions, those who head such missions tend to have in-depth knowledge about the socio-political environments in which they intervene, often produced in co-operation with recognized specialists and including local media and other local sources (if not local populations per se).¹³ This knowledge, however, often fails to inform day-to-day interactions of mission staff on the ground, with repercussions for civilian protection.

This is where this article has its concrete focus: It interrogates if and how interpretations of violent incidents by local population groups feed into knowledge production processes within UN peacekeeping missions, and the ways in which these interpretations inform or fail to inform UN peacekeeping protection frameworks on the ground. It does so using as its case example the UN-African Union (AU) hybrid mission in Darfur (UNAMID), a mission that made the protection of civilians including the large population of internally displaced people (IDP) in the various refugee camps within Darfur its core mandate.¹⁴ Becoming fully operational on 31 December 2007, UNAMID had a clear mandate to record and act upon incidents that threatened the security of civilian populations, even if it did not quite have the robust mandate to monitor human rights violations demanded subsequently by the ‘Human Rights Up Front’ Initiative.¹⁵

Based on that mandate, mainly through staff from UNAMID’s Civil Affairs and Human Rights sections respectively, micro-level data on security incidents was collected systematically, using a range of techniques, including public meetings, focus groups, interviews with individuals and local media analysis.¹⁶ This data were compiled into reports for UNAMID’s Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC).¹⁷ The role of JMACs within the architecture of UN peacekeeping missions is to provide ‘integrated analysis and predictive assessments’ for the mission.¹⁸ With respect to UNAMID, JMAC’s predictive assessment of patterns of violence could in theory play a vital role in the mission’s civilian protection mandate. Data for the first 19 months of the JMAC Darfur Incident Report Database has been made available to the Making Peace Keeping Data Work (MPKDW) project and is been analysed in more detail in the article by Duursma (2017).

Whilst constituting ‘the most comprehensive micro-level dataset of violent incidents’ and as such a valuable resource for a strategic analysis of the lines of conflict in Darfur,¹⁹ it remains unclear if the JMAC database tells us how the dynamics of conflict were perceived and responded to by local populations.

The remainder of this article aims to addresses this gap based on interview data collected among Darfurians in refugee camps in Chad, some of whom had in different ways been informants to UNAMID on security incidents. The analysis of their recollections of violent incidents that often triggered their eventual flight provides a counterpoint to how security incidents have been perceived and analysed at UNAMID level. Respondents’ evaluation of UNAMID’s presence in Darfur and their concrete encounters with UNAMID also raises important questions about the ways in which the mission went about its mandate to protect civilians. As such, the article contributes to on-going debates on the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions.

Taken together, the paper argues that in order to effectively protect civilians and address insecurities in any setting with a UN Peacekeeping Operation, a comprehensive assessment of local conflict dynamics is necessary. For this to happen, the systematic inclusion of local sources from different standpoints into UN-produced data sets such as those collected by JMACs is of vital importance. Only when based on micro-data sets that include an understanding of how local communities experience violence, a systematic UN wide information management and analysis system can contribute to better protection policies on the ground.

Methodology

Methodologically, the main body of the article is based on interview data among Darfurian refugees collected by Bashar in two refugee camps in eastern Chad, namely Goz Amir and Djabal (Goz Beida), between April and June 2015. These two camps were chosen because many of the refugees who reside there fled from Darfur during the time covered by the UNAMID JMAC data set referred to above. Interviews followed a semi-structured questionnaire but respondents were encouraged to provide their own narratives in open questions. Bashar worked as local staff for the United Nations Mission in Sudan and subsequently UNAMID from January 2005 to November 2007, which provided him with comprehensive background knowledge on the issues in question. At the same time, due to his background Bashar was initially treated with suspicion, but through engagement with local sheikhs and other gatekeepers in the refugee camps was able to gain acceptance and trust. Whilst access to respondents was through those gatekeepers, interviews were conducted predominately on a one-to-one basis without anybody sitting in. Altogether 53 in-depth interviews were conducted in both camps, with 41 men and 12 women. Even with the above caveats in mind they provide a unique source of material from which to analyse conflicting local perceptions of violent incidents in Darfur and of UNAMID. The interview data were analysed through thematic coding using NVivo.

The paper in addition draws on interview data with other former UNAMID staff conducted by Bashar in the UK via skype in October/November 2014 and January/February 2015, as well as interview data with current UN Peacekeeping staff who chose to remain anonymous conducted by Müller in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in March 2016. Ethical approval for all interviews was granted by the University of Manchester Committee on Research Ethics and all interviewees agreed that anonymized quotes could be used in future publications.

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows: It will firstly provide a brief introduction to the conflict in Darfur and the role of UNAMID since its inception. This is followed by the narratives of Darfurian refugees in Chad about the conflict they fled from. The article then reflects on how UNAMID accesses and collects information on local conflict dynamics, before it turns to how Darfurian refugees in Chad describe their encounters with UNAMID. It furthermore asks what wider implications the above-presented dynamics may have before arriving at some conclusions that point to the importance of the systematic inclusion of local sources of knowledge into UN-produced data sets.

Setting the scene: UNAMID and the conflict in Darfur

The Sudanese state of Darfur had experienced intermittent violence from the mid-1980s onwards, triggered by a combination of local dynamics but also related to features of national state governance and the structural position of Darfur within Sudan.²⁰ When large-scale conflict started as a result of two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement, taking up arms against the central Government of Sudan (GoS), Darfur started to receive the sustained attention of the international community.²¹ By the time the AU convened peace talks that eventually resulted in the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in Abuja, Nigeria, in May 2006, the two rebel groups had splintered into multiple factions and only one faction of the SLA did in fact sign the DPA.

UNAMID entered this scenario in December 2007, taking over from the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) that had initially been created as an observer mission to monitor the 2004 ceasefire agreement that had preceded the DPA.²² The DPA extended responsibilities for AMIS, but its capacity to protect civilians had from the start been hindered by a vaguely formulated mandate in that respect, as well as insufficient resources and political constraints.²³ AMIS has thus been heavily critiqued from various sides, not least by displaced Darfurians themselves who expected a level of protection AMIS had no mandate to provide – even if in spite of its limited scope and mandate, AMIS did reportedly have a positive impact on civilian security in the albeit limited areas where it was deployed.²⁴

More generally, the post-DPA period saw a decline in large-scale, battlefield-type violence, whereas the security situation of civilians remained precarious and the wider quest for a political solution to the conflict elusive. The conflict in many ways had mutated from one between clearly defined rebel groups and the GoS into a ‘violent scramble for power and resources’ involving multiple actors.²⁵ The major parties to the conflict retained their overall strategy for waging war: The GoS continued to use its proxy militias, the so-called Janjaweed, to incite violence,²⁶ whereas the various and increasingly divided rebel groups and new armed factions continued to battle for territory and influence in what has been described as the ‘political marketplace’ of Darfur (and Sudan more generally).²⁷ Whilst the analysis of the Darfur conflict purely as a political marketplace might be too one-dimensional and simplistic, it has certainly been the case that the tactical and shifting alliances made by the different adversaries over time have been strongly influenced by their respective real or perceived bargaining power.²⁸ This in turn suggests that an understanding of the specific ways of conducting political business in the region is a prerequisite for any outside intervention to succeed in its objectives, including the protection of civilians.

Instead, the conflict’s internationalization distorted the rules of political bargaining previously observed by local elites, leaving not least the GoS as the main culprit with little incentive to engage, as any price demanded from it was bound to be deemed too high.²⁹ Most visible, the internationalization of the conflict in Darfur meant that the situation became depicted as a conflict of good against evil, fought by ‘Muslim Arabs’ who tended to be pastoral nomads and allied to the GoS, against ‘Christian Black Africans’, who tended to be sedentary farmers and were depicted as its main victims.³⁰ Most pronounced within the Save Dafur campaign, was the transformation of complex political and resource-based struggles into a moral crusade based on moralistic projections that gravely distorted the complexities of the various conflicts in Sudan.³¹

This narrative also found its way into the international political response,³² and indirectly into the creation and mandate of UNAMID. As outlined above, the UNAMID mandate explicitly formulated the protection of civilians as a core duty – thereby acknowledging that the GoS failed to do so, not least as a large percentage of those civilians by then lived in IDP camps whose security in theory was guaranteed by Sudanese government police and security forces.³³ It should thus have come as no surprise that the most significant challenge to UNAMID’s effectiveness in carrying out its civilian protection mandate came from obstruction by the GoS. Starting with its insistence on a mission predominately African in character instead of an international UN-led peacekeeping force as originally proposed, from its inception UNAMID lacked full co-operation and real consent from its host government.³⁴ This state of affairs was aggravated in 2008 by the International Criminal Court indictment against Sudanese President al-Bashir on charges that included crimes against humanity and war crimes. The indictment not only proved to be a political dead end but also heightened the suspicion against any UNAMID activities aimed at gathering information on violent incidents against civilians.³⁵

More generally, in a setting like Darfur, where no peace agreement or political settlement is in place, any peacekeeping mission and its personnel become players in the scramble for resources as well as agents to be manipulated, and UNAMID was no exception.³⁶ For UNAMID’s protection of civilians mandate, this requires almost impossible balancing acts in an environment where the various players all have different expectations of and attitudes towards UNAMID. These include the GoS and its managed hostility, with whose representatives UNAMID needs to negotiate access; but equally different local militias and rebel groups who see UNAMID as a provider of valuable resources, the latter most visible in the large amount of carjackings.³⁷ All of these actors in addition try to make use of UNAMID to present their version of conflict to the outside world.

In between are different civilian population groups who interpret conflict dynamics based on concrete experiences of everyday violence, and based on these often have exaggerated expectations of the protection UNAMID might be able to offer. The main body of this article thus focuses on concrete encounters between UNAMID and civilian populations in order to interrogate whether the civilian population groups at the core of UNAMID’s mandate experience the same conflict UNAMID intervenes in. In the following section, the article turns to the interpretation of the conflict among those who have fled from it.

The violence we fled from: the conflict in Darfur seen through the eyes of refugees in Chad

From the interview data with Darfurian refugees in Chad a quite detailed picture has emerged on the reasons why people ultimately fled the country. Some noteworthy observations can be made from that data.

Firstly, a main driver were not concerns about personal safety but attacks on livelihoods in a broad sense, with looting and banditry on top of a list of reasons why people upped their lives. Almost half of all informants, 20 out of 53, described the repeated looting of cars, lorries or horse carriages whilst they were travelling as prime reasons, often combined with the looting of shops and/or animals, farm raids or wider attacks on villages with the objective to loot property. Another 24 informants reported that looting and related banditry activities were a major contributing factor to their decision to leave.

Looking at former livelihoods in more detail, all refugees self-identified as ‘African’ and were predominately farmers, even if some also bred a limited amount of livestock. A majority reported that they had stopped cultivating crops, after repeated attacks by what they referred to as ‘banditry by the Arab pastoralists’.³⁸

A Massalit farmer from Forbaranga in West Darfur referred to the impossibility of maintaining his livelihood as follows:

We were farmers [ … ] sometimes one might be able to cultivate and have a good harvest, but then people come and loot the crops or the money after you have sold the crops. [ … ] I myself had stopped farming since 2006 because of the crop damage by animals belonging to Arabs.³⁹

He for a while engaged in small trading activities across the border with Chad before he decided to remain in Chad as a refugee due to the deteriorating security situation and ever more frequent incidents of looting. Similar stories of crop damage, seizures, looting or robbery, often on the way to the market, were part of most refugee accounts. Some informants reported that entire villages were attacked with the aim of ‘looting animals and properties’, one village after the other in what seemed carefully planned raids that often resulted in internal displacement before villagers made the trek to Chad.⁴⁰

A Dajo farmer from Gomaiza, 7 kilometres from Forbaranga, said more generally that:

if a person would like to go from his home to the market, he cannot feel safe. For example one day [ … ] I was carrying animal fodder on a horse carriage [from the market], I was stopped by four armed men [ … ] they asked me to get off otherwise they will kill me.⁴¹

Whilst he was lucky on this occasion as his horse was very weak and thus they eventually left him alone, the fact that such incidents could happen every time on the way to the market made him decide to leave. This connects to another important trigger for the decision to leave, a general feeling of fear and insecurity, regardless of whether one had been a personal victim of an attack or robbery. This fear is also related to the perception that even if incidents of looting are reported to the Sudanese police or security forces, no action will follow and thus no recourse to any form of compensation let alone justice seems possible. For 18 informants, this underlying fear was the main trigger for their flight and almost all agreed that fear was prevalent to different degrees in their daily lives.⁴²

When asked whether they reported incidents of violence to the relevant authorities this answer of a Massalit sheikh, a community leader from Habilla, West Darfur, is typical: ‘I approached the police several times to report incidents of killing, looting of animals, damage of crops and rape’, he said, ‘but the police refused to listen to me, let alone to take any action’: he continued: ‘As a sheikh I found myself in a very difficult situation; I was unable to help my people and the situation was going from bad to worse.’⁴³

This situation was made more complicated by the fact that Sudanese police and security forces often worked in alliance with so-called Janjaweed or other armed groups in constantly shifting alliances. Those dynamics have been highlighted in the wider literature on Darfur and pre-date the current conflict, but the fault lines have deepened once people from certain tribes, initially predominately Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa, joined or formed rebel movements against the Sudanese state.⁴⁴ As a side-effect, distinctions between who was dubbed ‘Arab’, ‘African’ or ‘African allies of the Arabs’ became more entrenched and blurred at the same time, as neither did the ‘African’ tribes act as coordinated opposition, nor did all ‘Arabs’ support the GoS.⁴⁵

In an attempt to make sense of these developments over time, research participants used their own interpretations when making decisions about whether it was safe to stay or leave. Initially, many narrowed the civil war down to a fight between Fur and ‘Arabs’. One respondent said ‘the problem started earlier in 1984 as banditry [ … ] the Arab gangs were targeting Fur [ … ] looting their livestock’.⁴⁶ Another respondent concurred, saying ‘there was a tribal dispute between Fur and “Arabs” [… isolated] incidents then developed into a full-scale war between “Arabs” and Fur. However at that time [1980s] the government [did] not take the Arabs’ side’.⁴⁷ When President Bashir came to power in 1989, he initially announced a strategy to disarm any tribal militias, but respondents were united in saying that in fact no arms were collected from the ‘Arabs’, even though it remains vague in all testimonies which groups or individuals kept their weapons. Over time, the perceived conflict between Fur and ‘Arabs’ began to expand, and most ‘African’ tribes at various points in time were targeted and started to interpret the conflict as a war against ‘the black people’.⁴⁸ At the same time, many informants named a number of ‘African’ tribes as allied to the ‘Arabs’ and asserted those were committing violent acts against other ‘African’ tribes in the same way as the ‘Arabs’. In the eyes of respondents, those ‘Africans’ had been recruited as militias, and as a result not only were given arms, but had material benefits such as being exempted from paying protection money at check points and in general were able to go about their usual livelihood activities.⁴⁹

This relates back to the key issue behind respondents’ ultimate decision to leave: the destruction of a once viable material base, resulting in the loss of livelihoods combined with constant fear against which no defence seemed possible. Violence at times subsided for a while, ‘fighting between the government and the rebels used to take place every one to two months’, according to one respondent who then continues: ‘However, attacks on civilians, like looting homes [ … ] could be everyday business.’⁵⁰ Perhaps worse than belongings or properties being looted, was the perceived unwillingness by the government or any other actors to protect them that made people desperate to leave, combined with the inability to arrange protection on their own. As this interviewee stated: ‘The reason [behind leaving] was the lack of security [ … ] the government did not do anything to protect us and we did not have weapons to protect ourselves.’⁵¹

In many cases, the government did not only do nothing to protect people, but government forces were according to participants’ narratives often actively involved in atrocities and aided attacks by ‘Arab camel herders’. One woman respondent recalled that ‘there was air bombardment and on the ground there was shooting by Janjaweed from cars and people on horses and camels’,⁵² whilst another respondent stated ‘the government and the “Arabs” [ … ] came together to attack [ … ] the militias were supported by air bombardment and soldiers on the ground. The government soldiers were in military uniform whilst the Arab militias were wearing something different’.⁵³

An additional dimension to potential government involvement in atrocities and the general loss of trust in state authorities was the fear of arbitrary arrest for no clear reason, and in fact 15 respondents had experienced such an arrest prior to their decision to flee. Often, as one informant explained, these arrests were conducted with the justification of alleged support for any of the anti-government rebel movements:

It was more likely that you would be arrested on the ground of belonging to the rebel groups or supporting the rebels. This could happen anytime and anywhere, [ … ] going to the market or on the way to or from your farm. When arrested one could be beaten cruelly, made disappear or be killed. I know many people who had such experiences.⁵⁴

A number of informants mentioned that in this general climate of suspicion, disagreements or disputes between two individuals about anything might lead to allegations by the inferior party that their adversary was a rebel supporter in order to get them out of the way. One informant commented that ‘I knew many people who faced such situations and who were arrested and some of them were killed.’⁵⁵

Taken together, in addition to the loss of a viable livelihood and concrete threats to people’s lives or well-being, a major source of violence was indirect and related to an almost omnipresent fear and the realization that no real safe place existed for them in Darfur. Interviewees can be described as having become refugees whilst still physically in Darfur, following Daniel’s (2002) conceptualization that ‘the germ that constitutes’ who is a refugee is formed at the precise moment when state protection or the trust in the possibility of such protection ceases, regardless of whether people have actually fled.⁵⁶ The question that arises then is whether the presence of UNAMID with its mandate of protection of civilians could in any way re-create layers of trust into due process to address one’s grievances.

UNAMID staff encounters the local: tales from the marketplace?

Whilst data collected at the micro-level by peacekeeping missions is an important source for understanding conflict dynamics and how civilians perceive threats to their security,⁵⁷ for UNAMID the very process of gathering information on violent incidents in a context like Darfur was always fraught with difficulties. It might not only increase tensions with the Sudanese government,⁵⁸ but equally pose a threat to those who report security incidents to the mission. At the same time, because encounters with UNAMID take place in a contested political marketplace in which UNAMID is a key actor in itself, any local reporting is bound to be highly contextualized, driven by conflicting interests and too fluid to establish patterns of violence that lend themselves to clear intervention or protection strategies.⁵⁹ This raises important issues not only in relation to methodologies of data collection and their validity, but also about the extent to which it is possible for UN peacekeeping missions to gain a real understanding of conflict dynamics as experienced by local population groups.

The general data collection procedures on violent incidents by UNAMID, and in particular how community experiences of conflict may be captured or not in the wider process of reporting and analysis have been discussed in a separate paper that came out of the MPKDW project.⁶⁰ Here the focus is on some of the actual encounters between UNAMID staff and local populations during the data collection process, with a particular focus on how local UNAMID staff interpret those encounters, as the sub-group of local Darfurian staff working for the UNAMID mission in tasks related to incident reporting has an important bridging function between international mission staff and civilian populations. This discussion serves as a background to make sense of the narratives of civilian populations themselves of their encounters with UNAMID, encounters that have left them feeling sufficiently insecure to have made the journey to Chad as refugees.⁶¹

The first observation to note here are the contrasting dynamics of gaining trust whilst creating distance. A commonly perceived feeling by local UNAMID staff is ‘the importance of building trust with the local community’ in order to receive reliable information.⁶² Thus, local staff who can operate in local languages play a prominent role in the data collection on violent incidents that threaten civilian security – even if accompanied by international staff, the latter a prerequisite for all visits outside duty stations.⁶³ The process of building trust is, however, carefully orchestrated, as first encounters are predominately with local gatekeepers – be they local sheiks or other powerful stakeholders, often including government officials or security personnel. Thus even if those gatekeepers do not actually sit in when interviews take place, who is providing information to UNAMID is a highly monitored process – monitored also by government officials.⁶⁴ In many cases, encounters with presumed victims of violence are choreographed in that UNAMID is being asked to follow-up reports of particular incidents that have been brought to the mission’s attention by anybody who volunteers that information, and this in fact could be anybody, ranging from civilians, NGO representatives or rebel combatants.⁶⁵ It also includes, as all interviewees confirm, government personnel who report violent incidents by rebel groups that have harmed civilians, and in the fluid patterns of violence that characterize the conflict in Darfur it is only logical that civilian security has been threatened from all sides.⁶⁶

UNAMID (as all UN peacekeeping missions) has a high standard of evidence and thus needs to triangulate its data, and an important aspect to this relies on being able to gauge the trustworthiness of the various local sources.⁶⁷ ‘You need to know as many people as possible and develop good relationships with all local counterparts’, is how a former UNAMID employee expresses this, in order to get a range of views. The former employee continues to say that ‘we go to the market’ and talk to people, but then also cautions that people might be afraid to talk. In addition, in a situation characterized by a high incidence of car-jacking and other direct security confrontations with UNAMID staff, the room for manoeuvre has progressively narrowed over time, as confirmed by a current UNAMID international staff member.⁶⁸ One interviewee also mentioned that at times UNAMID held public meetings in markets and asked questions about security. But at those meetings, ‘nobody is able to tell the truth because security elements [referring to GoS security forces attending as civilians] are expected to be present at such gatherings. If somebody tells the truth, security forces will arrest him later’.⁶⁹

From the above it follows that un-mediated encounters with civilian population groups or informal conversations, a widely recognized important tool when trying to collect information and counter remoteness of access, occur only in rare circumstances. This remoteness and staged access, together with the UNAMID threshold of proof, is also visible in the JMAC data set, where incidents are being reported in a highly choreographed fashion, often instigated by media reports – even if incident reporting has seemingly become more accurate over time.⁷⁰

Thus, whilst data sets like those collected by JMAC provide important glimpses into patterns of everyday violence in Darfur, a turn towards some of those who lived in the UNAMID mission area but regarded their protection as too compromised to remain in Darfur, adds a vital additional dimension. The following section will turn to how they perceived UNAMID engagement.

Refugees remember their (non-) encounters with UNAMID

Among those who participated in the Chad interviews, only 13 out of the 53 interviewees had any direct contact with UNAMID or attended public meetings where UNAMID staff were present. The remaining participants were to different degrees aware of UNAMID’s presence and mandate. That so few research participants turned to UNAMID as a potentially alternative source that might provide them with the protection they felt was lacking from the GoS gives a first indication of the low level of trust into UNAMID as an actor with real power.

As already indicated above, encounters with UNAMID were highly choreographed and mostly either with people who themselves were sheikhs or organized through sheikhs, and in addition complicated in the perception of ‘normal’ civilians by the language issue. One interviewee said in a way representative of wider perceptions in this regard: ‘They met the sheiks and when people see them at the sheikh’s house everybody can come [ … ] if somebody is good in English they can talk to them directly.’⁷¹ This distance from normal civilians and their grievances, together with a time lag between when incidents took place and were reported to UNAMID, played a major part in the lack of trust in UNAMID to have a visible effect on the ground in relation to making people feel safe and protected. One of the sheikhs who had frequent encounters with UNAMID said: ‘Their [UNAMID’s] questions were naïve and came too late [ … ] sometimes they carried out investigations two weeks after an incident.’⁷² More generally, a widely held perception among most interviewees regardless of whether they had any direct encounter with UNAMID or not can be summed up in this statement: ‘They [UNAMID] came to protect people, but [ … ] they only write reports.’⁷³ This statement exemplifies the conflicting attitudes towards UNAMID, the fact that it in theory was seen as a force for good but in reality was always likely to fall short of meeting the expectations of those on the ground, who expected tangible protection if not the arrest of those who committed violent acts. A farmer from Kurundi village sums this up well when he reflects on UNAMIDs impact on people’s protection. He says ‘I heard from those who reported to UNAMID that they never follow the perpetrators or arrest them, even if they are standing in front of them.’ But he also acknowledges that ‘whatever the shortcoming of UNAMID, just the fact that they are present is a defence barrier [ … ] the presence of UNAMID has prevented a lot of crimes to happen’.⁷⁴ Whilst few participants expressed their overall attitude in such an explicitly positive way, many interviewees acknowledged that reporting violent incidents had a value in itself, as well as that many of UNAMID’s perceived shortcomings in terms of concrete protection were connected to UNAMID’s position via the GoS. One interviewee said in this regard:

They were unable to protect people, but when informed about an incident they come to investigate and report it. [ … ] Sometimes they were unable to protect themselves. It is good to provide them [UNAMID] with information because they have the means to report to the outside world and put pressure on the government. I trust UNAMID more than the police in Sudan.⁷⁵

The opinion that documenting violent incidents through UNAMID reports had a value of its own was voiced by a majority of informants, but many also grew more and more frustrated by the inability of UNAMID to stand up to the GoS.⁷⁶ The latter was partly related to a misconceived understanding of the role and power of UNAMID, expressed here by a farmer from Nyala: ‘I thought they collect data to report violations to the UN, and then the UN can intervene accordingly to [ … ] provide security as quickly as possible.’⁷⁷ But it also came from a number of concrete experiences when interviewees were witness to attacks on UNAMID. One such attack that featured in a number of accounts was in broad daylight at the market of Furbaranga. A UNAMID vehicle with five staff inside was attacked according to those eyewitnesses, one military officer shot and the others ran away and the vehicle was ultimately carjacked.⁷⁸ More generally, a number of participants referred to similar incidents to come to a conclusion along the lines of this farmer from Mokjar who said: ‘UNAMID were unable to protect their own staff and property. UNAMID staff were killed and their vehicles were looted’,⁷⁹ a judgement that is confirmed by the relatively high amount of incidents that involved UNAMID staff and in particular the large number of carjackings as reported in the JMAC database.

An additional dimension that contributed to the rather low esteem UNAMID was held in by the majority of informants relates to the widely held perception that information on violent incidents reported to UNAMID made its way to the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS). Some participants were adamant that UNAMID shared information directly with the NISS, as this sheikh from West Darfur explains: ‘I met UNAMID staff at my home and nobody was around. When I was investigated by a NISS unit, they knew all the details [ … ] including the clarifications made by UNAMID staff themselves.’⁸⁰ Another participant said that after he shared information with UNAMID he was visited by the NISS: ‘The National Security officer told me that UNAMID was brought by them and I should not expect that UNAMID can protect me’, and he subsequently felt intimidated and stopped engaging with UNAMID.⁸¹

This perception, that engaging with UNAMID would be detrimental for one’s personal security rather than provide protection, was quite widespread among interviewees (27 out of the 53 participants said that was the case), and only very few reflected critically on how NISS staff might obtain their information. Among those was a farmer who had resided in Kalma IDP camp before he moved on to Chad, who was aware that the NISS had strategically posted interpreters or other staff with UNAMID. He said:

Most of the educated people in the camp who have been in touch with UNAMID were arrested or investigated at checkpoints. One day we were able to identify one of the NISS staff who came with UNAMID, we could do so because he lived in a neighbourhood in Nyala and we knew somebody who also lived there [ … ] our relative was in the camp with us when the security spy came with UNAMID.⁸²

In addition, another informant who also had lived in Kalma IDP camp pointed out that most interpreters not only for UNAMID but for the (foreign) NGOs who provided services in the camp were from the security service and observed who was talking to whom.⁸³ Thus even if one was ‘not of the opinion that UNAMID shared information with the NISS, [ … ] because I have no evidence’, as this farmer from Wadi Salih said, it was still likely that any encounter with UNAMID could have negative repercussions for oneself, ‘as with the terrible economic situation it is easy for the NISS to recruit spies to collect information for them’.⁸⁴

This general climate of suspicion became another contributing factor to the distance in encounters between UNAMID and the local population groups it was mandated to protect. It is also reflected in a score research participants were asked to give UNAMID in relation to making people feel protected.⁸⁵ Out of the 53 research participants, 37 gave UNAMID the lowest score possible and only 1 participant felt UNAMID presence had a considerable role in preventing violence, whilst 3 participants felt UNAMID had at least some role in reduced suffering in IDP camps simply through their presence.⁸⁶ The dominant attitude is summed up well by a farmer from Furbaranga, who concludes his interview by saying: ‘I do not believe reporting incidents can protect people or bring about justice.’⁸⁷

Discussion: what can UNAMID’s example tell us about incident reporting and civilian protection?

From the data presented above, one key theme emerges: Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that reporting violent incidents in itself may not immediately result in increased civilian protection or even ‘bring about justice’ as some interviewees expected, it is equally the case that gaining knowledge about local perceptions of conflict dynamics is a vital step in creating more evidence-based data sets that have the potential to enhance protection frameworks.

This is also recognized in the HIPPO report that among other things calls for more effective engagement with local populations, whilst at the same time recognizing the fault lines inherent in this process.⁸⁸ The latter include the challenge of moving beyond gatekeepers or the small networks of locals who speak an international UN language, as well as fraught relations with a mission’s host government – all visible in the example of UNAMID, putting a question mark behind some of the suggestions that have been made in the wider literature on how to overcome the distance between peacekeeping forces and local populations.⁸⁹

These suggestions include the use of local social scientists in data collection and better analysis of social media; a move beyond ‘predictable patrols’ towards a system of active patrolling that seeks to gain trust of local people; as well as the active inclusion of local populations perceived as spoilers in local reporting.⁹⁰

Whilst the recruitment of social scientists in gathering UN intelligence might in itself be controversial, in Darfur a network of local Peace and Development Studies research centres exists whose staff are engaged in research on local dynamics.⁹¹ This research is often financed by UN entities, but no systematic links exist between it and UNAMID incident reporting.⁹²

In relation to the process of gaining trust through active patrolling, such a move does still rely on local interpreters or other interlocutors. In fact, at least in some areas of Darfur, quite comprehensive data have been collected by the Human Rights section of UNAMID, not all of which has been fed into JMAC or other data sets due to either security concerns or because it could not be verified in line with strict UN triangulation guidelines.⁹³ Some of those who have worked as interpreters or local researchers for the Human Rights section in the past had to flee Darfur as a consequence.⁹⁴ In relation to engaging with spoilers or those actively opposed to UNAMID’s presence, whilst that would present an important source for data triangulation and potential mediation in the future, this may be equally unrealistic in an environment like Darfur where UNAMID staff themselves are often threatened by violence, as documented in some of the interview data as well as the JMAC data set.

Taken together, it is certainly the case, and the interview data with Darfurian refugees in Chad has confirmed this in different ways, that the process of facilitating the entry of localized perceptions of conflict into UN data sets is highly challenging in a conflicted context like Darfur. At the same time, a more systematized approach to collate local information at the level of JMAC, where in theory information available at UN strategic leadership level and evidence-based reports from mission staff on the ground should be jointly analysed and fed back to local peacekeeping staff on the ground, has the potential to contribute to the development of better protection strategies. As a recent report on UN intelligence suggests, not so dissimilar to the ‘Brahimi’ report and subsequent high-level UN initiatives, what is needed is not only a strengthening of local agency in relation to UN reporting as the HIPPO report demands. Equally important are improved coordination mechanisms that ultimately reduce the gap between knowledge and perceptions about the political reality on the ground at mission headquarters and among local peacekeepers.⁹⁵

Conclusion

This article has discussed the fraught process of systematically including data on local perceptions of conflict into incident reporting of UN peacekeeping missions, in particular if such missions have the protection of civilians as a core mandate, as is the case for UNAMID. Narratives collected among Darfurian refugees in Chad have demonstrated in different ways how UNAMID staff and local populations move often in parallel worlds, and how this distance is being maintained even in encounters deliberately instigated to collect data on violent incidents. This does not mean to suggest that the bottom-up narratives of civilian population groups represent more of the ‘truth’ about the lines of conflict in Darfur, nor that UNAMID actively manipulated data on the conflict as asserted by former UNAMID spokesperson Elbasri.⁹⁶ Rather, the article argues that local knowledge and awareness of the ways in which insecurities are experienced in concrete in everyday encounters add an important and vital dimension to the protection of civilian component of every peacekeeping mission.⁹⁷ In addition, rethinking more direct engagement with local population groups that allows systematic inclusion of conflict narratives from all sides into UN reporting would not only contribute to the creation of trust between UN peacekeeping forces and local populations, but also has the potential to contribute to long-term conflict resolution strategies and mediation efforts grounded in local realities. In the specific context of UNAMID, the potential for local encounters was undoubtedly hampered by a difficult deployment environment.⁹⁸ But at a point in time when an exit strategy for UNAMID is being debated,⁹⁹ it is worthwhile to reflect on how an inadequate understanding of conflict dynamics in Darfur contributed to UNAMID’s limitations, and how such an understanding was cemented by the way data were collected and processed within UNAMID.

Acknowledgements

Müller wishes to thank the people who shared their knowledge and experiences with her as well as the anonymous referee for valuable feedback. Bashar wishes to thank the research participants in Chad who shared their experiences with him.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Tanja R. Müller is Senior Lecturer in International Development at the Global Development Institute and the Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute, both at the University of Manchester. She is the author of the article. Tanja has worked extensively on the Horn of Africa for about two decades, with a particular focus on Eritrea. She is a co-investigator for the MPKDW project.

Zuhair Bashar worked for two years (May 2014–May 2016) for the MPKDW project as a postdoctoral researcher. He collected the bulk of the empirical data on which this article is based.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/L007479/1] for its support for this research.

Notes

* Interview Darfurian refugee in Djabal Refugee Camp, Goz Beida, Chad, 25 May 2015.

1 Fjelde et al., “Protection Through Presence”; Holt and Taylor, Protecting Civilians; Shesterinina and Job, “Particularized Protection”; UN, DPKO/DFS Policy.

2 Ramjoué, “Improving UN Intelligence”.

3 UN, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, para 68.

4 Ibid., paras 69–75.

5 Jenkins, Peacebuilding.

6 UN, Report of the Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel.

7 The ‘Human Rights Up Front’ Initiative was officially launched by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in November 2013, see http://www.un.org/sg/humanrightsupfront/ (accessed May 10, 2016).

8 Interview, head of human rights section in a UN peacekeeping mission, 5 March 2016, Addis Ababa.

9 Beswick and Minor, The UN and Casualty Recording.

10 Kurtz, “With Courage and Coherence”.

11 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel, xii and 25.

12 Autesserre, The Trouble with Congo.

13 Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below, 141–2.

14 In addition to the protection of civilians as its core mandate, UNAMID is also tasked with contributing to security for humanitarian assistance, monitoring and verifying the implementation of peace agreements, assisting an inclusive political process, contributing to the promotion of human rights and the rule of law, and monitoring and reporting on the situation along the borders of Darfur with neighbouring countries, see http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unamid/index.shtml (accessed May 10, 2016).

15 UNAMID was formally established through UNSC Resolution 1769 (2007), adopted on 31 July 2007, see http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1769%282007%29 (accessed May 9, 2016).

16 For a more comprehensive discussion of these techniques see UN, Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions.

17 See Read et al., “Capturing Conflict”, a paper produced by the MPKDW project, for a more detailed discussion of this process.

18 UN, Policy on Joint Mission Analysis Centres; see also Shetler-Jones, “Intelligence in Integrated UN Peacekeeping Missions”, for a broader discussion of JMACs.

19 De Waal et al., “The Epidemiology of Lethal Violence”.

20 Abdul-Jalil, “Nomad-Sedentary Relations”; Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors.

21 Africa Confidential, 56 (14); De Waal et al., “The Epidemiology of Lethal Violence”.

22 Caparini et al., The Role of the Police in UNAMID.

23 Appiah-Mensah, “The African Mission in Sudan”.

24 International Crisis Group (ICG), The AU’s Mission in Darfur; Refugees International, Sudan: AMIS Needs New Resources.

25 Human Rights Watch, Chaos by Design, 5.

26 According to an ICG report from July 2005, based on interview data with AU officials, 75% of all verified killings in Darfur since June 2004 had been carried out by Janjaweed – type proxy militias, see The AU’s Mission in Darfur, 4.

27 De Waal, “Mission Without End?”.

28 De Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, 52–90.

29 De Waal, “Mission Without End?”.

30 Abdul-Jalil, “Nomad-Sedentary Relations”; Flint and de Waal, Darfur: A New History; Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors. In fact, both groups were predominately Muslim.

31 For a more detailed discussion see, for example, Crilly, Saving Darfur; Lanz, “Save Darfur”; Natsios, Sudan, South Sudan & Darfur; Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors.

32 For a more general discussion of how high-profile advocacy campaigns influence international politics see Müller, “From Band Aid to South Sudan”.

33 UNAMID operates in the context of a host state with a functioning police and security system, even if its presence might be weak in UNAMID deployment areas, thus does not have executive policing power. The only exception here is Kalma IDP camp where no Sudanese government presence exists, see Caparini et al., The Role of the Police in UNAMID.

34 Caparini et al., The Role of the Police in UNAMID.

35 Ibid.; De Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, 66; Read, “Tensions in UN Information Management”.

36 International Crisis Group (ICG), The Chaos in Darfur.

37 Interview by Müller, 5 March 2016, Addis Ababa.

38 ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ in this self-categorization are not used in a strict racial sense or based on skin colour, but as political categories. For example some ‘black African’ tribes like the Tama were seen not as ‘African’ but as allies of the ‘Arabs’ because they were not targeted in the same way as other ‘African’ tribes. Also, while ‘African’ tribes are usually referred to by their name, ‘Arabs’ are usually referred to simply as ‘Arabs’, and only after probing some more information is being revealed. ‘Arabs’ are also all those who do not farm. At the same time, those categories are ambiguous in other ways: a number of (African) informants speak about ‘Arabs’ who have lived among them for a long time and sided with them or warned them when an attack seemed imminent. This paper is not the place to engage with these ambiguities and the very complex dynamics of conflict in Darfur in more detail. A good recent overview is provided in International Crisis Group, The Chaos in Darfur.

39 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 7 May 2015.

40 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 10 May 2015.

41 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 7 May 2015.

42 An additional trigger was the fear of rape among women. Rape as a potential weapon of war in relation to Darfur has been widely discussed elsewhere, partly also in relation to the wider debate on whether genocide happened in Darfur, see for example Amnesty International, Sudan: Darfur; Hampton, “Agencies Speak Out on Rape”; Kaiser and Hagan, “Gendered Genocide”; Miller, “Moral Injury and Relational Harm”. Rape has been mentioned indirectly in most of the interview data as a general threat, but only one woman participant admitted to being raped and one was direct witness to a rape. Rape was not an explicit focus of the interviews conducted for the purpose of this project, not least because extensive testimonies from women who experienced rape were collected in one of the refugee camps and are in the public domain. Interviews conducted for the MPKDW project in addition relied predominately on male informants, often the decision makers within family units, and focused on wider conceptions of insecurity. Rape became highly topical again in 2014 following an alleged incident of mass rape in Tabit, North Darfur, that UNAMID was subsequently prevented from investigating in detail, see Human Rights Watch, Mass Rape in Darfur. To properly engage with rape specifically as a driver of insecurity would go beyond the scope and purpose of this article. Interestingly, rape was also described by some interviewees including a woman as related to an attack on people’s wealth, ‘they loot all the money, the shops, the livestock. They attack women to humiliate men’ she said (Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 26 May 2015).

43 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 4 May 2015.

44 Ateem, “The Root Causes of Conflicts”; Bashar, Local Approaches of Conflict Resolution; Flint, “Darfur’s Armed Movements”; Haggar, “The Origins and Organization of the Janjaweed”.

45 De Waal, “Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect”.

46 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 27 May 2015.

47 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 26 May 2015.

48 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, sheikh, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 6 May 2015.

49 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 7 May 2015.

50 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 19 May 2015.

51 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 21 May 2015.

52 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 27 May 2015.

53 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 30 May 2015. Those narratives are in line with testimonies published in the wider literature on the conflict in Darfur from various sources, most prominently in books such as Marlowe et al. Darfur Diaries and Walzer, Out of Exile.

54 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 10 May 2015. All interviewees said they had no contact or involvement with any rebel group, an assertion that cannot be verified. And while quite a number of interviewees mentioned clashes between government forces and rebel groups as a trigger for their decision to leave Darfur, none put any blame on rebel groups in relation to perpetrating violence. It thus may well be that interviewees were sympathizing with some of the rebels who often belonged to the same ethnicity as themselves.

55 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Djabal Refugee Camp, Goz Beida, Chad 21 May 2015.

56 Daniel, “The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement”, 279.

57 Adami, “Future Perfect?”.

58 Read, “Tensions in UN Information Management”.

59 See also de Waal et al., “The Epidemiology of Lethal Violence”.

60 Read et al., “Capturing Conflict.”

61 The following discussion is predominately based on interview data collected by Bashar among former UNAMID staff as explained in more detail in the methodology section.

62 Telephone interview, former UNAMID staff, 27 February 2015.

63 Interview by Müller, 5 March 2016, Addis Ababa.

64 Face-to-face interview, former UNAMID staff, 1 February 2015, in a UK city.

65 Telephone interview, former UNAMID staff, 11 October 2014.

66 De Waal et al., “The Epidemiology of Lethal Violence”; Holt and Taylor, Protecting Civilians.

67 Interview by Müller, 5 March 2016, Addis Ababa.

68 Telephone interview, former UNAMID staff, 13 October 2014; Interview by Müller, 5 March 2014, Addis Ababa.

69 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 10 May 2015.

70 De Waal et al., “The Epidemiology of Lethal Violence”.

71 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 10 May 2015. UNAMID also worked with local interpreters and whilst those predominately came from the local communities, there were instances when local populations suspected interpreters to in reality work for the government and quasi act as ‘spies’ (Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 22 May 2015).

72 Interview Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 5 May 2015.

73 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 27 May 2015.

74 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 23 May 2015.

75 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 19 May 2015.

76 All UN peacekeeping missions rely on co-operation with respective host governments, and when considering the fraught relationship between the UN and the GoS, expectations of UNAMID and its potential impact were always bound to be too high, see also Holt and Taylor, Protecting Civilians.

77 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 22 May 2015. These widely inflated expectation of what UNAMID troops would actually be able to do were partly engrained in the way the mission was framed, see De Waal, “Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect”.

78 Interviews Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 7 and 8 May 2015. It seems in fact that this particular incident took place in 2007 and it were thus AMIS and not UNAMID troops involved. When this was further probed with one of the interviewees he said to him these were the same anyway, and he did not remember the exact date.

79 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 25 May 2015.

80 Interviews Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 4 May 2015.

81 Interviews Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 6 May 2015.

82 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 21 May 2015.

83 Interviews Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Amir Refugee Camp, 8 May 2015.

84 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 21 May 2015.

85 In concrete, interviewees were asked: ‘How do you score UNAMID in terms of making people feel safe and protected?’, using a 10-points scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

86 Concrete scores were as follows: 37 participants: 1; 4 participants each: 2 and 3, respectively; 2 participants: 5; 1 participant: 7.5 and 4 participants declined to give a score.

87 Interview, Darfurian refugee in Chad, Goz Beida, Djabal Refugee Camp, 23 May 2015.

88 UN, Report of the High-Level Independent Panel, 65–6.

89 Ibid.; see also Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below.

90 Abilova and Novosseloff, “Demystifying Intelligence”, 11; UN, Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions.

91 These include the Peace Studies Centre at the University of El Fasher, the Peace Studies and Research Centre at the University of Nyala, and the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Zalingei.

92 Informal conversation by Müller with staff from the centres in El Fasher and Nyala at a workshop in Khartoum, 20 January 2015.

93 Interview by Müller, 5 March 2016, Addis Ababa.

94 It goes beyond this paper to discuss this last issue further. This is the topic of a forthcoming paper from the MPKDW project that focuses on security threats to local staff who worked for UNAMID, see Müller, “Collateral Damage”.

95 Abilova and Novosseloff, “Demystifying Intelligence”; see also Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below.

96 See Elbasri, “We Can’t Say All that We See in Darfur”. Whether Elbasri’s critique is justified or not is beyond the scope of this article.

97 For a more general argument in favour of relating different narratives of conflict from different vantage points to each other see Mac Ginty and Firchow, “Top-Down and Bottom-up Narratives”.

98 UN, Special Report of the Secretary-General.

99 Ibid.