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afrol.com, 31 May - The 18-years old conflict in the Casamance is going towards an end since the previous Senegalese government took an initiative to negotiate with the rebel Mouvement des forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC) earlier this year. Now, the difficult process of implementing the fragile peace plan is jeopardising the reconciliation.
The MDCF had reached an agreement of ceasefire with the previous ruling Parti Socialiste, facilitated by Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. However, the regular meetings in Banjul (The Gambia) came to a halt due to the Senegalese presidential elections in March. Still, the ceasefire was obeyed and the peace process kept on track.
After winning the March presidential elections and taking office in April, president Abdoulaye Wade has turned more offensive, though on many occasions, not too diplomatic. Turning from the Banjul negotiation, Wade said he preferred direct talks with the MFDC as a way to achieve peace and expressed a will also to meet with "rebel generals". "I think I should first meet with the separatist warlords and hold discussions with them," Wade has said on Radio France Internationale. This move obviously had neither been cleared with the political wing of the MFDC, with whom the government has been negotiating, nor with Wade's negotiators. It therefore caused some irritation within the MFDC.
All peace processes have their exciting and hopeful periods of negotiating a ceasefire and a peace treaty, and later on come those hangover days of implementing the treaties and free willingly give away positions which were gained during the conflict - a process crucial for the actual reconciliation afterwards. The government has found itself in the difficult situation of withdrawing more than half of its troops from a troubled part of its territory as part of fulfilling the agreement with the MFDC. The withdrawal thus has suffered one delay after the other.
Although the delay in withdrawing troops could complicate talks to end the conflict, the measure is popular with residents in the area, analysts say. "The Casamance people have welcome the troops' stay because they provide them more security," Babacar Gueye, a professor of political science at Dakar's Cheikh Anta Diop University, was quoted in IRIN yesterday.
Still, the peace process in on the track, as the Wade government after all shows its will to implement the politically difficult troops withdrawal from the Casamance. Although it has to consider the difficulties an embittered peace process might have for the future reconciliation, it also needs to consider the opinion of the public in Senegal at large. After all, Wade most recently was democratically elected.
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