APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 103 Darfur, Grand Conflict: Inter-Communal Rift and Grass-root Initiatives 103 to mending fences between Darfur’s two major communal groups. Combined with other factors, the tradition has made it possible to move at the grass-root level to restore normality to life and seriously attempt peaceful coexistence despite the rift the grand conflict has created. The inevitability of sharing the same space and economic interdependence leaves no other option but to seek reconciliation. Implications for the Peace Process Grass-root reconciliation reconnecting Arab and African individuals and groups is in its own right a major contribution to peacebuilding in Darfur. The downscaling of inter-communal tension in communities where reconciliation has prevailed sends a peace message to the entire Darfuri community and provides examples for others to follow. By 2007, as tensions subsided, some of the displaced began, with the help of local leaders, to return to their villages for the farming season. Markets in rural centers started operating, and ordinary people from Arab and African communal groups met to exchange goods and commodities.58 The role local leaders played in rural Darfur is similar to that of clan leaders who restored a measure of peace to Somaliland. In the absence of a state, Somali local leaders inspired and led a peace and reconciliation process that resulted in peace accords between clans and sub-clans without outside intervention.59 While efforts to reach a national peace agreement remain deadlocked, reconciliation at the grass-root level continues. The urgency for peace that such reconciliation represents originates or stems from a strong desire for a settlement. This was expressed by the AU Panel on Darfur when it reported that it ‘strongly sensed the impatience and frustration of the Darfurian people with the slow pace at which the leaders, on all sides, are approaching the urgent task of concluding a comprehensive and a durable political agreement’.60 Despite the fact that it is doubtful whether grass-root needs and interests will be addressed by those in control, the pressure for peace from the grassroots should not be underestimated. Experiences elsewhere point to the significance of grass-root pressure in the realization of peace and the achievement of positive change. Lederach argues that ‘virtually all of the recent transitions toward peace—such as those in El Salvador, Ethiopia as well as the earlier one in the Philippines—were driven largely by the pressure for change that was bubbling up from the grassroots’.61 A national peace process based on a restructuring of power and a genuine democratic transition could provide conditions more conducive to national and grass-root reconciliation. While on the one hand transitional justice, whether retributive or restorative, could be pursued nationally to hold those accused of orchestrating vio- 58. Interview, Khalid Mohamed Ahmed, lecturer at the University of El Fashir, 2010; interview, El Hadi Omer Mohamed. 59. ‘Humanitarian aid and conflict prevention: Lesson from the Greater Horn’ in David R. Smock (ed.), ‘Creative approaches to managing conflict in Africa: Findings from USIP funded projects’, Peaceworks 15, April 1997, 21, www.usip.org/files/resources/pwks15.pdf; also see Lederach, Building Peace, 52–53. 60. ‘Text: Recommendations of the AU Panel on Darfur’, Sudan Tribune, 25 October 2009, www .thefreelibrary.com/TEXT%3a+Recommendations+of+the+AU+Panel+on+Darfur.-a0210459365. 61. Lederach, Building Peace, 52.