Global Policy Forum

Can the United Nations now succeed where African peacekeepers have failed?

By Dan Morrison

The murderous Janjaweed militia are camped in a dusty swirl 6 miles outside the South Darfur town of Gereida, where the 60,000 residents fear an attack could come at any moment. With armed horsemen practically on their doorstep, the women of Gereida took an unusual step--they wrote a letter swearing to rampage with knives and machetes unless a group of outsiders leaves within 72 hours.

Their angry letter is delivered not to the Janjaweed but to 100 African Union troops stationed nearby. It turns out to be not a threat but rather a desperate ploy for attention and protection. "It's a siege situation; they're scared,'' says Nigerian Army Col. Raji Raina, the local African Union sector commander. The AU later joined tribal leaders to mediate the conflict, and most of the horsemen moved on. Sighs Raina, "It is thought that we should deploy to villages and camps and ward off attackers--it's not really so. In fact, all that people want us to do, it's laughable."

His choice of words--laughable--is brutally honest. More than two years after African Union military observers first landed in Darfur to monitor an often-violated cease-fire between Sudan's government and two rebel groups, their mission is plagued by shortages of equipment, fuel, and, some say, nerve. But the mission's greatest shortfall may be due to the oversize expectations that accompanied its 7,000 soldiers and civilian police to Darfur.

Limited Aims

It might seem that the forces sent by the African Union--a grouping of 53 African nations--would intervene to stop attacks on civilians. In fact, the African Mission in Sudan, or AMIS as it's known, is primarily charged with monitoring Darfur's frayed cease-fire while sluggish peace talks are underway in Nigeria. Its 5,000 "protection force" soldiers, most of them from Rwanda, Nigeria, and Senegal, are officially in Darfur to guard the 2,000 African military observers and civilian police as they go about their rounds. "Of course, they are providing protection, but you can't be everywhere,'' Said Djinnit, the African Union's peace and security commissioner, tells U.S News . "You are talking about 7,000 people having to cover an area the size of France."

It's hard to find a humanitarian worker in Darfur who doesn't tell a distressing story about the African Union forces. There's the Sudanese Army attack on an internal refugee camp that African Union soldiers caught on videotape but didn't prevent. There are the people they couldn't protect last month when Janjaweed raids drove 55,000 civilians from the city of Mershing. There are the government curfews imposed on Darfur residents that AU unit commanders also obey, giving government-aligned militias free rein at night.

For their part, Colonel Raina and other African Union commanders stress the need for conciliation. They note how overstretched their forces are. They offer stories, verified by aid workers, of attacks that didn't happen and food aid that was delivered across dangerous territory thanks to the diplomacy of a handful of colonels and majors from across the continent.

Still, Darfur becomes more insecure by the day. In West Darfur, the United Nations has pulled all but 60 foreign staffers because of fears that border tensions could spill over from nearby Chad. Elsewhere, rebel attacks and increasing cases of hijacking have stopped many food convoys from reaching hungry civilians.

When it comes to saving Darfur's people from the predations of Arab militias and rebel factions, the mission's limp official mandate is "to protect civilians encountered who are under imminent threat and in the immediate vicinity, within the limits of mission capability, it being understood that civilian protection is the [Sudan] government's responsibility.'' It's a twisting clause that, as the private International Crisis Group noted in a report last year, renders the idea of protection "almost meaningless." Colonel Raina, a veteran of peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Angola, concurs: "We need a much stronger mandate, and that mandate should be very specific that you can disarm people."

Whose problem?

So why, after all the international outrage, after 180,000 dead and 2 million displaced into camps and countless women raped, are African Union soldiers still playing nice amid the growing chaos of Darfur? World leaders expressed outrage in 2004 at widespread images and testimony depicting burning villages, murdered families, and mutilated women. The United States, burdened with war in Iraq and the aftermath of war in Afghanistan, never considered sending its own forces to Darfur, even after then Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the Darfur crisis a "genocide.'' It was the same with NATO, many of whose members had to be dragged into quelling the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999. In that context, the mood was, "Let Africans police Africa."

That handed the matter off to the African Union. For three decades, it was known as the Organization of African Unity, a body largely dedicated to coddling the continent's dictators and kleptocrats. In 2002, pushed by a younger generation of leaders, the OAU restyled itself the African Union, loosely modeled on the European Union. Two years later, as Darfur's atrocities grabbed headlines, the AU created a peace and security council to prevent and mediate conflicts on the continent.

A small contingent of military observers sent to Darfur was later joined by civilian police officers and additional brass from across Africa. In Nigeria, the African Union led peace talks between Sudan's government and the rebels. For once, leaders said, Africa would be solving its own problems.

Obstacles

On the ground, however, the effort was plagued by poor communication and intelligence, equipment shortages, and constant flak from Sudan's government. Sudan has restricted the AU's airport access to daytime hours. It blocked, for months, customs clearance for 100 Canadian-donated armored personnel carriers, even after four Nigerian soldiers were killed by bandits in an October ambush. Sudan has even painted some of its aircraft white, including attack helicopters, so they are indistinguishable from AU aircraft. "We are at the mercy of their cooperation,'' said a Rwandan officer.

Almost all of the officers and enlisted men who spoke to U.S. New s said they wished they could do more to quell the violence in Darfur, which now includes attacks by rebel splinter groups, banditry, and continued attacks by the Janjaweed and allied government forces on villages and displaced person camps. Last week, the U.N. Security Council released a report accusing both Sudan's government and the rebels of violating a U.N. arms embargo. "I came here thinking that I could help this place live in peace,'' said a South African Army major nearing the end of his tour. "I did my level best, but we were tangled up from the start, from within and without."

Now, the United Nations has begun the months-long process of taking over the African Union mission. At the U.N. Security Council, the Bush administration is using its February presidency to push for a stronger peacekeeping operation under a U.N. mandate, which some say could take as many as 20,000 peacekeepers (as well as Sudan's agreement to cooperate). U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he will ask President Bush this week for American troops and equipment to help "stop the carnage." A better funded and equipped U.N. force, Annan said, needs to include robust elements like tactical air support to be able to respond quickly and stop attacks rather than arrive "after the harm has been done."

Still, it's clear here that greater efforts are needed to bring about a political settlement that includes Darfur's nomadic Arab tribes and local leaders as well as the rebels and Sudan's government. Without a viable political deal, says South Darfur's police commander Maj. Gen. Abden Altaher, "no one will give up his weapon."

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