Desperation in Darfur

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

By By Dan Morrison - 2/20/06

When it comes to saving Darfur's people from the predations of Arab militias & rebel factions, the mission's limp official mandate is "to protect civilians encountered who are under imminent threat & 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 & Angola, concurs:

"We need a much stronger mandate & that mandate should be very specific that you can disarm people."

Whose problem? So why, after all the international outrage, after 180,000 dead & 2 million displaced into camps & 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 & testimony depicting burning villages, murdered families & mutilated women. The United States, burdened with war in Iraq & 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 3 decades, it was known as the Organization of African Unity, a body largely dedicated to coddling the continent's dictators & kleptocrats.

In 2002, pushed by a younger generation of leaders, the OAU restyled itself the African Union, loosely modeled on the European Union. 2 years later, as Darfur's atrocities grabbed headlines, the AU created a peace & security council to prevent & mediate conflicts on the continent.

A small contingent of military observers sent to Darfur was later joined by civilian police officers & additional brass from across Africa.

In Nigeria, the African Union led peace talks between Sudan's government & 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 & intelligence, equipment shortages & 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 4 Nigerian soldiers were killed by bandits in an October ambush. Sudan has even painted some of its aircraft white, including attack helicopters, so they're indistinguishable from AU aircraft. "We're at the mercy of their cooperation,'' said a Rwandan officer.

Almost all of the officers & enlisted men who spoke to U.S. News said they wished they could do more to quell the violence in Darfur, which now includes attacks by rebel splinter groups, banditry & continued attacks by the Janjaweed & allied government forces on villages & displaced person camps.

Last week, the U.N. Security Council released a report accusing both Sudan's government & 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 & without."

Context

Since early 2003, the crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region has become one of the world’s worst human rights crises.¹  

In coordination with ethnic militias known as the “Janjaweed,” the Sudanese government has systematically targeted civilians sharing the ethnicity of Darfur’s main rebel movements. Almost 2 million people have been forcibly displaced by the attacks & lost their property, livestock & other assets. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, raped, or arbitrarily detained by the Sudanese government forces & their militias.

The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) entered Darfur in July 2004 to monitor an African Union (A.U.) - brokered ceasefire agreement between the 2 rebel groups & the Sudanese government.

In the face of continuing attacks on civilians, the African Union mission’s mandate expanded to limited civilian protection in October 2004 & in April 2005 the A.U. Peace & Security Council authorized an increase of personnel to 7,731.²

As of  March 2006, the 6,898-strong AMIS includes:

•  4,760 protection forces (military)

• 1,385 unarmed civilian police

• 715 unarmed military observers & additional personnel

The force has succeeded in bringing limited stability to some areas where it's deployed, but it lacks sufficient numbers, equipment & funding to tamp down the increasing violence against civilians in Darfur.

The majority of Darfur’s population continues to suffer from ongoing attacks by government & rebel forces & bandits, or indirectly from insecurity & the collapse of the local economy. 

A resurgence of fighting since late 2005, continuing attacks on civilians & the spillover of fighting into neighboring Chad highlight the gap between AMIS’ capacity to protect civilians & the massive protection needs on the ground. 

The U.N. Secretary-General said in his April 2006 report to the Security Council on Darfur that the recent escalation of fighting between the parties, together with deliberate attacks on towns, villages & displaced persons’ settlements & acts of banditry, has forced thousands more civilians to flee their homes & exposed them to a wide range of abuses.³

A proposal to replace or “blue hat” AMIS with a U.N. force gathered momentum in January 2006 as AMIS funding problems increased. The proposal for a U.N. force has met stiff resistance from the Sudanese government. 

It consistently tries to prevent any initiatives that could protect civilians in Darfur. It has refused to investigate or prosecute war crimes, including murders & rapes, by government & military personnel & by its Janjaweed militias.  

The African Union mediators of Darfur peace talks between the Sudanese government & the Darfur rebels in Abuja, Nigeria, have imposed a deadline on the parties to sign a peace agreement & an “enhanced” ceasefire agreement by April 30. 

A peace agreement or a new ceasefire agreement will not guarantee an end to attacks on civilians, however. The April 2004 ceasefire agreement has scarcely been respected:

• armed groups have multiplied

• arms & ammunition are readily available

• ethnic polarization is greatly increased 

• those engaged in banditry know they enjoy total immunity from prosecution by the Sudanese authorities as long as they participate in the Sudan government’s counterinsurgency campaign.

Finally, as discussed below, the African Union force has lost credibility as a deterrent to attacks on civilians & humanitarian convoys & as a result hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons have been cut off from the humanitarian assistance they need.

The recent events in Chad, where Khartoum-backed Chadian rebels based in Darfur almost captured the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, on April 13, provide new & added urgency to the need to protect civilians in the region.

In addition to a serious risk of conflict engulfing Chad, the safety of some 208,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad is also threatened. 

Protection of Civilians: Lessons Learned from AMIS

Despite AMIS’s efforts to proactively interpret its mandate for protection of civilians “whom it encounters under imminent threat and in the immediate vicinity, within resources and capability,”⁴ it has been severely hampered in these efforts. Internal constraints include a lack of institutional expertise and technical capacity in deploying multi-sectoral field missions. External constraints include the continuing obstruction of the Sudanese government, inadequate funding from international donor governments and insufficient military equipment and logistics.

As a result, AMIS’ deterrent effect has diminished as its own forces have succumbed to deadly attacks. Attacks on humanitarian aid convoys by rebel groups, Janjaweed forces and bandits and continuing Janjaweed and government attacks on civilians, including those living in camps, have become widespread in the past several months. The primary responsibility for the deterioration in the security situation belongs to the warring parties, who continue to attack civilians and civilian objects in violation of international humanitarian law, and the government, which has created a climate of lawlessness by permitting Janjaweed forces to commit crimes with impunity. But it is also clear that AMIS’ ability to counter such attacks is limited by its low numbers and other constraints.

The African Union Peace and Security Council on March 10 extended the mandate of AMIS in Darfur through September 30, 2006. U.N. plans call for AMIS troops to be a mainstay of the future U.N. force in Darfur by retraining the AMIS soldiers and then “re-hatting” them and incorporating them into a larger U.N. force with improved logistical support and arms. This would expedite the introduction of the U.N. force and ensure that vital institutional knowledge and experience is retained within the future U.N. mission.  The introduction of a U.N. force will also provide an opportunity to strengthen AMIS regarding size, funding, mandate, and capacity — and, in particular, mobility.

Requirements for the Proposed U.N. force

The Mandate

Any U.N. operation in Darfur must have a clear mandate to proactively protect civilians whether or not a peace agreement is in place. Given the scale and gravity of the abuses that have taken place and continue to occur in the region, protection of civilians remains the highest priority.  Past experience in Darfur and lessons learned from U.N. operations in other countries have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of providing international forces with unambiguous guidance on this task. The Security Council must immediately secure the consent of the Sudanese government to the prompt and robust intervention of a U.N. force in Darfur no later than October 1, 2006 (when the A.U. mandate ends). The following elements should be included in any U.N. mandate:

• The U.N. force should be authorized under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and permitted to use “all necessary means to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel.” This formulation will allow U.N. forces to use deadly force to protect civilians under attack or threat of violence. It  would provide U.N. forces with flexibility to use a range of approaches to deter attacks.  For instance, forces must have the mandate to quickly deploy forces in volatile areas to prevent attacks against civilians.  The use of force to protect civilians must also be clearly articulated within the rules of engagement.

• The U.N. mandate must include the promotion and protection of human rights, cooperation with efforts to end impunity, including the International Criminal Court, and public reporting on human rights developments. The U.N. operation in Darfur should have adequate numbers of human rights monitors and resources to allow them to widely monitor the situation in Darfur, including abuses by all the warring parties. Human rights specialists should be routinely included in military and police patrols, and forensics experts and others should be included in the mission to assist in securing evidence (including mass grave sites) and in protecting witnesses. Given the prevalence of rape and sexual violence in Darfur and the scale of attacks in and around displaced persons camps, the U.N. mission should include sufficient numbers of civilian police. Female police and civilian personnel with expertise in the investigation of sexual and gender based crimes and child protection should be recruited.

• The U.N. mandate should include monitoring of the arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council on Darfur under Resolution 1556 and elaborated upon under Resolution 1591. As described in the report of the U.N. Panel of Experts,⁵  the warring parties and probably neighboring countries continue to violate the arms embargo imposed on Darfur by the U.N. Security Council in July 2004 and March 2005.  In addition, the Sudanese government continues to use aircraft in offensive military operations, despite promising in January 2005 to refrain from doing so. U.N. forces should be authorized to inspect, as they deem necessary and without notice, all aircraft and vehicles anywhere in Darfur, including those in the airports, airfields, military bases and border crossings. U.N forces should be authorized to seize or collect arms and related material which violates the arms embargo and dispose of such material as appropriate.

• The U.N. mandate should support efforts to demobilize and disarm abusive militia forces and to reform the security sector, including screening of military, militia, police, and internal security forces.  Given the pervasive involvement of members of the Sudanese military, political, police, internal security services and government-backed militias in war crimes, crimes against humanity and other abuses, concrete steps must be taken to screen all personnel, identify such individuals and remove them from participation, formal or informal, in government institutions.

Adequate Capacity and Resources

In addition to a clear and robust mandate to protect civilians, the U.N. force in Darfur must have adequate resources to implement its mandate. This means not only sufficient quantity and quality of military and civilian personnel — 20,000 has been suggested by U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Jan Pronk as the minimum necessary to be effective — but the requisite technical and military capacity to deploy rapidly and in far greater numbers not only in key urban areas but also in Darfur’s violent rural zones. 

Much of the AMIS force of 6,898 personnel has been concentrated in the larger towns and around the sprawling camps for internally displaced persons. The dearth of international presence and security in the rural areas has had several negative results. One is that abusive militia and bandit groups continue to attack civilians scattered in rural areas, causing them to flee into towns and camps. As a result they are cut off from farming and economic independence and become dependent on international humanitarian relief.

A second consequence of minimal AMIS presence in rural areas is that travel between towns or to rural areas remains highly insecure, not only for civilians, but also for international humanitarian agencies. Civilians, aid workers, humanitarian convoys, and commercial vehicles have come under increasing attack in the past year, not only by the warring parties but also by armed bandits.

Securing Darfur’s main roads for civilian and humanitarian traffic and proactively patrolling the rural areas is therefore an important task for the U.N. force, and one which will require substantial human, logistical and technical capacity. Mobility and the ability to rapidly react to ambushes and reports of impending attacks are key to such protection.

Instead of continuing to place Sudanese government interests above the survival of more than 1.7 million displaced Sudanese, U.N. Security Council members and regional institutions must prioritize the well-being of Sudanese citizens and fully support the urgent deployment of a robust, adequately equipped U.N. force to protect the civilians of Darfur.

Ethanol explained

By Richard J. Newman - Posted 4/25/06

ANARCHY, ANGER, DESPERATION
THE RESPONSE
Sharp criticism of U.S. reaction & failure to prevent disaster

Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief / Friday, September 2, 2005

Washington - Disturbing images of thousands of Americans dehydrated, hungry & unable to escape an uninhabitable city are prompting angry questions about whether the richest nation in the world is doing everything it can to respond to New Orleans' disaster.

"The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following 11 September 2001, has vanished," read an editorial in Thursday's editions. "In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster & economic uncertainty."