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By Jennie Matthew, Agence France-Presse
EL GENEINA, Sudan: Six months
after the peacekeeping force in Darfur transferred to UN leadership,
no new battalion has deployed and enormous expectations among
victims of the conflict are beginning to fade.
Supposed to number 26,000, barely
a third of what was to be the largest peacekeeping operation in the
world—7,600 troops and 1,500 police—are on the ground, battling
huge equipment shortages.
Despite the avowed determination
of the international community to restore stability to Darfur five
years into the conflict, no country has donated the air transport
and cover desperately needed for vast terrain with limited roads.
Ethiopia alone has offered a few
utility helicopters.
The first extra troops on top of
the numbers deployed when the African Union (AU) was in charge last
year, an Egyptian and an Ethiopian battalion are still yet to deploy
and their equipment still not in place.
“It is the responsibility of
the whole world and if the whole world cannot bring troops into
Sudan in one day, then how can Unamid be blamed for that?” said
force commander Martin Agwai, referring to the United
Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid).
Rodolphe Adada, the former
Congolese foreign minister who heads Darfur peacekeeping, said there
could no security in the increasingly lawless Darfur until the world
deploys all 26,000 promised troops.
Commanders say they do what they
can with the troops they have: night patrols that the AU did not
conduct and firewood patrols to protect women from rape when they
venture too far outside the camp.
“We are achieving a little bit
of initial reputation but it cannot last long,” said Gen. Balla
Keita, commander in West Darfur.
“If you continue just telling
people ‘ok wait and wait,’ somehow down the road they will say
‘we cannot wait any longer,’” he said.
Camps for the internally
displaced (IDPs) are frightening places in the pitch black of
night—people appear silently out of the shadows, groups of men sit
together talking and residents say gunfire crackles on the
perimeter.
Bumping around on dirt tracks,
rumbling from one IDP camp to another, Unamid officers hear
complaints about lack of food and plastic sheets to prevent huts
from leaking during the rains, and not enough people registered for
aid.
But even basic communication is a
problem. In El Geneina, there are enough local translators only for
the day shift. In Nyala, translators were so short one Friday
morning that a freelance journalist took on the task.
During the June-August rainy
season, many areas currently being patrolled will become impassable
without the air support still lacking.
“It’s good to come to the
camps. You are welcome but if you’re not on the ground where the
troubles are, what’s the point?” Sheikh Amin Ali Ibrahim tells
Unamid in Mossei IDP camp in South Darfur.
“What we expect is [for you] to
help people come back to their area and every guarantee that there
won’t be more trouble,” he said.
Some officials worry it is just a
matter of time before Unamid suffers the kind of attack on the AU at
Haskanita on September 29, when heavily armed men ambushed and
killed 10 soldiers.
“The effort being achieved so
far is not enough,” says senior El Geneina official Fadallah Ahmed
Abdallah on the margins of a meeting with peacekeepers.
“The IDPs had big hopes for
Unamidat the beginning. Now no one can cultivate his land normally.
Sometimes we feel Unamid itself needs some protection because Unamid
is not at full strength,” he said.
One Nigerian lieutenant laughed
when asked if the soldiers worry about being attacked. “We’re
ready for them,” he jokes, steering his soft-backed jeep down the
dusty lanes on a night patrol around El Geneina.
Diplomats believe the conflict
could drag on for years, that the Khartoum government could castrate
Unamid and sustain the conflict the US calls genocide.
Sudanese soldiers have been
stopping Unamid vehicles in West Darfur. One patrol accompanied by
Agence France-Presse was held up for 15 minutes outside one IDP
camp.
“It [the conflict] is not going
to be solved because the ingredients aren’t there. The government
of Sudan has not eliminated the rebels. The rebels don’t have the
authority to kick GOS out and take control,” said one UN official.
“As long as the government
controls El Fasher, Nyala and Geneina and key outposts and there is
no significant attack, it’s totally sustainable for another 10 to
15 years,” he said.
“At the end of the year, if
there is no effective Unamid military or political presence, the
government will just write it off.
“Military and political
insignificance will mean no movement and no support from locals,”
said one UN diplomat.
But with many IDPs and children
at least, Unamid are popular. Kids flock from nowhere at the sound
of the engines, waving and sticking their thumbs up
“They like us. They feel safe
when they hear us coming,” said one officer.
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