Sudan: UN's biggest challenge
2005-08-11 13:31
Juba - The effort to restore peace and stability in war-shattered, underdeveloped southern Sudan is the biggest-ever logistical challenge faced by a United Nations peacekeeping mission, say UN officials.
Quite apart from the political difficulties posed by the sudden death last month of ex-southern rebel leader John Garang, the expected force of 10 000 troops must cope with a critical lack of even the most basic infrastructure, a buried sea of landmines and shortages of food and water.
Biggest challenge for UN
"I think the mission is the biggest challenge the UN has faced, logistically," said Major Kim Reisz, the spokesperson for the joint monitoring co-ordination office, the military component of the UN Mission to Sudan (Unmis).
To carry out its mandate to oversee implementation of the January peace deal that ended Sudan's 21-year north-south civil war, the UN will assemble about 80 aircraft to haul troops and supplies throughout the deeply impoverished region.
"It is the biggest fleet ever," Reisz said, referring to the collection of fixed-wing military planes and helicopters that will descend on dirt airstrips scattered around vast southern Sudan, joining dozens of others from relief groups.
Few previous UN peacekeeping exercises have faced anything even close to the situation in southern Sudan, where multinational troops are to be deployed in six sectors, officials said.
Aid urgently needed
The war, which claimed more than 1.5 million lives and displaced at least four million people, has left the largely barren area, which is the size of size of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined, even more desolate and in need of extreme infusions of aid if the deal is to survive.
"There is nothing in southern Sudan really in place in order to facilitate the process of implementation with the exception of the agreement itself and the political will of the parties to implement it," a civilian UN expert said.
"Objectively speaking, everything in southern Sudan is against this agreement: physical infrastructure is either non-existent or was ruined during the conflict," he said.
"The climatic conditions, the food security situation, the water situation, all are extremely tense and vulnerable, posing very serious challenges," said another UN expert.