Darfur expectations fade
2008-06-25 09:17
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 is supposed 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?" declared force commander Martin Agwai recently.
Rodolphe Adada, the Congolese former foreign minister who heads Darfur peacekeeping, told AFP this month 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 that they have: night patrols that the AU did not conduct and firewood patrols to protect women from the risk of rape when they venture too far outside the camp.
"We are achieving a little bit of initial reputation but it cannot last long," said General Balla Keita, the commander in West Darfur.
'We cannot wait any longer'
"If you continue just telling people 'ok, wait and wait, some how down the road they will say 'ok wait you, we cannot wait any longer,'" said Keita.
IDP camps are frightening places in the pitch black of night, where 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 on Friday morning that a freelance journalist stood in as interpreter.
During the June to August rainy season, many areas currently being patrolled will become impassable without the air assets 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 camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) 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 the AU suffered at Haskanita on September 29. Heavily armed men ambushed and killed 10 soldiers.
'They feel safe when they hear us coming'
"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 UNAMID at 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.
The officer sitting behind him left her helmet back at the base for the only stated reason that she does not like wearing it.
In the shifting sands of the conflict, rebel groups have splintered, ebbing and flowing with overlapping tribal conflicts. When villagers are displaced in the fighting, other tribes move in and fight over who should control the land.
Diplomats believe the conflict could drag on years, that the Khartoum government could castrate UNAMID and coast along able to sustain the conflict that the United States calls genocide.
Sudanese soldiers have been stopping UNAMID vehicles in West Darfur. One patrol accompanied by AFP was so held up 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.
Officials say hundreds of civilian staff selected for jobs, wait so long for visas that many of them find other positions.
"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.