The African Union is failing in Darfur
By Eric Reeves, The TNR Online
Sept 26, 2005 — In the Darfur region of Sudan, government-sponsored violence and intimidation continue to claim thousands of lives a month. Yet if you listened to world leaders, you would conclude that the African Union’s deployment of troops to Darfur–intended to stop the genocide that is now in its third year–is a fully adequate response to the vast crisis. Kofi Annan recently reported to the U.N. Security Council that, “in some respects, the security situation in Darfur has improved over the past year. The presence of the A.U. Mission in the Sudan has been a major factor in this improvement.” According to Jan Pronk, Annan’s special representative to Sudan, “The A.U. force has helped to establish more stability. They have done an admirable job, highly professional, with much dedication.” Praise has come from other corners as well. Back in May, French foreign minister Michel Barnier said, “I want to stress the wholly remarkable work the African Union is doing on the spot.” And during her July trip to Africa, Condoleezza Rice had this to say about Darfur: “The African Union has the lead in this. We have tried to help and we will continue to try to help, but I think Africans believe this is a conflict … best resolved on the ground by Africans.”
All this praise for the African Union might sound like harmless encouragement. Unfortunately, it’s not harmless at all. Perpetuating the myth that the A.U. mission to Darfur is succeeding is an easy way for the world’s powers to pretend that Western intervention isn’t needed. But continuing violence against defenseless civilians, including increased attacks on humanitarian operations, shows that A.U. forces are failing to protect the people of Darfur. And by continuing to insist that those troops are doing a good job, western leaders are failing the people of Darfur, too.
With the death toll from the genocide nearing 400,000, the number of civilians at risk now stands at 3.5 million. That is the number the U.N.’s World Food Program estimates to be in need of food assistance. The vast majority of these people–approximately 3 million–are now internally displaced or refugees in Chad and have equally urgent medical, shelter, and water needs.
To survive, these civilians are dependent on the international relief effort; and that effort depends on the 12,000 or so humanitarian workers now on the ground in Darfur. But these workers–about 1,000 of whom are foreigners; the rest are Sudanese nationals–daily face growing insecurity. Indeed, so great is this insecurity, and so inadequate are the resources for protection, that all major humanitarian organizations have contingency plans for the immediate evacuation of their expatriate workers. The fate of Sudanese nationals working with these organizations will, in the event of withdrawal, rest entirely with the genocidal National Islamic Front in Khartoum, which still dominates Sudan’s new Government of National Unity. The hostility of the NIF to humanitarian efforts in Darfur has been well chronicled by human rights groups. It is part of a deliberate NIF strategy of genocide by attrition, in which the remainder of Darfur’s population will be abandoned to die from malnutrition and disease.
In short, the security of aid workers and the continuation of genocide are inseparable issues in Darfur. In a just-issued report, Doctors Without Borders, far and away the largest humanitarian organization operating in Darfur, warned that “displaced Darfurians remain totally dependent on international assistance, which could be cut off at a moment’s notice because of the continued insecurity in the region.”
It’s clear why this insecurity persists. The African Union, the group that is currently responsible for security in Darfur, does not have the military ability, the logistical and transport capacity, or the operating cohesion to address ongoing violence and intimidation. This is the first major effort of its kind by the fledgling A.U. Peace and Security Commission, and the organization is far out of its depth. Among the problems afflicting the A.U. force in Darfur: The African Union no longer has the money to pay deployed personnel at previous levels, lacks fuel to transport its troops, and was unable to sustain deployments during the heavy (and entirely predictable) rains of the last two months. It is dramatically short of men and equipment, while suffering from declining morale among troops and outright corruption among some officers. It hardly helps that two A.U. soldiers in Darfur recently died of AIDS (despite mandatory screening) and that the previously sizeable salaries of A.U. personnel led to significant, and for Darfur entirely uncharacteristic, problems with prostitution in impoverished camps and towns.
The 5,500 A.U. personnel currently deployed in Darfur simply cannot patrol, let alone secure the safety of, the more than 200 camps for displaced persons and the increasingly resource-stripped environs of these camps (which oblige women and girls to travel further in search of firewood, water, and animal fodder–and thus face greater dangers of sexual violence from marauding Janjaweed forces). Nor can the African Union protect the humanitarian convoys that are being attacked with ever-greater frequency, and are now often delayed or canceled altogether.
The attackers–“bandits” has become the convenient catch-all term–are increasingly renegade elements from the Janjaweed and the insurgency movements, as well as opportunistic men with guns. (These attacks come as predations by more organized elements of the Janjaweed and the rebels also continue to sever humanitarian corridors and attenuate the reach of aid organizations.) But whatever it is called, the threat of banditry cannot be avoided simply because it doesn’t resemble the violence that defined the first phase of genocidal destruction in Darfur; and yet the African Union appears helpless in responding to this problem. The African Union cannot secure the large rural areas of a region the size of France, or provide the protection that will allow displaced persons to return to their lands and attempt to resume agricultural production. It simply does not have the number of troops or mobility required.
In addition to its lack of manpower and resources, the African Union is without a mandate to protect civilians or humanitarian workers. The current force has deployed with a mandate merely to monitor the current ceasefire (a ceasefire that is largely meaningless). And it is unable even to fulfill that limited mandate, since it often lacks the resources to investigate reported ceasefire violations, even major ones.
The international community, of course, can’t acknowledge this; but neither will the African Union, because it would fly in the face of the argument repeatedly made by the continent’s governments, especially Nigeria and Egypt, that Darfur is an “African problem” that requires an “African solution.” Indeed, this was the mantra of a summit convened in Tripoli a year ago, with the presidents of Egypt, Nigeria, Libya, Chad, and Sudan the only participants.
Fortunately, one African leader recently refused to tow the line of disingenuously praising the African Union. In July, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, Senegal’s foreign minister, declared–with Condoleezza Rice standing uncomfortably by his side in Dakar–that the situation in Darfur was “totally unacceptable” and that the strategy of relying on the African Union was to blame:
Madam Secretary of State, you know, you have to deal with the facts on the ground. … Those militias, they’re still very active … killing people, burning villages, raping women. We are totally dissatisfied with the fact that the African Union has asked the international community to allow it to be an African solution to an African problem, and unfortunately the logistics from our own governments did not follow. The U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the African Union, the United States–we should all come together in a new way of dealing with the suffering of the people of Darfur. … We have to do something.
Over two months ago, the International Crisis Group presented a plan for what doing “something” might involve. The ICG called for a NATO “bridging force” to supplement the African Union, arguing that only a contingent of at least 12,000 to 15,000 troops, deployed by early September 2005, could begin to respond adequately to the security needs of civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur. Though the ICG estimate of force requirements is low in comparison with other military assessments, it reflects a serious consideration of the challenges on the ground, and also recognizes the need for a much larger force if Khartoum’s National Islamic Front opposes such deployment.
To date, not a single major international actor–governmental or nongovernmental–has publicly supported the ICG recommendation. As a result, the future of humanitarian operations in Darfur–and thus the fate of the immense civilian population that has become completely dependent upon such operations–remains uncertain. Last December U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland declared that as many as 100,000 could die every month in the event of humanitarian withdrawal. With 3.5 million people in need, with agricultural production largely at a standstill, and with Darfur residents unable to feed themselves, the genocide could enter its deadliest phase if the security situation continues to deteriorate to the point where humanitarian workers are forced to leave. All of which provides compelling grounds for Western intervention. Unless you believe the African Union is doing an “admirable,” “professional,” and “remarkable” job.
* Eric Reeves is a professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College and has written extensively on Sudan.