UN envoy calls for 20,000 peacekeepers to disarm Darfur militias

Jan 14, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — The top U.N. envoy in Sudan declared Friday that efforts to bring peace to Sudan’s vast Darfur region have failed and called for a robust U.N. peacekeeping force of up to 20,000 troops to disarm marauding militias and provide security so over 2 million displaced people can return home.

A Rwandan African Union soldier patrols at Abushouk camp near El Fasher in North Darfur, Nov. 3. 2005 .

Jan Pronk said an ethnic cleansing campaign in 2003 and 2004 had been successful and a larger, more sophisticated and mobile force was needed to help end the continuing rapes and killings and stop the groups of 500 to 1,000 militia on camel and horseback that still attack villages at least once a month.

“Looking back at three years of killings and cleansing in Darfur we must admit that our peace strategy so far has failed,” he told the U.N. Security Council. “All we did was picking up the pieces and muddling through, doing too little too late. The ultimate responsibility lies with the perpetrators. But we should do more to stop them, to end impunity and to offer a perspective to the children of Darfur that they can live without fear.”

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in the vast western Darfur region erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when ethnic African tribes took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglect. The government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. It denies the charge.

An estimated 180,000 people have died in the upheaval — many from hunger and disease.

Pronk briefed the council a day after the African Union’s Peace and Security Council accepted in principle the need to transform its 7,000-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur into a U.N. peacekeeping force. The AU council extended the AU force’s mandate until March 31, authorized consultations with the U.N., and said a final decision would be taken by ministers at the end of March, Tanzania’s U.N. Ambassador Augustine Mahiga told reporters.

The AU force has made a significant difference where its troops have been deployed. But it has been hampered by a shortage of funds, troops, and equipment and its mandate has been limited to monitoring an April 2004 cease-fire that is regularly broken by all parties and offering limited protection to civilians.

Pronk said a new type of force with sophisticated military hardware and air surveillance is needed to disarm militias, help stop attacks, and deploy to villages so the 2.2 million people who fled the violence and now live in camps can return to their homes.

“People don’t go home if they are uncertain, unless there are reliable people to protect them,” he said.

Pronk said he envisions a U.N. force of at least 12,000 to 20,000 troops.

But a U.N. force could face problems from the Sudanese government, which has opposed non-African peacekeepers.

Sudan’s charge d’affaires Yasir Abdelsalam told reporters that “the African Union is doing well” and Pronk commended its work. “This is why we think the African Union should be given more support to succeed,” he said.

Tanzania’s Mahiga, the current council president, told reporters the Security Council hopes that negotiations between the government and rebels on a peace agreement in Darfur will be completed before a U.N. force deploys.

Both the AU and the Security Council must authorize the hand over and no date has been set.

Mahiga told reporters after Friday’s briefings by Pronk and AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim, who is trying to mediate the peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, that “there is a need to inject a sense of urgency and to reinvigorate the peace process.”

Pronk and Salim urged the council to impose sanctions on those holding up the peace process — which it has already authorized — to put pressure on the parties to move the Abuja talks forward.

Pronk also urged the International Criminal Court, which is investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur, “to work quicker” and issue indictments against commanders or political leaders.

“I understand that they have to be very thorough in order not to make mistakes but the important thing also is to make an end to impunity and set some examples,” he said. “This is also an instrument to stop further atrocities.”

Salim told the council that substantial progress has been made in the peace talks on wealth-sharing but almost none on power-sharing and security arrangements. A major problem has been a split in the rebel movements, which are negotiating “on the basis of their worst fears, as against their best hopes,” he said.

“So far, the negotiations have been characterized by an unacceptable level of inflexibility on the positions of the parties, suspicion, absence of even the minimum level of confidence and deep distrust,” Salim said.

Pronk told reporters “if they continue in Abuja at the present pace, it will take another year or two without any certainty there will be agreement.”

He urged the Darfur parties to follow the model that led to the January 2005 peace accord ending the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and southern rebels that cost millions of lives: first agree on a real cease-fire that ends the fighting, and then engage in talks with all parties on outstanding issues including land, water, democratization and sharing power and natural resources.

The Security Council has already authorized a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor the 2005 north-south accord and Pronk said he was told that 10,000 troops will be on the ground by the end of March.

He expressed hope that this will happen but he said two key elements must be in place first — a Russian aviation unit which has been delayed for 14 months and still needs approval from Russia’s parliament and a Chinese medical team which has been slow in deploying.

(AP/ST)