AU peacekeepers struggle to ease suffering of Darfur refugees
June 10, 2006 (ZAMZAM) — Armed with heavy automatic riffles and a rocket launcher, 18 African Union peacekeepers warily deployed in Zamzam, a sprawling camp of thatched huts and makeshift tents scattered across sand dunes, where some 40,000 people have sought refuge from Darfur’s violence.
The 18 Rwandan soldiers were the only force on the ground Friday to maintain peace in the area, a semiarid desert more than 8,000 square kilometers wide where over 150,000 refugees live among thousands of armed men from a dozen warring factions.
The AU, desperately short on men and material and viewed with increasing suspicion among some of the Sudanese it was sent to protect, says it’s ready to hand over the job to the United Nations.
Sam Ibok, the African Union chief mediator for Darfur, said the 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur did not have the resources to sustain a large-scale operation.
“The AU has always planned to turn over peacekeeping to the UN,” he said in a recent AP interview.
As the U.N. Security Council visited the region and a joint assessment team began to study how to replace the African force with United Nations troops, the sheer lopsidedness between peacekeepers _ barely 50 of them in Zamzam on a good day _ and combatants illustrated the daunting difficulty of ending the chaos in Darfur.
At least 180,000 people have been killed in fighting across this vast region of western Sudan since 2003, when rebels rose against Khartoum, accusing it of neglect. The government is accused of unleashing in response a militia known as the janjaweed, accused of some of the war’s worst atrocities.
“With all the splinter rebel groups, the janjaweed controlled by the Sudanese army and those who act own their own, there is maybe 20 armed factions in this zone,” said Lt. Col. Mohammed Sallam, an Egyptian officer who commands AU military operations in the Zamzam area.
“When you get in an ambush, you know you are being shot at, but you never know by who.”
Unknown militias killed an AU soldier in an ambush last month and seriously wounded several in a separate rocket attack on an AU base. An interpreter also was recently slain _ by the very refugees the African force has come to protect.
In Zamzam, officers say they never leave their small police office without a military escort.
“We’re scared, the situation is completely unpredictable here,” said Lekbaraki Salem, a Mauritanian police officer with the AU. He said he suspected there were hundreds of rifles within the camp, and that combatants from the Sudan Liberation Movement _ the main rebel group _ crossed the lines at night to visit their families.
Most SLM rebels in the area belong to the Zaghawa tribe, as does rebel chief Minni Minnawi, who signed the peace agreement. But most of the refugees in Zamzam belong to the Fur, a large tribe that gave its name to Darfur and mostly follows dissident rebel leader Abdulwahid Elnur _ whose refuses to endorse a peace agreement Minnawi and the government signed May 5.
The treaty has not prevented increased fighting between rival SLM factions to the west and to the north, but tribal leaders in Zamzam said they lived in harmony within the camp.
Friday, Zaghawa and Fur sheiks stood side by side among a growing crowd of followers surrounded by AU peacekeepers. They described similar scenes of waking up one morning to find their villages surrounded by the Sudanese army and bombed by the air force. They said the attacks occurred in September 2005, and that janjaweed auxiliaries had looted all their belongings.
“I used to have 167 sheep, 40 goats and two donkeys,” said Abduzain Hassaballah, the Zagharawa sheik of a village two days’ walk west of Zamzam. “Now I have nothing, except two wives, 13 children, and nothing to feed them.”
The sheiks and their followers said they would be eager to return to their villages if security improves, and hoped to be compensated for their loss. But they didn’t want to discuss the peace agreement, and AU peacekeepers insisted on leaving before the gathering grew hostile.
The peacekeepers said many refugees who support Elnur’s faction blame the AU for the treaty, which they consider unfair.
“We have to explain it better to them,” said Maj. James Mulenga, a Zambian officer with the AU.
While several translators at the El Fasher headquarters close by complained they were under-worked, the AU military patrol Friday did not count a single Fur or Arabic speaker.
When the group crossed a checkpoint manned by the Sudanese army further down the dirt track, an Arabic speaking journalist had to do the translation. The checkpoint, which stands close to both janjaweed and SLM camps, flanks a village that has been abandoned since large-scale fighting erupted in 2003.
Lt. Shahib Daoud, who commanded the dozen men taking refuge from the sun under an improvised wooden shed, said the villagers had left because of the lack of water.
“They go to live in the refugee camps so they can get fed, and later ask for compensation,” the Sudanese army officer said, touring the disemboweled houses.
AU officers said villagers had been bombed by the air force, and that the army prevented them from returning.
“They haven’t even come back to collect the wood,” said Capt. Henry Komond, a Kenyan, pointing to the beams and collapsed thatched roofs that make a valuable commodity in a region where firewood is scarce.
In Zamzam, Hawatilin Hamid said finding wood for cooking was one of her hardest chores. AU soldiers once accompanied women gathering wood, but such patrols were stopped because of the growing hostility of many refugees toward the African force.
Hamid, a 45-year-old widow, said she was so worried about being raped by the janjaweed roaming outside the camp that she used money earned cleaning the house of a richer villager to buy firewood, rather than extra food for her five children.
“We have to survive on the aid rations,” she said. “That’s one kilo of wheat for each of us every month. I don’t know how long we can last.”
(ST/AP)