New Darfur force commander voices optimism

July 5, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Bringing peace to Darfur will not be easy but a joint U.N.-African Union force should be much more effective than the AU peacekeepers currently struggling to hold the ring, the new force commander said on Thursday.

Martin Luther Agwai said it would be difficult for Africa to provide 20,000 troops and police for the joint force, but it would be up to the task of protecting the 2.5 million Darfuris driven from their homes by the conflict.

“It’s a first experiment but I’m so optimistic and confident that if there is a will there is a way,” he told reporters.

“Definitely the new hybrid force once in place will be able to do things three times better than what the current African Union troops would be doing.”

In its first major venture into peacekeeping, the AU sent around 7,000 troops and police to Darfur in 2004. But facing funding problems and repeated attacks, the inexperienced mission has failed to stem the violence.

Khartoum opposed a U.N. takeover of the AU force, but under the threat of sanctions it accepted a compromise AU-U.N. mission.

Agwai, a Nigerian who was deputy force commander of a U.N. mission in Sierra Leone and the deputy military adviser at U.N. headquarters in New York, has few illusions about his new command.

“It’s going to be a big task and sometimes I become scared that… the whole eyes of the world are on one, believing that one can work some magic,” said Agwai, who had initially declined the post.

“But that also gives me some encouragement because that means the whole world will be around to support me.”

International experts estimate 200,000 have been killed in more than four years of rape, murder and disease in Sudan’s west. Washington calls the violence genocide, and blames the government and its allied militia.

Khartoum rejects the term and says only 9,000 have been killed.

Agwai, a former Nigerian chief of defense staff, said that while Africa would try to muster as many troops as possible, some may have to come from the U.N. system in order to bring the force up to full strength.

“It’s going to be very difficult to have purely African troops up to that strength … if the Africans cannot reach that target then the United Nations may have to go outside Africa to get the balance.”

(Reuters)