UN to convene a meeting on helicopters shortage for Darfur force
December 28, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — Peacekeeping troops in the Darfur region of Sudan may obtain helicopters with help from the U.K. as the United Nations and African Union prepare to take joint command of the force.
The U.K. mission to the UN will convene a meeting of nations sending troops to Darfur to coordinate proposals for getting helicopters, British envoy Michael Hoare said yesterday. The UN is considering offers that don’t include pilots or maintenance crews, and ideas for purchasing helicopters from private contractors, none of which would fulfill mission requirements.
The UN flag will be raised at the mission’s headquarters in El Fasher on Dec. 31, and African troops that have been in Darfur since 2004 will switch to the blue berets of the UN. Little else will change immediately, UN officials said, in part because the force lacks the 24 helicopters needed to patrol an area the size of France.
“The hard-nosed reality is that in the early phases of this mission it will be enormously difficult, and we are taking serious risks by going with what we have,” Michael Gaouette, the UN official in charge of managing deployment, said in an interview. “We are not as far along as we wanted to be.”
Gradual Deployment
There will be about 9,000 AU and UN troops in Darfur when Nigerian General Martin Agwai officially takes command of the mission, known as Unamid. Gaouette said it might be March before another 2,500 troops arrive and the force starts to “think and act differently.” Patrols outside almost 40 camps will increase, along with interaction with refugee camps, Sudanese government officials and aid workers, he said.
The joint mission, created by a Security Council resolution adopted on July 31, aims to end a conflict in Darfur that has forced more than 2.5 million people from their homes, some into neighboring Chad, and caused the deaths of at least 200,000 since February 2003. The goal is to get 26,000 soldiers and civilian police on the ground by the end of 2008.
The UN has been waiting since October for the Sudanese government to accept some proposed troops, including units from Nepal and Thailand and engineers from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The transfer of command also probably will occur without final agreement on issues such as government clearance for night flights.
No `Miracles’
“There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical and concerned,” Philippe de Pontet, an African analyst for the Eurasia Group, a New York-based firm that does political risk- analysis for businesses, said in an interview. “Don’t expect any overnight miracles or major improvements in the situation. The hope is that over the course of the year they will be able to get the troops needed for a robust force.”
De Pontet said the UN also should be concerned by increased rebel attacks on oil fields just outside of Darfur, including operations run by China, a major buyer of Sudanese oil. The Justice and Equality Movement said on Dec. 11 that it attacked an oil field, partly owned by a Chinese state-run company, in Kordofan state.
A Chinese engineering unit was one of the most recent to arrive in Darfur as part of Unamid.
“The rebels associate China and Chinese oil companies with the government in Khartoum,” de Pontet said. “These attacks are very calculated move on their part that makes an already complicated situation even worse.”
(Bloomberg)