Malawi to deploy 50 police officers to Darfur

January 4, 2008 (BLANTYRE) — Malawi is to deploy about 50 police officers to Sudan’s Darfur as part of its contribution to the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission, the country’s police chief said on Friday.

“In our efforts on capacity building, 50 police officers are ready for deployment to Darfur in Sudan,” Oliver Kumbambe, inspector general of the Malawi police, said in a statement.

The southern African nation, which has 6 500 police officers, has not given details on exactly when it would deploy the police force.

This will be Malawi’s largest police contingent on a peacekeeping mission. Twenty-seven Malawi police officers are currently in Liberia and two are in Kosovo. Malawi last year pledged to send 800 troops to Darfur to serve in the peacekeeping force.

According to conservative estimates, Malawi has about 10 000 troops.

At least 200,000 people have died and more than two million have fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan’s Arab-dominated regime in February 2003, according to the UN figures, disputed by Khartoum.

The Darfur mission, the UN’s largest, will eventually consist of 20 000 troops and 6 000 police and civilian personnel, but only around
9 000 troops and police are currently in place.

The force, which has a budget of 1,2 billion dollars for 2008, still needs 24 helicopters to patrol an area the size of France.

Troops currently on the ground are mainly Rwandan, South African, Nigerian and Senegalese, accompanied by Kenyans, Gambians and a Chinese engineering corps as well as 1 000 police from more than 25 countries.

Additional soldiers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Pakistan and police from Nepal will deploy in the next two months.

(AFP)