Rwandan troops to begin deploying in western Sudan
By ARTHUR ASIIMWE, Associated Press Writer
KIGALI, Rwanda, Aug 11, 2004 (AP) — Rwanda will begin sending dozens of troops to Sudan’s western region of Darfur on Sunday, becoming the first foreign force deployed to protect black African farmers from Arab militiamen, a defense spokesman said.
The Netherlands will airlift 154 Rwandan soldiers to al-Fasher, the capital of northern Darfur state. From there they will be sent to other parts of the troubled region, said Col. Patrick Karegeya, spokesman for the Rwandan Defense Forces.
The troops originally were intended to protect unarmed African Union military observers monitoring the shaky cease-fire between Sudanese government troops and rebel factions in the region the size of Iraq, Karegeya said Tuesday.
However, their mandate recently was amended to allow the 15 Rwandan officers and 139 troops “to protect the civilians when it is established that they are in danger,” Karegeya told The Associated Press.
The troops are part of a 300-strong African force Sudan was pressed to allow into Darfur, where thousands have been killed, more than a million forced from their homes and some 2.2 million are in urgent need of aid, according to the United Nations, which called Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
It was not immediately clear when Nigerian troops would be sent to Darfur as part of the force.
Rwanda has been pushing African leaders to give the troops the mandate to use force to stop attacks on civilians and other vulnerable groups, but not to intervene in the conflict in Darfur, Rwandan officials said in July.
“We wouldn’t want to go there as soldiers and find ourselves helpless,” Karegeya said in July. “Rwanda is taking this position after learning from the bitter experience of the 1994 genocide.”
He was referring to the United Nations force in Rwanda that watched the 100-day genocide unfold because it did not have the mandate to stop the slaughter of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority.
Rwanda did not want to take a helpless force to Darfur, Rwandan officials said.
The deployment of the first foreign force to Darfur “gives us a new image because Rwanda has for long been associated with wars and has now, for the first time, gone an extra step in peacekeeping operation,” Karegeya said Tuesday.
The African Union said it plans to boost the number of troops to Darfur to between 1,600 and 1,800.
However, Sudan is reluctant to allow the larger force to deploy in Darfur.