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Sudan threatens delaying UN-AU force deployment in Darfur

September 26, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — The deployment of the UN-AU force in Darfur would be delayed because of differences over nationalities of the troops, a Sudanese official said.

Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem
Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem
Sudan’s UN Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem told the Inner City Press newspaper published in New York that the UN Department of Peacekeeping (DPK) has been rejecting offers of African troops.

Last Friday UN chief Ban Ki-moon opened a one-day ministerial in New York with the African Union (AU) to discuss a roadmap for ending the Darfur crisis. One of the items discussed was speeding the deployment of Un-AU hybrid force in Darfur.

However the UN & the AU were deadlocked over the nationalities of the troops that were offered. The AU and the Sudanese government rejected non-African forces saying that the continent has offered more than enough forces.

But the UN contends that not all of the African forces offered meet the UN standards.

Ambassador Abdelhaleem said that UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno has most recently rejected 3,000 Egyptian soldiers offered by Cairo last week. However he did not elaborate on the reasons behind Guehenno’s decision.

The Sudanese diplomat hinted that his government is not prepared to accept non-African forces

African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has issued a warning last Friday to Western nations saying that “financing is important, but it does not authorize’ intervention”.

But U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad appeared to be challenging Konare’s statements last week by saying that UN members are picking the tab on the hybrid force which means that non-African troops must be included.

“The African Union secretariat needs to move” he stressed.

The UN and the AU missed the August 30 deadline mandated by resolution 1769 to finalize the contributing nations to the UN-AU force.

More than 200 000 people have been killed and some 2.5 million displaced in the four-year conflict in Darfur, an area the size of France

(ST)

1 Comment

  • Charles Anteros
    Charles Anteros

    Sudan threatens delaying UN-AU force deployment in Darfur
    UN: The Ambivalences and inconsistencies on Darfur

    If there are any institutions that lack the moral authority and ethical responsibility, it is the UN and the AU. Only the UN, the AU together with the Sudan government can rise to defend anarchy and war in exchange for stability, honor, integrity, truth and justice. It is only the UN, the AU along with the Sudanese authorities that can stand with inseparable arrogance in order to allow calamity to permeate humanity. The some-what insipid participation of the UN and the AU in Sudan’s troubled Darfur have engendered suspicions and dislike towards the unions, or the Unholy Trinity.

    Like the UN’s counterpart, the AU pursues consciously or unconsciously unrecognized and often dimly perceived policies for DarFur. The AU’s aims and goals have been somewhat candidly in conflict with popular expectations of Africans, and indeed, it has no harmony with the policies of its own member states. True, like the UN, the AU has been assailed as a relic of ideology and without substance. For many in Sudan and Darfur in particular, the AU projects an institution that has no purpose to serve Africa. The disturbing paucity of aims and efficacy of the UN/AU reveal disconcerting unreliable techniques and measures upon which these unions failed to deal with wider range of complex issues in Africa, and particularly DarFur, thus questioning the destiny of the UN/AU.
    Perturbing or not, like Somalia, the UN had trouble resolving Darfur’s crises. From relief efforts in Somalia in the period between 1992 to1993, the UN as may be an arbiter, found itself complicated in the war with the Somalis. The UN created honest dislike for its role in the Somalia crises, especially with specific ethnic components of Somalia. Instead of spending the UN’s money on food security in Somalia, the UN found itself squandering millions of dollars on its troop protection against the Somalis. Those years have seen the UN embarked on a military occupation of Somalia while attempting to fully disarm the population, with the intent of establishing its own desired style central government in Somalia. In the present case in Darfur, Negroponte recently remarked that if Darfur’s rebel groups refused to participate in the forthcoming peace talks scheduled next month in Libya, it should be met with a price. This point of view departs from the noble actions expected of the UN. Like Somalia, the UN is nearing war with the people of Darfur who will find themselves fighting both the Sudanese government and the UN and may be the AU too. True or not, sanctions will lead to full military assistance to the arrogant Sudanese leaders with the full occupation of Darfur by the UN.
    The AU/UN inclination towards a political diplomacy with Khartoum in a way paints a bleak picture of empathy towards the DarFurians. This perilous drama deviates from an optimistically formed and a well planned peace keeping operation that can intervene promptly to ensure stability exists for the people of DarFur. The security and threat perception that are currently overwhelming the DarFurians require a paramount political instrument that wins the mind of both rebels and civilians in DarFur.

    Sadly, Sudan government is more likely to support sanctions against Darfur rebels than enter into negotiations that settle political agitations with Darfur. Frankly, what does the Sudanese government have to lose if war simply increases its power to amass resources from these trouble areas like it deed when South Sudan was deeply involved in the civil war? Since they feel disenfranchised and cheated, some people in Darfur have begun a low-intensity civil war aimed at establishing an independent Darfur and it could become a major and politically organized war that can last long just as the South Sudanese civil war. These people have lived along traditional lines with no education, hospitals and infrastructures for quite a long time. Thus, any policies to be performed by the UN/AU must foster the decision of the people of Darfur, otherwise, like Somalia; the UN/AU will fail. The AU does not have resources and the UN does not have the political capacity to settle the problem of Darfur. Both are caught up in ambivalence and inconsistencies.

    If a country like Egypt supports Sudan government’s position on peace mission in Darfur and then sends over 2000 soldiers as peace keepers, would this not be termed as an indecent proposition? This is a systemic failure because the largely contributed forces required for peace keeping in Darfur can become absolutely ineffectual, emblematic and easily manipulated by Sudan’s ruling elite. As corny as they are, the Egyptians have left a formidable hate in the minds and hearts of the people of Darfur. Historically, Egypt instituted the current elite system to act as its prefect on the Nile and on Sudan’s political history. Even then, it was last year in December that the Egyptians launched a relentless attack against the Sudanese refugees who are predominantly from Darfur, killing over 200 women and children.

    To underscore my point, it should be recalled that over the years and through out the course of this year, Sudan government has not been in compliance with numerous agreements including several resolutions with the international community on the issues pertaining to Darfur, leave alone the issue on CPA. Eminent in its strong defiance to the International Community, Nafi Ali Nafi, the strong man in the security apparatus of Sudan has self appointed himself as Darfur’s charge de affairs. This means Nafi al “MaNafi” wants to be DarFur’s night mare.

    The NCP has entrusted the issue of DarFur to Nafi because he can best exercise repression and state organized violence on the indigenous peoples of DarFur. For, Nafi is indeed the mastermind of the government-supported torture systems introduced in South Sudan, (known as The White House and in Khartoum as Ghost House). Better known as the Nazi Professor, he is the one directly responsible for bringing the disgusting torture systems, such as sodomizing suspects and raping women, experimented in South Sudan. He is directly responsible for the atrocities in Darfur. Most important in Nafi’s portfolio is, the key security apparatus of the National Islamic Front (NCP).

    In the early 90s, Nafi Ali Nafi, together with Salah Gosh (Ghost) became people in control of the military intelligence in the Sudan. Nafi personally played significant role in organizing Sudan’s security forces that planned and trained militias, SSDF (South Sudanese Defense Forces) for the purpose of fighting the SPLA, former armed revolutionary group based in South Sudan. . He also took part in arrests and tortures of Sudanese Christian clergy in Khartoum, El Obeyed, Juba and Wau.

    How serious the UN/A will deal with international pleas on the issue of DarFur, can be measured by its success. One example is the inextricably profound dichotomy between the UN/AU’s and NATO’s interventions in genocidal wars. During the Bosnian/Serbian war, NATO led a Stabilization Force (SFOR) with successful conclusion and provided a safe and secure environment for implementation of the Dayton Accords. Best in its mission was the desire to achieve compliance from Milosevic. The failure of the UN/AU to stop the Janjaweed and the SAF attacks on civilians would create heavy lasting effects to Sudan’s longevity. Of course, this is not a new thinking on the security requirement for DarFur, but it lies heavily on such people as Negroponte and Oumar, who are heads of the UN and the AU, who now seemed to have enclosed the people of DarFur in a sterile anguish so that in their empty subjectivity they now have to become so incapable of furnishing themselves with any principle for making choices much less their survival.

    Finally, I recall the words of Edmond Burke that, “Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.”

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