As it so happens, the saga of the Darfurian UN Peacekeeping force goes on. The mission is again delayed, and the head of the UN Peacekeeping says that it will take this entire year to assemble, with only 9,000 out of 26,000 personnel fully deployed up till now. I keep on talking about it and every day that passes, this half baked abortion of a mission becomes more and more embarrassing. No helicopters, no good equipment, host nation hostile, donor nations not interested, African Union useless, United Nations even more so. Welcome to the new community of nations.
Showing posts sorted by date for query darfur peacekeeping. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query darfur peacekeeping. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Tuesday, January 29
Monday, November 26
More confusion in Darfur, and this time its the rebels and Chinese
Now the rebels do not want the Chinese peacekeepers anywhere near them! This will make the process much more difficult. And as i noted before, the fact that the UN Peacekeeping force still does not have any rapid deployment or heavy equipment (such as APC's, transport and gunship helicopters) means that the coverage of a country the size of western europe with hardly few thousands will be a joke.
Read and wonder!
KHARTOUM - A major Darfur rebel group said yesterday that freshly arrived Chinese peacekeepers were not welcome and would be considered as Khartoum’s allies in Sudan’s war-ravaged western region.
China, which is the biggest buyer of Sudan’s oil, has been accused of shielding Khartoum - accused of fanning the violence in Darfur - from international sanctions.
"Our position is clear, the Chinese are not here for peace and they must leave immediately," Justice and Equality Movement commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Asher told AFP by telephone the day after more than 100 Chinese engineers arrived in Darfur.
"Otherwise, we will consider the Chinese soldiers as part of the government forces and we will act accordingly," said Asher, who is also a brother of JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim.
The Chinese arrived as part of the vanguard of a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission to be in place next year. A total of 315 Chinese engineers are expected in Darfur.
The 26,000-strong force is due to begin peacekeeping operations in Darfur early next year, tasked with ending nearly five years of bloodshed.
The force of mainly Africans will replace an under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000-strong African Union force that has served since 2004.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Read and wonder!
KHARTOUM - A major Darfur rebel group said yesterday that freshly arrived Chinese peacekeepers were not welcome and would be considered as Khartoum’s allies in Sudan’s war-ravaged western region.
China, which is the biggest buyer of Sudan’s oil, has been accused of shielding Khartoum - accused of fanning the violence in Darfur - from international sanctions.
"Our position is clear, the Chinese are not here for peace and they must leave immediately," Justice and Equality Movement commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Asher told AFP by telephone the day after more than 100 Chinese engineers arrived in Darfur.
"Otherwise, we will consider the Chinese soldiers as part of the government forces and we will act accordingly," said Asher, who is also a brother of JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim.
The Chinese arrived as part of the vanguard of a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission to be in place next year. A total of 315 Chinese engineers are expected in Darfur.
The 26,000-strong force is due to begin peacekeeping operations in Darfur early next year, tasked with ending nearly five years of bloodshed.
The force of mainly Africans will replace an under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000-strong African Union force that has served since 2004.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Friday, October 12
More confusion over the Darfur peacekeeping force
Jean Marie Guehenno, UN Under Secretary General for Peace Keeping Operations said that a strengthened UN Darfur peacekeeping force will not really be on the ground till well into next year. There are currently almost 20000 peacekeepers on the ground, 16000 from the AU, and about 4000 from Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal. Sudan is furiously pushing against the inclusion of non-African peacekeepers into the peacekeeping force. For obvious reasons. Keep out the non Africans, and the pathetic under powered and equipped African forces cannot stop the genocide carried out by the Arab Sudanese regime!
Darfur is huge and you need logistics to keep the peace. If you don't have trucks, helicopters, fuel, a supply chain, heavy equipment, armoured personnel carriers, ammunition, etc. etc. what will these extra bodies do?
wave flags and sing "she will be coming down the mountain"? But guess what?
while simple equipment such as trucks and fuel can be arranged by even countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh, to deploy attack and transport helicopters requires a serious commitment from a serious army. And that means one of the western powers. Helicopters are one of the most maintenance intensive pieces of equipment. Closely followed by tracked vehicles. Very finicky and needs loads of maintenance. Look at where Darfur is based. Where is the equipment going to come from? Who will pay for it? If a Mogadishu like situation happens like it did when 10 African peacekeepers were killed recently , who will go in for rescue of these peacekeepers? and how? and from where?
See my previous posts on this half baked abortion of a mission here
Sunday, September 16
If all UN troops for Darfur are coming from Africa, what are Chinese troops doing there?
The Head of the African Union has said that all UN troops in Darfur would be from Africa. I would not like British troops in Darfur at all as I mentioned before but I did say that China should deploy troops as it already has quite a lot of commercial interests in Sudan.
But as an aside, I am not very happy with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown taking a far from healthy interest in Darfur. He is still banging on about it as the BBC reported today in here.
So this report from the People's Daily is quite interesting. And the typo on the word "farms" is perhaps quite revealing. Read and reflect
A Chinese peacekeeping unit will be deployed in Sudan's Darfur region in early October, an official with Ministry of National Defence said on Saturday.
The unit consists of 315 people. They are divided into three engineer platoons, one well sinking platoon and one field hospital, Dai Shao'an, vice director of the peacekeeping affairs office with the ministry, told Xinhua.
On invitation of the UN Security Council, the unit was founded on 13 June in the Jinan Military Command of the People's Liberation Army and has been trained for multi-functional engineering troop.
The unit will fly to join a UN hybrid international peacekeeping force for Darfur.
Their main responsibility is to build roads and bridges and dig wells to prepare for the deployment of the hybrid international forces for Darfur.
The unit has been equipped with 145 vehicles including bulldozers, grabs and other constructing facilities as well as 315 small arms, said the vice director.
The engineers have been provided with necessary training and education of the UN constitutions, international laws and English language to fulfil the peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
Source: Xinhua
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!
Thursday, August 30
The Darfur UN Mission: The Flying Pigs are still circling the genocide.
Remember I was asking where in the name of all that's holy would all those thousands of troops come from, for the Darfur UN mission?
Take a look at this report from the Council of Foreign Relations. The mystery deepens and my original questions still stand. And we keep on having more and more deaths in Darfur. Brilliant, Ban Ki Moon.
Some excerpts
Their jeeps lack (McClatchy) two-way radios, they’ve been forced to borrow soap and food (WashPost) from humanitarian agencies, and some of them haven’t been paid in months. Yet the seven-thousand beleaguered troops currently stationed in Darfur as part of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force are expected to form the backbone of the new joint AU/UN peacekeeping force for Darfur authorized by the UN Security Council in July. The UN resolution authorized a force of roughly twenty-six thousand military personnel and police, but it also specified the force should be primarily African. The AU’s chairman, Alpha Oumar Konare, declared that due to sufficient troop pledges (AP) there will be no need “to resort to non-African forces.”
But many of Africa’s militaries are already stretched “to their limit” (CSMonitor). The challenges encountered by the current AU peacekeepers illustrate “it may not be possible to source from Africa the full range of skills, expertise, and experience required for either the military or the civilian contingent of the hybrid force,” writes watchdog group Human Rights Watch. Many African countries do not have (Reuters) the capacity to equip their troops to the level required by the UN peacekeeping department. Army engineers, intelligence-gatherers, and transport helicopters are necessary to make the Darfur force effective. These capabilities are not just lacking among African Union peacekeepers, reports the Economist, they are also in short supply worldwide.
Do read the full report, 1 page most. Quite worrying actually.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
Take a look at this report from the Council of Foreign Relations. The mystery deepens and my original questions still stand. And we keep on having more and more deaths in Darfur. Brilliant, Ban Ki Moon.
Some excerpts
Their jeeps lack (McClatchy) two-way radios, they’ve been forced to borrow soap and food (WashPost) from humanitarian agencies, and some of them haven’t been paid in months. Yet the seven-thousand beleaguered troops currently stationed in Darfur as part of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force are expected to form the backbone of the new joint AU/UN peacekeeping force for Darfur authorized by the UN Security Council in July. The UN resolution authorized a force of roughly twenty-six thousand military personnel and police, but it also specified the force should be primarily African. The AU’s chairman, Alpha Oumar Konare, declared that due to sufficient troop pledges (AP) there will be no need “to resort to non-African forces.”
But many of Africa’s militaries are already stretched “to their limit” (CSMonitor). The challenges encountered by the current AU peacekeepers illustrate “it may not be possible to source from Africa the full range of skills, expertise, and experience required for either the military or the civilian contingent of the hybrid force,” writes watchdog group Human Rights Watch. Many African countries do not have (Reuters) the capacity to equip their troops to the level required by the UN peacekeeping department. Army engineers, intelligence-gatherers, and transport helicopters are necessary to make the Darfur force effective. These capabilities are not just lacking among African Union peacekeepers, reports the Economist, they are also in short supply worldwide.
Do read the full report, 1 page most. Quite worrying actually.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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