Sudan may agree to U.N. peacekeeping deal in Darfur

November 17, 2006

There’s some promising news coming out of Khartoum, according to the BBC:

Sudan has agreed in principle to allow a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force into Darfur, UN chief Kofi Annan has said.

Khartoum has previously refused a UN presence in Darfur. The plan envisages strengthening AU peacekeepers, leading to a hybrid force with UN troops.

But with at least 200,000 dead in three years and violence continuing throughout Darfur and in neighbouring Chad, would even the existence of such a force make a difference? One is skeptical.

As I put it ther other day in response to news of yet more killing: There are presently about 7,000 A.U. peacekeepers in Darfur. They “have failed to end the violence” [according to another recent BBC piece], as if they had any chance of doing so. “The UN Security Council has passed a resolution for 20,000 troops to be sent to Darfur but Sudan has refused to let the UN take control, saying that would infringe its sovereignty.” Sovereignty comes before genocide, it seems, according to the rules of this morally backwards game. But even if U.N. peacekeepers were to take over in Darfur, would it matter? Would the genocide stop?

Likely not. Until there is a commitment from the international community — and from the U.S. and its allies above all — far greater than the U.N. can muster, until the international community stops putting the principle of sovereignty before the far nobler goal of putting an end to genocide, until we all start taking the situation in Darfur much more seriously than we do now, the killing in that distant and neglected land will continue.

November 17, 2006 at 10:57 am

So true, Michael. Most wars have collateral damage, but this whole ‘war’ is collateral damage. It’s a war on poverty in its most bizarro sense of warring on the poor.

Frankly, I don’t think this so-called agreement amounts to much.

Buried beneath all the articles about the agreement are other articles that show just how meaningless Khartoum’s commitment actually is.

At the time Annan was announcing the agreement, Sudanese Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein was saying “Darfur will be the invaders’ graveyard.”

And at the same time, the government was blocking Jan Egeland attempts to visit the region.

And, on top of that, Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol is now insisting that the accord “does not mean UN peacekeepers will join African Union troops in a joint force in Darfur, saying it entailed the provision of only UN technical assistance.”

The key question here is not so much how provides the troops or how many there will be, but what sort of mandate will they operate under.

Khartoum is insisting that any new force be headed by the AU, which would keep the AU mandate in place. Any UN force would operate under the much more robust mandate set out by the Security Council in Resolution 1706.

The limited AU mandate is the primary problem right now because it makes them unable to protect civilians or disarm belligerents – which is exactly what Khartoum wants.

Rolling the UN forced into the AU keeps the AU mandate in place, whereas rolling the AU into the UN puts the UN mandate in place. And that is why Khartoum is dead set against any UN force.

Sending 20,000 troops to the region will be useful, but unless they have the proper mandate, it is just an shameful exercise in global face-saving.

I was glad to see that Speaker Pelosi responded to the Save Darfur Coalition, and brought Darfur up as a subject during her lunch with Bush. I hope the political will sustains…

Great points, Eugene. I agree that not much is likely to come of this. Khartoum seems to be buying more time. All the more reason not to wait for Sudan’s approval before acting.

And I do hope Pelosi and the Dems are able to work with Bush on this. There is some effort on the right — from Brownback mainly — to intervene in Darfur.

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