CNS STORY: U.N. force in Darfur must protect civilians, church worker says

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DARFUR-UN Aug-8-2007 (740 words) With photos posted July 31 and Aug. 8. xxxi

U.N. force in Darfur must protect civilians, church worker says

By Paul Jeffrey
Catholic News Service

NYALA, Sudan (CNS) -- The decision by the United Nations to send peacekeeping troops to the Darfur region of Sudan will fail to put an end to years of bloodshed unless the peacekeepers come with a clear mandate to protect civilians, said an official of an ecumenical relief effort in Nyala.

After seven months of negotiations with the Sudanese government, the U.N. Security Council voted July 31 to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur. They will not all arrive until sometime next year, provided the U.N. can come up with the troops and the estimated $2 billion needed to deploy them. The U.N. soldiers and police will absorb a beleaguered African Union contingent of 7,000 troops that has failed to stop what many -- including the U.S. Congress -- consider genocide.

Yet Adam Ateem, director of peace-building and protection activities for the ecumenical Darfur Emergency Response Operation, told Catholic News Service that the U.N. force will fail unless it learns a lesson from the African Union's experience.

"The A.U. force had a very vulnerable mandate. They could monitor and report only. The militias and the rebels and the government knew this, and they could do whatever they wanted," Ateem said. "If the U.N. force comes with a weak mandate, they won't be able to do anything. If they're coming to keep the peace, they have to be able to protect civilians, especially the IDPs (internally displaced persons) ... if they choose to return to their villages. Without a clear mandate to do that, they'll fail, just as the A.U. has failed."

As many as 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 when the government responded to a growing insurgency in the region by arming Arab militias to attack African farming villages that supported the rebels. Often with direct support from the Sudanese military, the militias -- known as Janjaweed, or "devils on horseback" -- attacked and burned hundreds of African villages, driving more than 2 million people from their homes into crowded camps inside Darfur and across the border in neighboring Chad.

The African Union force was deployed in 2004 in an attempt to stop the violence, but its limited mandate under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter turned its members into mostly passive observers.

"They did nothing but became a target, and their soldiers began to get killed and their vehicles hijacked. They've been useless," said Ateem, an attorney originally from North Darfur.

The newly approved U.N. peacekeepers will operate under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which grants them the right to use force to protect civilians. Yet they will have no authority to seize weapons from belligerents, nor is there any provision for sanctioning the Sudanese government if it continues its noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"The Security Council has passed lots of resolutions, but the government of Sudan ignores them. The international community tries to be flexible, but the government of Sudan takes advantage of that," Ateem said. "It's good the U.N. troops are coming here, but the international community must play a stronger role if we're going to end this crisis."

The U.N. force will only have a peace to keep if the parties to the conflict can agree to a cease-fire and subsequent peace. A 2006 peace deal, pushed through at the last minute after intense pressure from the U.S. government, called for disarming the Arab militias, something the Sudanese government has failed to do. Only one rebel faction agreed to the peace deal, and its leader now has little following. The other rebel groups have splintered into more than a dozen different factions.

A unity summit of the rebels took place in Arusha, Tanzania, in early August, but Abdel Wahid Nur, a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the most popular of the rebel chieftains, refused to attend. Those who did show up called on the government to engage in "final" peace talks within two or three months.

Even if the rebels can unite and successfully negotiate a new deal with the government, Ateem said, that will not be enough.

"A peace agreement between the government and the rebels is not real peace; it's simply political peace," he said. "We have to build social peace on the ground. The signing itself can give us extra energy to promote real social peace on the ground between tribes and between communities."

END

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