The Darfur peace talk still hangs in the balance. The four-year conflict in western Sudan still remains to be solved and with the rising strength of the insurgents, the incumbent task of excavating any solution from anywhere is proving to be a herculean job. The African Union is lost in digging out any solution and so is the United Nations. To make matters worse, both these bodies are at loggerheads and threading a path through the crisis is looking more and more like a failed objective.
The Sudanese government has been proved incapable of coming up with any ideas of solving the four year conflict between the Janjaweed militias and rebel groups (the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement); instead of welcoming the AU and the UN, it is resisting the deployment of more troops.
In a high level meeting convened by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare on Friday, Sudan refused to allow non-African troops into the troubled far western region and insist that there are enough AU forces to be deployed in the region. Senior dignities from at least 26 countries were at the meeting but Sudan’s objections meant that all had to return home scratching their heads.
More than 26,000 AU and UN troops are due to be deployed in Darfur by early next year in an attempt to bring an end to the four-year conflict. Sudan agreed to this deal on the condition that the troops should be predominately African. But now it’s been revealed that all African troops do not meet the required standards to tackle the violence in Darfur and this means that armed forces from outside the continent have to be imported. And this is what Sudan is strongly in disfavour of.
The reason for this disinclination to embrace UN forces by Sudan is anyone’s guess. Possibly the Sudanese government doesn’t want its region to be infiltrated by the United Nations. It’s been reported that the Sudanese government provides money and assistance to the Janjaweed militia and has also helped the militia during attacks on the opposition rebel tribes. The Sudanese government knows that with UN forces in the region, the cat will come out of the bag and this is exactly what it fears.
UN peacekeeping forces already deployed in the volatile region had had to confront a plethora of problems, including attacks on them and limited access to land and water. The UN itself is dissatisfied with the treatment that its peacekeeping forces get from the Sudanese government and just ahead of the meeting, two World Vision aid workers were shot in the head, and a third was shot in the shoulder on Thursday during a carjacking incident in southern Darfur.
The Libya peace talks on the Darfur crisis is going to be held in October this year but with the solution about the deployment of troops still to be resolved, it’s hard to imagine any positive result erupting out of that discussion. Under such hostile conditions, it’s hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Image Source: IRW
Source: BBC, Washington Post
