African protection force on way to Darfur

A contingent of Rwandan troops is heading to Darfur this weekend – the first foreign soldiers to deploy in western Sudan, where thousands of people have been killed in violence some are calling a genocide.

Their main mission is to protect the 80 African Union observers already in the country, but with a somewhat vague mandate and continued Arab militia attacks on black African farmers, the Rwandans could easily find themselves defending civilians too – and drawn into the conflict.

The deployment comes amid intense international and regional efforts to end the crisis in Darfur, which has forced more than a million black Africans from their homes and left some 2.2 million in urgent need of food and other aid.

Yesterday, Sudan announced that President Omar el-Bashir a day earlier had ordered tribal leaders to form security forces to disarm the Arab militiamen blamed for killing 30,000 people in Darfur during an 18-month conflict. The decision was announced following two days of talks in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum between Sudanese officials and Darfur tribal chiefs.

But human rights groups and aid workers say earlier Sudanese pledges to improve security in Darfur have not yet been fulfilled and attacks on civilians continue unabated.

The 154 Rwandans depart Sunday for al-Fasher, Darfur’s main city, armed with an AU mandate “filled with creative ambiguity,” said David Mozersky, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “How proactive (the soldiers) will be about protecting civilians is entirely up in the air.”

It is a major test for the African Union, which was established two years ago to replace the Organisation of African Unity, which over the years had failed to intervene effectively in Africa’s myriad wars and insurrections.

To a certain extent, the uncertainties surrounding the current effort are typical of peacekeeping missions established in situations where there is no peace – reminiscent, for example, of such limited successes as the United Nations missions in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Bosnia and Rwanda itself in the early 1990s.

While the mandate is to protect the AU observers, Desmond Orjiako, a spokesman for the organisation, said: ”I’m not saying they cannot defend civilians.” He did not elaborate.

Rwandan army spokesman Col Patrick Karegeya said the troops would defend civilians if they were attacked. “But it’s not that they are going out to hunt for,” he added.

Sudanese officials – who stand accused of supporting the amorphous and violent Arab militia known as the Janjaweed – have not welcomed any notion of foreign troops coming in to protect civilians in Darfur, an expanse of desert roughly the size of Iraq.

Last month the Sudanese gave in to pressure from African leaders and allowed the protection force. But they appear to be dragging their feet on whether the AU can send in a fully-fledged peacekeeping force for civilians. And when the idea of Western intervention was recently floated, the Sudanese scotched the suggestion, saying they would forcibly resist such a move.

Darfur’s troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and their African farming neighbours over dwindling water and agricultural land. Those tensions exploded into violence in February 2003 when two African rebel groups took up arms over what they regarded as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen.

The Janjaweed’s actions – which have killed tens of thousands and caused the expulsion of perhaps a million – amount to a massive retaliation.