Khartoum, December 30: Darfur remains volatile despite improvements, with the causes of its six-year conflict still at play, the commander of UN-African Union peacekeepers in the western Sudanese region said Tuesday.
“Of course the security situation is better than it was two or three years ago, in terms of clashes between factions,” Lieutenant General Patrick Nyamvumba, head of the UNAMID force since September, said.
“But the absence of armed clashes between the government and a number of groups does not mean there is prevalent security.
“Now we have other forms of insecurity. We have kidnappings, we have carjackings, we have robbery, we have tribal clashes, so the situation, much as it has improved, still remains volatile,” said Nyamvumba.
“There’s absolutely no guarantee that the situation will not get worse, because the factors that caused the conflict, as far as I’m concerned, still exist.”
UNAMID has been a target of several attacks this year. Five peacekeepers with the force were killed within two days in December. In August, two of its civilian staff were kidnapped and kept in captivity for 107 days.
Nyamvumba said “the focus should be more on getting a political process” moving, and on attempts to get the different factions back to the negotiating table, “which seems to be the biggest challenge now.”
“There’s a lot of work to be done to bring normalcy to Darfur,” added Nyamvumba, who was formerly chief of logistics of the Rwandan Defence Forces.
His predecessor Martin Luther Agwai said Darfur was no longer a theatre of war but more of a “low-intensity conflict,” echoing remarks by the former head of the mission Rodolphe Adada.
Nyamvumba said broadening the peace process would faciliate UNAMID’s job.
A Darfur peace agreement was signed in May 2006 between Khartoum and only one Darfur rebel movement.
“We have so many players in the context of Darfur… so it becomes difficult for us to engage those outside of the political process, to make them accountable,” he said.
“If you get obstructions from them in the execution of your mandate, you really don’t have anything to hold them accountable to, that makes it difficult to execute our mandate,” he continued.
Another obstacle is the lack of equipment, particularly military helicopters.
Two years after its deployment, the peacekeeping force is still missing crucial helicopters needed in case of attack and for night patrols in the arid Darfur region where “in some areas, 70 kilometres (43 miles) can take three, four hours to cover.”
“We’re expecting five helicopters from Ethiopia, we’ll probably have them next month. But it’s still far below what we expect,” he said, adding the force needs a minimum of 18 helicopters.
Today, 77 percent of the 19,500 military personnel has been deployed and Nyamvumba said he hopes this figure will increase to 85 percent by March. Sixty percent of the police force is on the ground.
UNAMID is the UN’s largest mission, with 26,000 troops and police officers expected when full deployment is complete.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum and its allies.
Over the last six years, the rebels have fractured into multiple movements, fraying rebel groups, banditry, flip-flopping militias and the war has widened into overlapping tribal conflicts.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease and more than 2.7 million fled their homes.
Many of the rebels enjoy direct and indirect foreign support that helped fuel the conflict, with some critics pointing the finger at France, which has a military presence in neighbouring Chad – also accused of arming the Sudanese rebels.
Meanwhile, the United States on Tuesday welcomed efforts by Sudan and Chad to normalize ties, underlining how such moves would also help bring peace to Sudan’s conflict-torn western Darfur region.
In Khartoum, Sudan and Chad agreed at high-level talks last week to meet again to take steps to stop cross-border rebel attacks from each side, Sudanese presidential adviser Ghaze Salaheddin told official media on Friday.
—Agencies