Wednesday, October 29, 2008

ABC Foreign Correspondent 28/10/08: UNAMID in Darfur

Watch it here.

Update:
More news from Darfur.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Four Chinese men kidnapped in Sudan were killed in a failed rescue attempt, Chinese officials said on Tuesday, but Beijing said it would continue investing in the volatile, oil-producing African country.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry had said the men died "without any provocation" and did not mention a rescue attempt. There was also some confusion over the number killed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They did mention that UNAMID is undermanned. This is due to a failure on the part of the UN and the AU to source enough troops for the "Blue Helmet" roles, and more significantly, obstruction from the Sudanese Government. Several contributing nations, often Western/Anglosphere contingents, have experienced significant delays and outright obstructionist behaviour from Khartoum.

The planned indictment of Al Bashir by the ICC has certainly not helped. It is indicative of the culture of the UN that the two organisations, the ICC and the DPKO, are hindering each other. Well, more to the point, the actions of the ICC are hindering the DPKO. In their zeal to be seen to be "doing something" the ICC are endangering both the mission of UNAMID by creating a reluctance on the part of Khartoum to accept the numbers of foreign troops required to achieve it, and the safety of the personnel currently in-country by making them potential targets for the SAF.

If the ICC had held off until UNAMID was sufficiently manned to establish a dominance in Darfur, the Sudanese Government would have had less power to both prevent the indictment, and to hinder UNAMID in the achivement of the mandate.