KEY POINTS:
Almost six months after the United Nations started its largest, most expensive and most hyped peacekeeping mission, promising to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, the operation is failing to protect the people it was sent to save.
Only one-third of the military personnel and one-quarter of the police have been deployed in what was billed as the biggest and most important mission in the UN's 60-year history. It now threatens to become its most catastrophic failure.
There's no equipment and peacekeepers have had to paint their helmets blue, or put blue plastic bags over them.
To cap it all, the force commander, General Martin Luther Agwai, considered quitting because "I thought the world didn't care about us".
Only after reading a self-help book, Stop Worrying and Start Living, did he decide to stay.
Not a single additional soldier has arrived since the joint UN and African Union mission was born at the start of the year to help protect seven million Darfuris in Sudan's western province from militia and rebel attacks, and banditry. It took over from the under-resourced and under-funded AU predecessor, Amis.
"At the moment we are Amis with blue helmets," said General Agwai.
But even the helmets are not new. Most soldiers had to paint their green helmets blue. Helicopters and new armoured personnel carriers have not arrived. The vehicles inherited from Amis are falling apart - and most still bear the legend "Amis".
Among civilian staff are splits between the AU officials and the new UN ones. The UN staff are described as "arrogant" and "superior", by AU officials; the UN recruits in turn accuse some AU staff of "laziness" and "incompetence". "They play solitaire all day and have a nap in the afternoon," said one UN appointee.
The Unamid officials' frustration is palpable. "We don't have the manpower to guard all these camps across Darfur," said Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed al-Masri. "Unamid can't do anything, only observe."
But there is also a growing anger towards the international community - namely the United States, Britain and France - for not backing up their words with action. "Unamid is not the problem," insisted Henry Anyidoho, the deputy political head of the mission. "The problem is the failure of the international community to give Unamid the equipment it needs to do its job. They expect too much, too quickly - even though they are not providing the means."
New battalions are expected. Publicly, the force remains hopeful the full 26,000 military personnel and police officers will be deployed by this time next year. Privately, some admit it may never reach full deployment.
- INDEPENDENT
