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Darfur: colonised by 'peacekeepers'
The new 26,000-strong UN force being sent to the war-torn western province of Sudan is likely to stir up further tensions rather than deliver peace.
Philip Cunliffe
The United Nations (UN) Security Council yesterday passed resolution 1769. It establishes another peacekeeping mission in Sudan, UNAMID, for Sudan's war-torn western province of Darfur. With a total authorised strength of 26,000, UNAMID is expected to be the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world by next year. What's more, UNAMID peacekeepers will deploy under the terms of 'Chapter VII' of the UN Charter, which legally entitles them to use force beyond self-defence. In other words, this will not be a neutral, monitoring contingent, but a militarised force and de facto protagonist in Darfur's conflict. The creation of UNAMID comes on top of the two other peacekeeping missions already in Sudan: the 7,000-strong African Union force deployed in Darfur, and the 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force policing a ceasefire in south Sudan since 2005 (UNMIS). In June this year, the European Union also began planning its own 3,000-strong peacekeeping operation to police the border between Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic. Further south, Africa is already host to the world's largest UN peacekeeping operation, the 18,000-strong MONUC operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are some further 36,000-odd UN peacekeepers scattered across the continent (see the table below). In light of all these multinational forces descending on Sudan and already stationed across Africa, it is unsurprising that some analysts have pointedly asked whether Africa is in the process of being 're-colonised' by the UN (1). The reality is more complex, however, though no less disturbing.
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