The organization's success and failure will be measured, in part, by how the African Union responds to incidents like the one in Tawila and whether it can prevent others like it in the future. For now, its troop strength in Sudan, which may take until February or later to reach its full level of 3,400 peacekeepers, is grossly insufficient to deploy full-time to every fractious, violence-prone town like Tawila.
Privately, diplomats in Sudan have long worried that deploying so few troops would be a recipe for failure. Last week, in the days following the violence in Tawila, the UN's top envoy, Jan Pronk, suggested expanding the African Union force to more than twice the present number.
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