The UN Security Council, acknowledging the failure of the current strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, agreed on Friday to deploy thousands of peacekeepers to the troubled province.
The US, which holds the council presidency this month, offered the motion, and it was approved unanimously. Officials acknowledged that winning council approval was probably the least difficult step.
The Sudanese government opposes the presence of UN troops in Darfur, and UN officials say it will not be easy to persuade member nations to contribute troops for the new Darfur force. The US has no intention of sending combat troops, officials said.
Assuming those and other challenges are overcome, the first UN troops are not likely to arrive in Darfur for almost a year.
"It's a complicated and operationally, logistically difficult mission," said John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN.
Still, said Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, "we need to arrest the deteriorating security situation there." At least 30,000 residents of Darfur have been driven from their homes in the last month alone, UN officials said.
The violent and chaotic situation in Darfur poses significant risks that troops would be drawn into firefights with Sudanese government troops and Darfur rebels.
But under the plan, said Kristen Silverberg, another assistant secretary of state, UN troops would be better-armed than the African Union troops patrolling Darfur now. They would also be given new rules of engagement that would allow them to "protect civilians and enforce the cease-fire."
The troops will be given "a robust mandate," Silverberg said.
US and UN officials said they expected the UN force to absorb the 7,000 African Union troops already there, rearm them and then increase the total troop presence to a level between 12,000 and 20,000. More than 200,000 residents of Darfur have been killed since the violence began three years ago, and as many as 3 million rely on international aid for basic sustenance.
In 2004, the US, the UN, the EU and the African Union agreed to send African Union troops to enforce a ceasefire in Darfur, although it broke down almost as soon as it was agreed upon.
Over the following two years, troops from several African nations took up posts in Sudan. But they carried only AK-47 assault rifles and operated under rules of engagement that did not allow them to enter the conflict.
It did not take long for the government troops and Darfur rebel forces to realize that the African Union peacekeepers were a scant deterrent. Starting last summer, the violence began to pick up again. By fall, the peacekeepers became targets; four were killed in October, another last month.
One African Union officer, interviewed in a Darfur military camp in November, complained that "we are sacrificial lambs in a buffer zone."
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS