ABOVE SILEIA, SUDAN — A Russian-made Mi-8 chopper hovers over the scorched remains of this Darfur village, half-deserted since a government air raid destroyed scores of homes.
U.N. military engineers peer through portholes, armed with maps and survey tools they will use to scope out a new peacekeeping camp to be built in the desert below.
Plans to put a 600-soldier base in the heart of Darfur's latest trouble spot are part of the aggressive new strategy of the recently deployed United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission. Sileia jumped to the top of the list of proposed new camps after more than 100 people died in clashes in the area in February.
But the white U.N. helicopter never lands. Someone forgot to dispatch a security patrol on the ground to protect the advance team. So engineers make do with quick sketches during a brief flyover.
"I don't even want to get into whose fault this is," said a fuming Col. Murdo Urquhart, the British army officer in charge of new camps.
Four months after it took over from the beleaguered African Union force in western Sudan, the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur is a tale of good intentions and loftier ambitions, mixed with some of the same issues that dogged its predecessor. Among the problems are the slow deployment of troops, a lack of adequate equipment and a shabby network of military bases.
It's being called the most formidable U.N. peacekeeping mission ever attempted. Not only will it be the largest when fully deployed at 26,000 troops, but there's also an awkward power-sharing arrangement with the African Union.
Usually, U.N. peacekeepers are sent to failed states or countries with weak governments to enforce peace treaties in a post-conflict environment. But in Sudan, there's a strong government that consented to the U.N. mission as a result of intense international pressure. There's no viable peace agreement here. And the fighting, though it had cooled, may be heating up again.
Despite the challenges, expectations are high. Many of the more than 2.5 million displaced Darfurians hope stability will return so they can go home. And the international community is betting big that a robust presence will end the seemingly intractable conflict.
Most estimates of the death toll since 2003 range from 200,000 to 300,000.
Rodolphe Adada, the U.N.-AU joint special representative for Darfur, said the mission should quell violence once it's fully up and running, but he warned that it would not be a substitute for political dialogue.
"We shouldn't be seen as the solution," he said.
The mission, with an estimated annual budget of $2.5 billion, has arrived as the Darfur conflict has grown more complicated. Though frequently described as a genocide that pits an Arab-dominated government and its allied militias against non-Arab rebels and villagers, the conflict today defies easy labels. Arabs are killing Arabs. Africans are killing Africans. Some former rebels have joined the government and some Arab militias, known as janjaweed, now fight against it.
At the same time, general lawlessness and proliferation of arms have fueled widespread banditry, carjacking and rape. Most recently, Chad and Sudan have contributed to the violence through a proxy war in the Darfur region, where they are arming and funding insurgencies to attack one another.
For the moment, the mission's most pressing challenge is getting boots on the ground. Fewer than 300 additional U.N. troops, from nations such as Bangladesh and China, have arrived in Darfur. The rest of the nearly 9,000 peacekeepers here are African Union holdovers who just replaced their green AU berets with blue U.N. helmets.
Richard Williamson, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, has called the slow deployment unacceptable, urging the U.N. to dispatch 3,600 troops by June. But U.N. military commanders in Darfur foresee a slower rollout, perhaps 2,400 troops by September. Either way, full deployment of 26,000 isn't likely until 2009.
The blame game
Finger-pointing abounds. U.S. officials blame U.N. bureaucracy. U.N. leaders say Western nations won't provide needed equipment, including 24 new helicopters.
Then there's foot-dragging by the Sudanese government, which is insisting that U.N. troops come chiefly from African nations. Sudanese officials say that's because they don't trust Western nations or their allies.
But African armies are often underfunded, ill-equipped and poorly trained.
A typical self-sustaining U.S. Army battalion can be quickly dispatched just about anywhere because it comes with its own vehicles, accommodation, generators, mechanics, medics, engineering capabilities and food services. Poorer African military units sometimes come with little more than soldiers with guns.
"Not everyone that wants to give a hand in Darfur meets the standard," said Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Karenzi, the mission's deputy force commander.
