This section briefly examines the AU response to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the extent to which it demonstrated the organization’s resolve to seek African solutions to African problems as well as safeguarding Sudan’s national sovereignty against possible humanitarian military intervention by Western powers. The nature and manner in which the AU responded is important as it partly informs us on the overall response by the UNSC to the crisis in Darfur.
Murithi (2009:2) observed that the speed, boldness and determination to seek “African solutions to African problems,” demonstrated by the AU was evidenced by the organization’s ambitious deployment of a “hasty, erratic, and not carefully planned” peacekeeping missions in Burundi (2004), Darfur (2004) and Somalia (2007). The AU mission to Sudan (AMIS) was largely ineffective because it lacked adequate funding and logistical support.
The catalyst to AU response to Darfur conflict was the signing of an AU brokered partial Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement (HCFA) on 08 April 2004 in N’Djamena, Chad. This was between the GoS and two rebel movements namely the JEM and the SLM/A leaving out other insurgency groups (Bellamy and Williams 2010:207). The fact that some parties to the Darfur
155
conflict did not append their signatures to the ceasefire agreement made the operating environment for the peacekeepers very difficult and dangerous.42 On 28 May 2004, a Ceasefire Monitoring Commission was established following the signing of further agreements in Addis Ababa marking the decision to deploy AU military observers and a small protection unit to monitor ceasefire implementation in Darfur (Ibid.). Subsequently, this led to the establishment of a Humanitarian Ceasefire Commission and the hurried and inadequately planned deployment of (AMIS 1) which deployed 60 military observers and a small contingent of protection force of 310 soldiers in June 2004 (Birikorang 2009:7). This peacekeeping force level was in every respect grossly inadequate to meet the challenges on the ground and to fulfill its mandate (Holt and Berkman 2006:5). Unfortunately, the ceasefire did not hold leaving the AU observer mission to operate in a war zone area with no capacity to adequately defend itself let alone protect civilians.43
The AU deployment into the Darfur region was a bold step reflecting the AU’s political determination to follow through on its commitment to non-indifference to intra-state conflicts on the continent (Aboagye 2007). This was done in an attempt to seek African solutions to African problems following a marked decline in Western countries’ interest in participating in peacekeeping missions in Africa after the 1992 Somalia peacekeeping debacle. The UN’s response to conflicts in Africa since then had been reflective of “abdication from responsibility, or minimalist peacekeeping interventions, in the aftermath of the Somali debacle of the UN Operation in Somalia and the 1994 Rwanda genocide” (Aboagye 2007:4). Additional troops were thus required to boost the effectiveness of the African peacekeepers.
Further consultations with the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) resulted in approval of reinforcements for peacekeepers in Darfur that transformed the mission to become AMIS II.
This mission was established with a force level of 3 320 personnel composed as follows: 670 observers, 1703 protection force, 815 civilian police (CIVPOL) and 132 civilian staff (Neethling 2009:11). Despite these reinforcements, the mission proved to be ineffective,
42 UNAMID fatalities of peacekeepers in Darfur are very high. According to UNAMID Facts and Figures (2015) the breakdown of the casualties is as follows: 154 military troops; 47 civilian police; 1 military observer; 4 international civilians serving with the mission; 24 local civilians serving with the mission and 2 other non- members of the mission.
43 In an interview with one of the military observer who participated in AMIS 1, he questioned the seriousness of both the dispatching countries and the AU department responsible for peacekeeping missions considering that the observers were clearly deployed in a hostile area without adequate protection vehicles such as armoured cars and heavy weapons to deter rebel groups that were not part of the partial peace agreements. In his view the AU was being over ambitious and sacrificing African troops in dangerous theatres of war without first securing a comprehensive cease fire among the belligerents. Interview held in Addis Ababa on 18 0ctober 2015.
156
mainly because the AU lacked the means, expertise and resources to effectively plan and launch complex and modern peacekeeping operations, hence the search for a partnership with the UN which has more planning expertise, experience and resources for peacekeeping operations (Aboagye 2007:5). In an effort to influence the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission to Darfur, several international NGOs including the Global Policy Forum highlighted and emphasized the gross operational and logistical inadequacies inherent in AMIS II which it was hoped, could be addressed by the deployment of a more resourced UN peacekeeping mission.
Aboagye (2007:8) argues that the AU intervention in Darfur happened by default as opposed to being a deliberately planned peacekeeping operation. The absence of peacekeeping deployments by the UN and the international community, he argues, “forced the AU to be seen to be doing something in line with its newly adopted policy shift from non-interference to non- indifference as endorsed by the Union’s constitutional right to intervene” (Ibid.: 9). This policy shift was reinforced by the much talked about but hardly implemented policy rhetoric and slogan of seeking African solutions to African problems. Thus the ineffectiveness of the AU mission and the desire by various NGOs and Western powers to have a UN mission deployed to Darfur influenced the calls for the deployment of a UN mission which was vehemently denied by the Sudanese Government.44
The worsening situation in Darfur during 2006 and a corresponding failure by the AU to fully support AMIS II, led the UNSC to approve resolution 1706 that authorized the deployment of 17 300 UN troops to reinforce poorly funded and ill-equipped AU troops (Weiss 2009:135).
The GoS strongly objected to this resolution arguing that if the UN peacekeepers deployed without its consent, they would be treated as “foreign invaders.” It follows therefore that the original plans to hand over the AU mission to the UN were scuttled by the Sudanese authorities leading to further negotiations that ultimately resulted in the UNSC resolution 1769 that authorized the deployment of a UN/AU hybrid peacekeeping mission to Darfur (UNAMID),
44 In an interview with a Sudanese diplomat in Addis Ababa in October 2015, he informed this researcher that the Sudanese Government was afraid of a regime change agenda that the UN peacekeeping missions are now known to be associated with. In his own words, “The government of Sudan was clearly of the view that Western powers wanted a different regime in Sudan that would normalize relations with the Western powers leading to the dislodgement of Chinese and Russian influence in the country in order for them to exploit the vast mineral resources in my country. Having witnessed the modus operandi of UN peacekeeping missions in previous operations in Congo in the 1960s, Somalia and Rwanda in the early 1990s, it was evident that UN peacekeepers were not going to come simply to the humanitarian aid of the Darfuris but to use them in the process to achieve their own selfish political and economic objectives.
157
the first of its kind in the history of UN peacekeeping.45 The hybrid mission is formally and officially both a regional and UN mission where the AU and the UN jointly approve the appointment of senior officials and the composition of the mission while the UN provides UNAMID’s “command and control structures and backstopping” together with financing its operations (Ban 2010a).Thus the hybrid option was a compromise deployment of a joint UN/AU hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (Durward 2006:27). Adoption of this type of mission was meant to avert a UN military humanitarian intervention that was going to be resisted by the Sudanese government through force of arms as well as the need to maintain a mutually beneficial working relationship between the GoS and powerful members of the Security Council that had vested self-interests in Sudan. The successful deployment of UNAMID served to protect the national sovereignty of Sudan from being violated by a humanitarian intervention force spearheaded by the western powers. Governments friendly to Khartoum had successfully protected the Sudanese national sovereignty against possible infringement by foreign forces even when it was evident that there were documented cases of large-scale atrocities and crimes against humanity (Simon 2008:57).
Abass (2007:432) observed that the adoption of a hybrid mission was critical as it averted a perception among African and Arab countries that the UN was acting illegally or illegitimately in a manner that threatened or violated Sudan’s state sovereignty. In this regard, the innovative and unprecedented transformation of AMIS II into UNAMID hybrid mission was a “legitimacy boost” for the AU since it was the only international body that had the state consent of the Sudanese government (Ibid.). However, the first and primary challenge to the UN/AU hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur was that there was no peace to keep in the Darfur region and that the Sudanese government was not fully cooperating with the international community in finding a lasting solution to the Darfur crisis (Murithi Op.Cit.:13). Military clashes involving Government troops, militias sponsored by the government and the various other militia groups continued to take place constituting a major source of insecurity among the civilian population and the peacekeepers (UN Doc. S/2013/22 dated 10 Jan 2013.
45 The hybrid nature of UNAMID was manifested by the following: first, the UN component of the combined mission was grafted to an existing AU mission (AMIS) and the combined mission was expected to support the implementation of an AU negotiated peace settlement; second, the UN/AU mission has characteristics of both peacekeeping and peace enforcement.
158
The next section analyses the response by the UN to the crisis in Darfur and the operational effectiveness of UNAMID towards protection of civilians facing threats of crimes against humanity.