By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 2008 (IPS)

The beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sudan, handicapped by lack of troops and helicopters, has come under fire for its unusually high costs.

Women associated with armed group at U.N. Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration pre-registration site in Abyei, Southern Sudan. Credit: Un Photo/Tim McKulka

Speaking to reporters during a U.N. debate on the unmet development goals of Africa, the former president of Mali said he “really regretted” that “enormous sums were being poured into conflict prevention in Africa, which could be better used to address the continent’s development challenges.”

UNAMID’s mega budget, one of the largest in U.N. peacekeeping history, was “scandalous”, he said, considering the fact that the key to solving the problem in Sudan rested “with us”.

He admitted, however, that there was an “African responsibility” to deal with peace and security problems in the continent.

“We have set up institutions and we must give them the power and the means to take appropriate and timely action,” he told reporters Monday.

By its very nature, he said, “this is a question of development”.

He also quoted Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who has said that “disputes over water resources are a major cause of the conflict in Darfur”.

The Chinese envoy said, “Only improving people’s lives on the ground will fundamentally remove the cause of the conflict and improve the security environment.”

But the United States has said the killings in Darfur are tantamount to “genocide”.

According to U.N. estimates, the four-year-old conflict in Darfur has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 civilians, and reduced over 2.2 million to the status of refugees or internally displaced persons.

The new UNAMID hybrid force, which began operations on Dec. 31 last year and is described as potentially one of the world’s biggest peacekeeping missions, will have an initial mandate of 12 months and incorporates the former African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which was in Darfur since 2004.

But AMIS itself suffered from a shortage of troops and financial resources.

Meanwhile, the 2.0 billion dollar budget for UNAMID ranks ahead of the 1.1 billion dollars the United Nations is spending annually on its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

Of the 20 current peacekeeping missions, eight are in Africa: in Western Sahara, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Burundi and Chad/Central African Republic.

So far, UNAMID has raised only about 9,000 troops and is also short of helicopters and ground support equipment.

While the 53-member African Union argues that it should be primarily responsible for conflict resolution in the continent, the Sudanese government has been insisting that UNAMID troops should be virtually all-African.

The government of Sudan has already rejected troops from Norway and Sweden. At the same time, it has expressed reservations over military units from Thailand and Nepal.

Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno said last month that when the Security Council adopted a resolution last July to create a 26,000-strong UNAMID, it said the force should be “predominantly African in character”.

“To have a force that is exclusively African in character is another matter,” Guehenno told delegates. And “there are a number of important reasons why a broader mix of troop contributors is necessary.”

As a compromise, the U.N. Secretariat has expressed its willingness to “prioritise deployment” of troops from two African countries, Ethiopia and Egypt, “with the understanding that the Asian units (from Nepal and Thailand) would deploy in a timely fashion.”

On Monday, Guehenno told the U.N. Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations that a lack of key support for UNAMID – including critical air and ground transport, diplomatic and political engagement with the parties and cooperation from the host state – was “exacerbating” the logistical and operational difficulties the mission already faced due to the region’s remote and inhospitable terrain.

He also said that despite progress in strengthening U.N. peacekeeping capabilities and management, “The international community’s faltering interest and lack of sustained support were making it difficult to maintain peacekeeping gains in key conflict areas.”

Addressing the same committee, Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary-general for Field Support, said the U.N.’s overall peacekeeping budget, which had been less than 2.0 billion dollars in 2003, could exceed 7.0 billion dollars in 2007-2008 – more than three times the size of the U.N.’s annual regular budget.

The largest portion of the 7.0 billion dollars will be earmarked for UNAMID.

She pointed out that there were enormous logistical increases, including those in aircraft fleets, engineering system contracts, deployment of strategic deployment stocks, rations contracts, satellite links and email accounts.

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