Zuma withdraws Darfur peacekeepers
President Zuma has announced the withdrawal of more than 800 SANDF troops from Darfur.
|||Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma announced on Wednesday that he has decided to withdraw the 800-odd South African National Defence Force troops who have been participating in Unamid, the hybrid African Union/UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Sudan and its predecessor Amis since 2004.
Zuma said in a statement the troops would leave by April 1. He said that SANDF members had been deployed with Unamid since 2008.
However, they had previously been there since 2004 with Unamid’s predecessor Amis. (The African Union Mission in Sudan).
“President Zuma has thanked all members of the SANDF for their participation in bringing peace in Darfur,” the statement said.
Zuma gave no reason for his decision. However, his view that peace now prevails in Darfur – once the focus of international attention because of the intense fighting there – accords with the view of the Sudanese government.
Khartoum has been urging the UN and AU to terminate Unamid for some time. However fighting does continue, especially in the central Jebel Marra mountainous region of Darfur.
On January 27 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) “expressed grave concern over the impact of the ongoing hostilities in Darfur on thousands of civilians who have been forced to flee their homes amid the conflict that began two weeks ago.
“Initial reports indicate that about 19 000 civilians have fled into North Darfur state, and up to 15,000 into Central Darfur state, following fighting in the mountainous Jebel Marra region that straddles three Darfur states.”
However, Military expert Helmoed Romer Heitman believes there is a good case for withdrawing the SANDF from Darfur.
The SANDF is already overstretched, both financially and because it has too few infantry, as a result of its deployments in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur and on its border protection mission.
“By any reasonable standard those add up to 14 or more infantry battalions and we have only 13 including the parachute battalion that is supposed to be the reserve.
“To that we need to add the instability in Burundi, the continued failed state situation in the CAR and the peace agreement in South Sudan that, if it works out, may end up needing to be policed by a peacekeeping or monitoring force…”
These conflicts closer to home were of greater strategic interest to South Africa, he said.
“The Darfur deployment is not of direct strategic relevance, the mission has been largely futile as a result of its forces being matched if not overmatched by the weaponry available to the various militias, and the Khartoum government has made sustaining the force difficult and irritating.
“Taking these issues together and the likely further restrictions – if only in real terms – in defence funding, there is a good case to be made for withdrawing from Darfur. In fact I have argued that in various circles for quite a while now. I would rather see us have a battalion or so in hand for Burundi or the DRC or, at a pinch, for South Sudan in whose independence we have a political stake.
“I am not sure what the level of reimbursement for the UNAMID deployment is, given that it is not a pure UN operation, but am sure that it does not cover all of the actual costs involved, so there will be some saving from not having troops there.
“But the easing of the troop overstretch is to me the more important, as it will give the Army a breather and make it possible to respond to a crisis nearer home without courting a final implosion of the Army.
“On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that the government has somehow bowed to Khartoum on this, although I thought they were pretty annoyed by the behaviour of the Sudan military while al-Bashir was in SA, effectively indicating that our troops were hostages.”
African News Agency
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