By NNN-WAM,
Dubai : There is a marked reluctance on the part of the African Union (AU) to put an end to the strife in Darfur, a UAE paper commented Sunday.
”It could be, as has been thought before, that the nations which comprise the AU do not wish to pit their forces against fellow black Africans. If that is so, then it serves no purpose at all in sending so-called AU peacekeepers into Darfur,” wrote Gulf News in its today’s editorial.
The joint UN-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), the paper said, is woefully short of troops with only 9,000 personnel against a promised 26,000.
”Combined with inadequate equipment, they present no danger to the numerous bandits, armed groups and rebel factions that are free to roam over an area the size of France. It has not helped in any way that the Khartoum gov ernment has been the most reluctant of all to curb the strife.
”The Khartoum government initially created the Janjaweed to capture land in Darfur, but the Janjaweed (“devils on horseback”) ultimately became an uncontrolled law unto itself,”the paper remarked.
”With inadequate peacekeepers covering such a vast territory ineffectively, UNAMID is being made to look ridiculous – the latest incident of 60 armed men stealing the weapons of Nigerian UNAMID peacekeepers being a case in point,”it concluded.