ANOTHER BUSH/BLAIR VICTORY IN THE MAKING:

New peace force on way to Darfur (David Blair, 05/10/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Thousands of African troops were preparing for deployment in Darfur yesterday after Sudan agreed a 10-fold expansion of the African Union force in the region.

A contingent of 3,500 soldiers will arrive in Darfur by the end of the month, joining a team monitoring a supposed ceasefire between local rebels and the pro-regime Janjaweed militia.

At present, the AU has 68 ceasefire monitors in the region, protected by 300 troops from Nigeria and Rwanda. Sudan's agreement to the expansion of this force may be crucial to Africa's efforts to resolve the crisis.

The deal was signed in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, at the headquarters of the AU, an alliance of all 53 countries on the continent. It also provides for 800 African police to be sent to Darfur as part of the new mission.

The extra troops are likely to come from Nigeria and Rwanda, which have both appealed for funding and logistical help from America and the European Union.

The AU has made plans to send a fully fledged peacekeeping force.

You can't really overstate how monumental an achievement it will be to not just stop the genocide but get Africans to take responsibility for doing so themselves.

MORE:
Meanwhile, what could be more hilarious than The Guardian, which would label a tripartite Iraq a defeat, advocating breaking up the Sudan?
Blood brothers: Only a genuine division of power in multicultural Sudan can put an end to the country's bitter sibling rivalries (Jeevan Vasagar, October 4, 2004, The Guardian)

Sudan is sometimes described as "Egypt's little brother". The phrase is meant to give a sense of the kinship between the two nations, but "little brother" also seems an apt personification of the country: if Sudan were a single human being, it might well be someone's troubled younger sibling - an overgrown teenage boy with floppy, uncontrollable limbs and a violent identity crisis.

Sudan is Africa's biggest country. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the border of Egypt in the north down to lush, tropical jungles in the south, encompassing hundreds of tribes who speak more than 100 languages.

The north is Muslim, speaks Arabic and shares a culture with north African countries such as its neighbour Egypt - though many of Sudan's Muslims are black, rather than Arab, and speak an African language as their mother tongue.

The north, which includes Darfur, is a band of semi-desert that blooms in the wet season and then returns to sand and scrub in the dry season; southern Sudan, meanwhile, is a fertile landscape of marshes and jungle and is home to nomadic Christians or nature worshippers, tribes of tall, athletic people with aubergine-black skin and ritual scars on their faces.

Trying to forge a single collective identity out of this sprawling country is a difficult task, and no Sudanese government has yet achieved it. Instead, in a succession of regimes since independence, the members of a handful of northern, Arab tribes have sought to concentrate wealth and power in their own hands.

-Sudan accepts Blair's five-point peace plan: After two hours of talks and a warning on sanctions, Khartoum agrees to give African Union troops freedom of movement in Darfur (Patrick Wintour, October 7, 2004, The Guardian)

Sudan bowed to a five-point plan tabled by Tony Blair during talks in Khartoum yesterday, which included accepting the free movement of 3,500 African Union troops as ceasefire monitors in Darfur province.

Mr Blair also urged Sudan to return its troops to barracks and accept a deadline of December 31 for an agreement on devolution for the south of the country. He hopes this will serve as a model for peace in Darfur.

Mr Blair held two hours of talks with Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, during which he warned that the EU and US were willing to go to the UN to impose sanctions.

Privately, the prime minister believes the west will know by the end of the year whe- ther Sudan is serious about honouring its commitments.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 6, 2004 8:17 PM