EU ready to launch Chad mission

The EU’s much delayed peacekeeping mission to Chad will be launched in the coming weeks, diplomats say, after participating countries agreed to provide helicopters and medical facilities.

The additional pledges were made after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels (10 December) contemplated even more serious delays. The pledges are now being assessed by the operation commander, Lieutenant General Patrick Nash of Ireland.

The delay has underscored the EU’s shortfalls in military capacity. A draft resolution supported by the main parties in the European Parliament noted on 12 December that "the EU’s credibility in its foreign policy…is at stake if it cannot mobilise sufficient troops and equipment to make this mission operational".

Member states have committed most of the roughly 3,500 soldiers required, which will allow the EU to wrap up the process of ‘force generation’ in the coming weeks.

Around half of the Eufor mission will be made up of French troops, with smaller contingents from Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Austria and possibly Romania.

"We are ready to deploy," a senior diplomat from a troop-contributing country said, pointing out that his government was just waiting for helicopters and other logistics assets to be made available.

But the logistical problems that have delayed their deployment could well impede their effectiveness once they fan out across some of the most difficult and remote territories in Africa.

Eufor is tasked with protecting refugees from the neighbouring Sudanese province of Darfur as well as civilians displaced by fighting in Chad itself, some 400,000 people in all.

The EU’s serious shortcomings in strategic airlift capabilities and constraints imposed by the available airfields in Chad mean that only part of the force - which will need to provide its own water and fuel - can be flown into the area of operations. Eastern Chad is more than 2,300 kilometres from Douala, Cameroon, the sea-port likely to be used by Eufor.

Eastern Chad is arid and has few paved roads, which are routinely made impassable by flash floods during the rainy season, May to October. This makes helicopters - tactical airlift - a vital asset for any military mission there.

Heavy fighting in eastern Chad is calling into question the viability of the mission, which has no mandate to intervene in Chad’s internal conflict or to enter refugee camps. Across the border in Darfur, a political settlement remains beyond reach. A hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping mission, which Eufor was supposed to support, has been stalled by political obstruction from Sudan’s government.

Eufor is a bridging operation and is expected to be replaced by UN peacekeepers within one year.

The EU’s much delayed peacekeeping mission to Chad will be launched in the coming weeks, diplomats say, after participating countries agreed to provide helicopters and medical facilities.