Plaster not enough for dying patients

Crisis management, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and disaster relief are all prone to the unfortunate syndrome of the operation being a success but the patient dying.

All tend to take place only after a calamity has occurred and therefore the best that can be expected of them is to alleviate the consequences. In many ways this is a great injustice to those who deal in these fields, since much time, effort and money is invested in formulating plans and contingencies to deal with calamities - which are then often put into place rapidly and professionally. Nonetheless, given the context, these operations are doomed to a heroic image, at best, or a dismal one, at worst - but more commonly are just plain inadequate in the face of an awful reality.

As it creates and evolves its security and defence policy capabilities, the EU would do well to keep this unfortunate framework in mind, since it means that even those operations launched by a consensus and with total member state assistance will be perceived as a failure in the public domain. Equally, one should be exceedingly wary of using this framework as an excuse for an inadequate response or operation - yet that is exactly what seems to be happening in the case of the EU and Darfur.

It cannot be possible to define as either adequate or a success any intervention in a situation that has been going on for three years and has involved the displacement of two million people and the rape and murder of many thousands. The EU has been closely associated with the international intervention from the start of the crisis in 2003 and has donated hundreds of millions of euros for humanitarian relief. It also declared itself willing and ready to assist more concretely on the ground. Talk of an EU military operation was vague and muted. Although this was clearly a political/humanitarian crisis of the kind the EU was meant to become specialised in operating with, it came into sharper focus only when NATO, at the behest of the US, suggested it would undertake some sort of mission to the afflicted area.

In the event neither ventured into that part of Africa, since it was decided that the African Union (AU) would undertake the mission. NATO and the EU offered to provide strategic airlift - since no African nation barring South Africa had the capability to physically get its troops into Darfur. The EU also provided military and police advisers at regional and operational headquarters, and some materiel assistance. At least on paper, the EU ticked all the correct boxes - which is all very well, but the fact remains that the AU mission, which is poorly equipped, has not managed to contain the situation, let alone alleviate it.

The EU, by opting for the AU, in effect imposed a development approach on crisis management - the buzzwords became 'African ownership', much as if this was a more general malaise of development, like a failed banking sector, rather than a killing spree by murderous gangs backed up by a government. The AU is to be admired for stepping up to the plate, but it was always obvious it could only undertake the mission with massive external support in command, staff and materiel. The EU assistance in these areas has been anything but massive. This is partly a result of the other consequence of imposing a development approach: the budgets moved from a crisis management operation to the development bodies of the EU, which are neither trained nor equipped to deal with these situations.

Darfur is a mess and a running sore on the conscience of the world. The EU has applied a plaster to it and claimed a success - but the patient is dying, fast. It is time to admit failure and undertake a proper operation, for the sake of those who desperately need it - and for the future of European security and defence policy.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

Crisis management, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and disaster relief are all prone to the unfortunate syndrome of the operation being a success but the patient dying.