Troops not enough to resolve Darfur crisis

Sometime next month, European troops will start filing into Chad and the Central African Republic on the largest military mission the EU has undertaken since Bosnia, in 2004.

They are being deployed to support a joint United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in the neighbouring Sudanese province of Darfur.

The European force will be up to 4,000 strong and contain a sizeable French contingent and the bulk of troops are expected to be stationed in Chad. Their main task will be to protect refugees and aid workers and to stabilise the volatile border region with Sudan as part of efforts to bring peace to Darfur.

Darfur has been the scene of widespread violence that has cost at least 200,000 lives since 2003, according to the most widely cited estimates. Others go much higher. An additional 2 million people were displaced by the fighting between government-sponsored militias and local insurgents, many of them fleeing to areas in eastern Chad and the north-east of the Central African Republic where European troops will be based.

Eastern Chad is also a stronghold of several rebel groups that are fighting the regime of Idriss Déby, the president of Chad, a key French ally in the region whose government was nearly ousted last year but bailed out by a French military intervention. One rebel leader has warned the EU that it would receive a "very, very bad welcome" if it got in the way of the insurgency.

EU troops will not be on a combat mission but will operate under sufficiently robust rules of engagement, according to an EU diplomat. In fact, their mandate will be stronger than that of the Darfur force itself.

This underscores what might turn out to be the toughest challenge that the EU operation will face apart from the difficult security situation. It will need to co-ordinate closely not just with a planned UN police mission in Chad and the Central African Republic, but also with the hybrid UN-AU force across the border in Darfur.

Evert Kets, a researcher on African security issues at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, thinks that special mechanisms are needed at both the operational and policy levels to ensure that this complex co-ordination task will be met. "This is a regional problem and therefore it is extremely important that the EU-UN force and the UN-AU force work together on all levels," Kets said.

Another problem is finding enough Europeans willing to do the job. European military planners are "scraping the bottom of the barrel", Kets said. France is expected to raise about half of the total, with the rest likely to fall to countries including Belgium, Poland and possibly Germany. Force generation will take place over the coming weeks and will have to proceed at breakneck speed if the ambitious goal of full deployment at the beginning of next year is to be met.

In addition to providing the bulk of the force, France will also host the operational headquarters for the mission. Analysts stress the importance for the EU force not to be seen merely as an extension of French policy. The authoritarian regimes in both Chad and the Central African Republic rely on French support to stay in power.

The decision approving the mission in principle was taken by EU foreign ministers on 12 September following a request by the UN Security Council in the context of intensifying activities to bring peace to Darfur. The UN Security Council is expected to pass a resolution formally authorising the EU deployment in late September or early October and troops are set to begin arriving in the region at the end of the rainy season in mid-October.

The new mission in Chad and the Central African Republic, as yet unnamed, will be a major test case for Europe’s crisis management capacity under the European Security and Defence Policy. It is an open question whether it will help the search for peace in Darfur, especially since the EU mission is merely one element in a broader effort. In terms of alleviating the suffering of refugees, the EU’s mission is almost certain to have a tangible impact on the ground. But with-out further intense diplomatic engagement, it is unlikely to help resolve the Darfur crisis.

Sometime next month, European troops will start filing into Chad and the Central African Republic on the largest military mission the EU has undertaken since Bosnia, in 2004.