ABU SHOUK, Sudan – The armoured personnel carrier slowly bumps its way out of the UN base in Sudan’s far-west region of Darfur with Indonesian policeman Andhy Kurniawan at the wheel.
His colleague Daud Markus Afi, a part-time singer, mans the machinegun overhead while Endro Suryanto is in charge of the radio. They are leading another African Union-UN patrol into Abu Shouk, a camp for an estimated 75 000 of the 1.4 million people displaced by the decade-long conflict in Darfur. A surge in tribal violence, along with clashes between rebel fighters and government forces, has forced another 300 000 to flee their homes this year as the security situation deteriorates.
The rear end of the armoured vehicle carries a message, in Indonesian, to anyone who might try to confront the patrol. Fierce, like a wounded ox, it says. The Indonesians are paramilitary officers with years of experience in their home country’s conflict zones. But here, their job is to protect a multi-national group of unarmed police advisers following behind them in SUVs, backed up at the rear by more Indonesian paramilitaries. “Our main aim is to protect civilians by our physical presence in the field,” says Jaffar Ali, of Pakistan. He is the UN Mission in Darfur’s police commander in the area.
Among their tasks is to watch for rights violations and to identify areas where the Sudanese police could benefit from training, Ali tells reporters accompanying the group. This patrol also includes officers from Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi and Sierra Leone. A notice taped to the office wall reminds them that they all represent the United Nations, “wherever you go, whatever you do. This is no small responsibility.”
But UNAMID police face their own issue of trust, according to a participant in a meeting between UN officials and foreign envoys last week. In El Fasher, near Abu Shouk, they held a two-yearly review of developments in Darfur.
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the Ghanaian who heads the mission, said there is an “unacceptably high” level of firearms in Darfur, but pointed out that unemployment and economic hardship are also a source of banditry and violence in the camps. “I would shudder to think what would happen if you did not have UNAMID deployed and protecting” the internally displaced persons, he told reporters. –
Story by Nampa/AFP