Darfur Mission Starts With Depleted Forces
December 31, 2007
The world’s largest peacekeeping mission — joint U.N. and African Union forces in Sudan’s Darfur province — kicked off with severely depleted forces.
About one-third of the planned 26,000 personnel deployed Monday on the mission, the Financial Times said. Sudan’s government refused non-African forces from Thailand, Nepal and Scandinavia and U.N. member states haven’t provided all necessary hardware for the mission, the Times said.
The 9,000-member force, called Unamid, took over command Monday from Amis, an all-African force.
Since the conflict began in 2003 about 200,000 people have been killed, many by pro-government militias, and 2.5 million people have been driven from Darfur, the paper said.