Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe (CBC)

The African Union's peacekeeping force of 7,000 is set to leave Sudan's Darfur region by the end of the month and there are currently no plans to replace it with a UN force, an idea that the president of Sudan has vetoed. In the past three years, more than 200,000 have died and two million have been displaced in the conflict. The United Nations says matters will worsen if the peacekeepers leave.

Nigerian ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe is the head of the African Union mission in Sudan. Recently, CBC's Africa correspondent David McGuffin, who has been in Sudan for two weeks, spoke with the ambassador in Khartoum. Here is an edited transcript.

David McGuffin: From the outside, right now, coming from Canada for instance, the situation in Darfur certainly looks bleak. How would you describe how events are unfolding right now?

Baba Gana Kingibe: It is rather unfortunate. I think the security situation, which we had stabilized really from about mid-June 2004, up to the beginning of the year 2006, suddenly took a dip for the worse, since, ironically, the signing of the Darfur peace agreement. As you know, out of the four parties that negotiated, two of them didn't sign. And they are two critical elements, if you like, two critical legs of the table that fell off and the table has not been stable ever since. It is worrying and disturbing because there has been a proliferation of the armed groups once again and with the consequences of more displacements, less access to humanitarian agencies, and a spilling over into the border areas of the conflict that had hitherto been confined to Darfur. So indeed you are right, it's very bleak.

McGuffin: UN humanitarian aid co-ordinator Jan Egeland has said it's a catastrophe waiting to happen, that what's gone on up until now is just a taste of what we can expect to see, especially if the mandate doesn't come through or doesn't get extended beyond the 30th of September. Would you say that's a fair assessment?

Kingibe: What has been happening in Darfur since toward the end of 2003 has been bleak enough, has been dire enough and I think too many deaths have occurred; too many people have been displaced. I shudder to think of worse situations than what we've already gone through. But the prospects are there unless really there is an urgent accommodation between the government of the Sudan and the United Nations to see how they can stabilize the security situation in Darfur.

McGuffin: Right now the government of Sudan certainly seems steadfast in saying no to the United Nations coming in and picking up where the African Union has left off. Do you see a way beyond this impasse?

Kingibe: I think there must be continuing dialogue; there must be continuing engagement. It's a pity that the international community in a sense perhaps got aid fatigue to the African Union troops. We had asked for resources of the kind that would enable us to muster the situation. This hasn't been forthcoming. We came in a sort of peace-agreement monitoring mode. We haven't come in a peace enforcement mode.

McGuffin: I was here last year with [Lt.-Gen.] Romeo Dallaire and he compared it quite closely to what went on with him in Rwanda with his being unable to actually act on violence that's going on in front of his own troops. That must be frustrating.

Kingibe: That is the biggest drama for any military, to be restrained by a limited mandate, to be restrained by limited capacity to intervene. Every one of the rebel groups in Darfur is better armed and logistically better supported than the African Union troops. There isn't much the troops can do in the face of hordes of rebel armies, let alone the Sudanese government troops undertaking operations which they wish they could intervene and yet they couldn't.

McGuffin: The government of Sudan certainly has a lot to answer for. There are 200,000 people dead in the region and there's been quite a bit of evidence that their troops have worked with local militias in propagating some terrible atrocities there. What would your message be to the government of Sudan?

Kingibe: Well, I think there is no denying that terrible atrocities have taken place. There's no denying that, of course, the government of the Sudan has the primary responsibility to protect its citizens. It has failed to do so. But I don't think it's too late. I think that at the moment when the rebellion broke out in Darfur, the attention of the government was diverted by the war in the south, and clearly that was the basis for the enlistment of the militias and so on to do a kind-of proxy containment of the rebellion, but once you unleash a force of that nature, it takes time and it's difficult to now control them.

McGuffin: It's just a short while to go before the mandate could end for the AU in Darfur. Do you still see reasons for hope?

Kingibe: The African Union is committed to staying the course in Darfur. Right now, the troop-contributing countries are rotating their troops; they're bringing in new troops, that is a sign of commitment and engagement. Why we have to leave is simply because we cannot stay. The operation costs us something like $25 million a month just in terms of allowances and feeding and so on alone, not to talk of logistics and infrastructure and so on. So, the deal with the international community was that Africa will provide the manpower and the international community will provide the necessary logistics and funding to sustain them. The international community have reneged on that and they have now linked their continuing assistance to a commitment to transition by the government of the Sudan. So we are caught between the rock and a hard place, as the United Nations and the government of the Sudan carry on their disputation, the African troops are stranded.

McGuffin: To go back to the question of hope though, is there no hope then?

Kingibe: No, no, when we lose hope, we are all dead. I do hope that even in this last minute the international community will see the necessity to de-link strengthening AMIS [African Union Mission in Sudan] and funding AMIS from the transition. If it is meant to be a leverage to bear pressure on the government of the Sudan to accept transition it is going to fail woefully. It is in the interest in the people of Darfur, it is in the interest of those who are suffering in Darfur for the international community to come forward and make viable the only mechanism that exists on the ground to provide some level of protection, to provide some level of security, and the greater the assistance, the greater the co-operation from the international community, the greater the effectiveness the African Union troops will show. So really it is unfortunate that anybody could give a spin on a withdrawal as Africa leaving Darfur to its fate. The international community has left Darfur to its fate and they have left the people of Darfur to their fate.

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