African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Politics

Mosques and coffee shops

By admin
August 24, 2007
1340
0
Share:

Posted on behalf of Timur Goksel. Timur Goksel served first as the official spokesman and then as the senior advisor of UNIFIL between 1979-2003. He now consults on conflict and peacekeeping and teaches the same at American University of Beirut.

I am sure the hybrid UN-AU mission in Darfur created by Security Council Resolution 1769 has enabled all those watching the Darfur tragedy helplessly all these years to claim a victory of sorts. But will it work?

With 24 years of service with a UN peacekeeping operation in south Lebanon and four years of university and seminar lecturing on peacekeeping and conflict issues, I am afraid it won’t. The UN is hardly capable of running its own complex peacekeeping operations. How the UN will ever manage an operation that is to be effectively commanded by an inexperienced, under-resourced and relatively new regional organization that has more than a few teething problems is beyond comprehension. I predict the worst possible command, control and management problems for UNAMID, especially if it opts for a robust enforcement philosophy.

The only hope for this mission is a well-defined “community peacekeeping” or what is commonly known as “winning the hearts and minds” of the belligerents and public affected. The African Union does not appear to be aiming at the newly fashioned “robust peacekeeping” that entails treating the mission as a military operation. If the African Union understands that a compassionate approach that involves going down to grassroots, building confidence with the relevant public will also mean the best possible way of gathering intelligence and taking preventive measures based on that intelligence, UNAMID has a chance. Otherwise it will be yet another mission with soldiers in their armored cars or behind/inside their fortresses helplessly watching and reporting.

Link to entry on “Without an operable peace agreement, what effect will 1769 really have on Darfur’s future?”

Previous Article

Peace in Darfur: Next Steps

Next Article

Famine Crimes and Mortality Figures

admin

0 comments

  1. Alex de Waal 27 August, 2007 at 22:34

    Timur has made a valuable contribution to this debate. The attention to UNAMID in Darfur has been devoted almost entirely to its mandate, numbers and composition, with a near-complete neglect of what the troops and civilian police are to do when they actually arrive on the ground in Darfur. Experience from peacekeeping missions in comparable situations absolutely vindicates Timur’s analysis: far more important than armor and weaponry is the quality of relations with the people.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • Politics

    Summits and stereotypes: analysing the analysis of Africa — by Jolyon Ford at Oxford Analytica

  • CultureWest

    Monochrome Lagos, and other West African Creatives to Watch

  • President Paul Kagame. Credit: ITU/J.Ohle
    PoliticsRwanda

    Paul Kagame’s life-presidency: The world abandons Rwanda again

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81664
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Popular articles

  • President Cyril Ramaphosa (left) with his predecessor, former President Jacob Zuma in 2017. Credit: GCIS.

    What did we learn from South Africa’s exhaustive state capture commission?

  • Group work at a workshop in Cameroon to support people with disabilities address gender based violence. Credit: Sightsavers.

    We cannot keep leaving women with disabilities behind in leadership

  • Boni & Ente in Runyankole and English, with author Carol Baingana pictured in the bottom right corner.

    Can indigenous African languages help with children’s speech therapy?

  • The climate crisis has made weather patterns more extreme and unpredictable in northern Cameroon. Credit: Carsten ten Brink.

    The climate crisis tinderbox in northern Cameroon

  • A fish market on Lake Victoria in Mukuno District, central Uganda. Credit: RTI International/Katie G. Nelson.

    Lake Victoria locals blame companies for mysterious mass fish die-offs

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
Cleantalk Pixel
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
African Arguments wants to hear from you!

Take 5 minutes to fill in this short reader survey and you could win three African Arguments books of your choice…as well as our eternal gratitude.