By LUKE VARGAS
UNITED NATIONS (TRNS) – Two days after an ambush claimed the lives of thirteen individuals affiliated with the U.N. mission in South Sudan, news from across the region paints a mixed picture of operational success and frustration.
The bodies of the five Indian peacekeepers killed near Walgak in South Sudan’s Jonglei state on Tuesday were returned to Delhi today, but scant details have emerged about the attack. The U.N. has confirmed that four Kenyans and one South Sudanese contrators, as well as three national staff, were also killed in the attack, but no consensus has been reached about the identity of the attackers, although one group, the South Sudan Democratic Movement/Army, has denied responsibility.
"To the best of my knowledge, we ourselves have not identified who the perpetrators may be," said U.N. Spokesperson Eduardo del Buey. "There were about 200 armed people who attacked the convoy."
Emblematic of the complicated landscape the U.N. navigates across Central Africa, the Jonglei district has been a site of serious conflict over the last year, marked by a series of incidents ranging from South Sudanese armed forces mistakenly shooting down a U.N. helicopter to large-scale attacks against pastoralist herders.
As a result, U.N. humanitarian staff have been locked out of certain areas across the border regions of both South Sudan and Sudan, prompting the rerouting or cancellation of missions altogether.
This week’s attack offers a stark reminder of the persistant dangers faced by U.N. personnel in operating in the newly-independent South Sudan, despite their best efforts to avoid becoming entangled in fighting, and like similar confrontations in Syria last month, it is yet another obstacle to the U.N.’s insistence on free access for its operation.
Sudan
One notoriously challenging region for such access is Sudan’s Blue Nile State, where the U.N. has been unable to supply humanitarian aide since fighting broke out in September 2011. In an effort to clamp down on what it says is international support for the rebel groups it is trying to surpress, the Sudanese government in Khartoum has repeatedly denied humanitarian entry into the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.
The impasse in Blue Nile State has finally broken, however, as the U.N. announced today that the World Food Program had successfully delivered two months of food rations to a total of 51,000 persons at two sites.
Del Buey said today that the WFP will attempt to reach an additional six communities before the rainy season begins in May, but he said the WFP still needs $20 million in additional funding for that effort.
Central African Republic (CAR)
Moving west, the U.N. is on the outside looking in as it attempts to make sense of the volatile situation gripping the Central African Republic, where last month rebels sacked the capital Bangui, forcing sitting president François Bozizé to flee the country.
U.N. envoy Margaret Vogt told reporters Wednesday that the country’s “extremely delicate and fragile” security situation has severely handicapped the U.N.’s ability to operate. Between the looting of U.N. resources, the widespread displacement of personnel, persistent lack of access, and heavy fighting, nearly every citizen in the country is in need of humanitarian assistance, Vogt explained.
After losing 13 of its soldiers to fighting during the rebel push to Bangui last month, South Africa announced the withdrawal of its troops from the country. Short of pulling out of the region altogether, South Africa has chosen to shift its attention to the U.N.’s more headline-grabbing effort in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will be contributing forces to the offensive mission there.
Symbolic of the international community’s dwindling role in the country, the U.S. State Department announced last week that it was abandoning its hunt for Joseph Kony, the Lord’s Resistance Army general popularized by the #Kony2012 public awareness campaign last year.
With unclear battle lines and dwindling resources, the U.N. peace-building mission in the CAR appears to be at an impasse at the hands of the country’s security situation, while more aggressive U.N. efforts next door seize the spotlight.
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
To the south, a mix of old challenges and new tactics has positioned the U.N.’s MONUSCO mission in the DRC as the wildcard effort of the region.
After being selected to receive the support of the U.N.’s first-ever (unarmed) drone in January and authorized to deploy the U.N.’s first-ever offensive combat brigade last month, MONUSCO’s added manpower and technological capacity seemingly distinguish it as the central African mission seemingly best poised to live up to its expanded mandate.
That impression is misleading, however, as it has been MONUSCO’s failure to hold off rebel activity and assert security that prompted the U.N. to take action out of desperation. The most expensive of the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces, the fourteen-year-old MONUSCO mission has spent upwards of $10 billion on what some observers characterize as negligible results.
Backed up to the walls of its compound by violence, the U.N. base in Kitchanga has been forced to shelter thousands of civilians from M23 encroachment.
Afforded little room to operate, MONUSCO convoys transporting construction equipment across the country were reportedly stopped by M23 rebels this week and submitted to ‘illegal’ inspection of their cargoes.
Defending their inspection of the vehicles, the M23 said it believes the U.N. mission is already transporting military equipment for the use of its "offensive brigade" under the guise of construction shipments.
MONUSCO’s offensive brigade, detailed for the first time in late March, will have the express aim of neutralizing rebel elements in the country, which would include the M23 rebels.
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