Promises, promises

SELDOM has east Africa seen such turmoil. Eastern Congo faces a humanitarian disaster; the killing in Sudan's Darfur region goes on apace; war rages between Islamist militias and Ethiopian troops in Somalia; and rebels threaten the government in Chad. On top of that, war may resume between Eritrea and Ethiopia and between Sudan's government and former rebels in the autonomous south.

As a result, the UN is sending unprecedented numbers of troops to the region. It already has 17,000 in Congo and 20,000 more are due to join an existing 6,000-strong African Union (AU) force in Darfur. These are the largest UN forces in the world. Another 2,000-odd are sandwiched between the Eritreans and the Ethiopians, plus 10,000 in south Sudan. The AU also has some 1,600 Ugandan troops under its command in Somalia's blighted capital, Mogadishu.

We accepted the mission, now give us the tools

The numbers alone look impressive, as befits the world's much-vaunted determination to help end Africa's bloodiest conflicts. In Congo, the UN is doing its best to hold the ring between several rival ragtag armies. But elsewhere its fine intentions have yet to bear fruit, especially in the two most pressing cases, Darfur and Somalia.

In Darfur the UN is due to start deploying its forces in a few weeks. The speed with which several African governments have offered troops has been a welcome surprise, suggesting a new-found willingness to bear a bigger burden of peacekeeping on their own continent. But now the effort risks failing all over again because of a dire lack of helicopters, a prime cause of the peacekeeping failure to date. In a region as big as France with no proper roads, the static AU force has been easy prey for rebels and government proxies alike. That makes it imperative for the UN to provide both transport and attack helicopters for its expanded force. A score might be enough to begin with, but since the Africans cannot provide even this number the choppers (and pilots) will have to come from elsewhere.

The government in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, may jib at the prospect of West Europeans or Americans providing or flying aircraft over Darfur, so it would be good if Russia or India were to help out. But even if they don't, a robust and mobile force is vital if peace is to be restored to a region where some 300,000 people have already died and more than 2m are displaced. Plenty of well-armed men intend to make the UN/AU force's job hard, especially as there is still no peace agreement to be monitored on the ground, as the Security Council hoped there might be when it voted to send in troops in July.

In Somalia, however, it is the African countries that have failed to deliver. In February the AU promised a force of 8,000 to keep the peace in Mogadishu, after Ethiopia's invading forces, with tacit Western approval, clobbered the Islamist militias to bolster a shaky Somali government. But so far only the Ugandans, too few to do the job, have turned up. So the Islamists have regrouped and war threatens to engulf the city again, perhaps infecting the whole region. Africa and the West, not to mention the UN, seem to have lost hope and interest. African governments, whose forces in Darfur are being paid for by the West, should pay some of their own way in Somalia, albeit with more help from the rich world. But the main foreign governments involved in the painful task of negotiation—Britain, Italy, Norway and America—must not give up.

(Economist.com)