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Military Responses to Mass Killing:The African Union Mission in Sudan

P A U L D . W I L L I A M S

This article explores the role that military force might play in responding to the mass killing of civilians, through a discussion of the international response to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Itcontends that international society supported a weak military response in Darfur that left civi-lian protection to a hopelessly small, under-funded and unprepared African Union force. The

first section provides an overview of the possible military options available to internationalsociety to respond to instances of mass killing. The second discusses the military responseto the Darfur crisis, which came primarily in the form of the African Union’s Mission inSudan (AMIS). The third section offers a preliminary assessment of AMIS in terms of its inter-national legitimacy, its effectiveness in achieving its mandate and its ability to foster stablepeace in Darfur. The conclusion reflects upon the extent of change in international society’sresponse to the mass killing of civilians since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Genocide and mass killing require a degree of political organization; they do

not take place in situations of anarchy and chaos. Consequently, such atrocitiesdo not tend to stop until the perpetrators have achieved their objectives or theyare stopped by third parties willing to use force. The latter scenario (eventually)came to pass in some important cases: the Holocaust was only halted by theAllied powers defeating Nazi Germany; Pol Pot’s killing was stopped onlyafter Vietnam’s invasion; it took NATO bombs and determined Bosnian andCroat armies to halt the killing sprees of Serbian extremists in Bosnia; and itwas left to the Rwandan Patriotic Front to bring an end to Rwanda’s genocidein 1994.

This pattern raises many important and complex questions about how out-siders can and should respond to the mass killing of civilians. This articlefocuses on the role military force might play in such situations through a discus-sion of the international response to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. The first sectionprovides a brief overview of the possible military options available to inter-national society to respond to instances of mass killing. The second discussesthe military response to the Darfur crisis until the end of 2005. This cameprimarily in the form of the African Union’s Mission in Sudan (AMIS). In thethird section I offer a preliminary assessment of AMIS in terms of its international

legitimacy, its effectiveness in achieving its mandate and its success in fosteringstable peace in Darfur. Although there was a large degree of support for AMIS

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Consequently, the Council supported a weak military mission that left civilianprotection to a hopelessly small, under-funded and unprepared African Union(AU) force.

Protecting Populations in Danger: The Military Menu

The world’s governments spend vast sums on military materiel every year, yetthere are relatively few military options available to protect civilians facing geno-cide, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity. In 2003, the yearDarfur’s current conflict began in earnest, global defence expenditure totalledUS$997,158,000,000. By way of contrast, the total budget for UN peace oper-ations during 2003–4 was US$2,300,000,000. Defence accounted for 2.7 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, or approximately US$159 for everyhuman being. With this money the world’s governments retained 20,358,400armed personnel and an additional 32,967,300 reservists.1 Most of these armedforces, however, are only able to threaten their neighbours or their own citizensand are unable to project and sustain their power over long distances.2 Not sur-prisingly, these figures suggest that the world’s governments value their owndefence far more than the ability to protect imperilled foreigners. But they alsopoint to a disjuncture between the apparently growing support for a norm of humanitarian intervention and the actual ability of states to perform such militaryoperations.

In 2004, Michael O’Hanlon and P.W. Singer estimated that in order to meetthe need of populations in danger, international society required a total of 200,000 well-trained and deployable troops available for simultaneous humani-tarian interventions and other difficult peace operations. This would require apool of some 600,000 personnel.3 To date, the world remains some way shortof meeting even this modest target, with most of the military potential containedwithin the NATO states. This state of affairs has led some commentators to con-clude that on questions of humanitarian intervention in Africa, ‘the advancedWestern nations are short on will and the Africans are short on means’.4 Such

an assessment is partly accurate, but it neglects to mention that many Africanleaders are also unwilling to use their militaries to stop mass killing withinother African states.

With the Darfur crisis in mind, which actors could have legally or legitimatelyauthorized a military response to stop the killings? It is not the aim here to assessthe advantages and disadvantages of different actors, but rather to list the militaryoptions that have been available to international society so as to better assess theresponse to the crisis. In theory the following options were available.

The United Nations Security Council Under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Security Council can define threats toi t ti l d it it fit It h l d d l d th t t

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operations with a greater degree of international legitimacy than any other organ-ization. In practice, however, it has tended not to authorize the use of militaryforce against the wishes of a functioning sovereign state. Consequently, as is

well known, the Council failed to act decisively to stop mass killings in Cambodia,Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Indeed, it has never authorized the use of militaryforce for humanitarian purposes against the wishes of a functioning state. Argu-ably the closest it came was Somalia in the early 1990s, where force was officiallyauthorized in the absence of a suitable state authority rather than against afunctioning one.

There are several reasons for this poor track record. First, as the High-levelPanel on Threats, Challenges, and Change put it: ‘The Charter of the UnitedNations is not as clear as it could be when it comes to saving lives within countriesin situations of mass atrocity’.5 This ambiguity has helped the Council err on theside of backing state rights over the rights of the victims. Second, many UNmember states remain wary of condoning any precedent that might fundamentallyrupture international society’s norm of non-intervention. As a result, when theCouncil has interfered in what many of its members consider the internalaffairs of sovereign states, it has issued caveats about the supposedly uniqueand extraordinary nature of the case in question despite the persistence of obvious similarities across the cases in which mass killing has occurred.

In relation to Darfur, the Council also refused to authorize military interven-tion to protect civilians. Indeed, none of its members was willing to even table a

resolution calling for such action. Instead, the Council eventually imposed a sanc-tions regime, an arms embargo and a no-fly zone, and referred the situation to theInternational Criminal Court.6 As late as mid-2005 it was evident that neither thesanctions nor the no-fly zone had been effectively enforced. The Council’s beha-viour thus left the dilemma posed by Kofi Annan back in 1999 unresolved: if ‘in those dark days and hours leading up to the [Rwanda] genocide a coalitionof states had been prepared to act in defence of the Tutsi population, but didnot receive prompt Council authorization, should such a coalition have stoodaside and allowed the horror to unfold?’7 The three main types of actors

capable of conducting such operations are international organizations, coalitionsand states.8

International Organizations

Not all international organizations include clauses in their constitutions permit-ting them to authorize a military response to mass killing. With Darfur inmind, there were four organizations that could have authorized such a militaryresponse: NATO, the European Union (EU), the Intergovernmental Authorityon Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU). The Economic Community

of West African States (ECOWAS) has been excluded because it has yet to demon-strate a commitment to use force beyond its borders.

Alth h th W hi t T t d t li itl ll f NATO t d it

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NATO is arguably the only organization that could project the kind of militaryforce capable of conducting medium-scale or large-scale enforcement operations.Although its armed forces are not explicitly configured for humanitarian interven-

tions, its doctrine (including its notion of a Peace Support Force) does cover issuesof responding to mass killing and ethnic cleansing.9 In addition, by mid-October2004, NATO’s new Response Force had reached its initial operational capabilityof 17,000 troops ‘and was ready to take on the full range of missions’.10 In prac-tice, following a request from the AU in late April 2005, NATO provided logis-tical assistance for AMIS (see below). It did not, however, publicly considerdeploying its own troops for a humanitarian intervention. This was in spite of calls from NGOs such as the International Crisis Group (ICG), which in July2005 proposed that NATO provide a ‘bridging force’ to bring the numbers of external military personnel in Darfur up to 12,000 –15,000 within 60 days.The ICG also suggested that if the Government of Sudan (GoS) did not consentto this, NATO should be prepared to lead an enforcement operation of up to40,000 troops.11

As part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy, formally initiated with thesigning of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the EU constructed a rapid reactionforce. Declared operational in December 2001, this ostensibly involves the capa-bility to deploy 50,000–60,000 troops at 60 days’ notice for a period of up to oneyear. The reaction force was designed to perform the so-called Petersburg Tasks,which include crisis management and responding to humanitarian emergencies.

Although there is no evidence that the EU could actually deploy such numbersto Darfur, in June 2003 it did prove capable of projecting a small force of approxi-mately 1,500 troops into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to counter ‘low-level spoilers’ in the area. In November 2004, the EU defence ministers agreed tocreate 13 battlegroups by 2007, each comprising 1,000 – 1,500 troops and capableof deploying up to 6,000 kilometres from the EU within 10 to 15 days of a unan-imous decision taken by the member states. By the end of May 2005, three suchbattlegroups had been formally launched: (1) France, Germany and Spain; (2)Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia; and (3) Estonia, Finland,

Norway (a non-EU member) and Sweden, in a Nordic Brigade.In theory a third option was the IGAD. Although Sudan is a member, the

organization had only become engaged in issues of international peace and secur-ity in 1996, primarily through its activities in Somalia and Sudan. As of October2005, as part of its engagement in Somalia, IGAD had committed itself to sendinga force of up to 10,500 peacekeepers/peacebuilders into Sudan. This force wasauthorized by the AU in February 2005. It remained unclear, however, whetherIGAD could autonomously authorize its troops to use military force in circum-stances other than self-defence or to conduct an enforcement operation without

host-state consent. More fundamentally, perhaps, IGAD had no previous experi-ence of enforcement missions and lacked the necessary funds and capabilities.

Fi ll i i ifi t b k f it d A ti l 4(h) f th AU’


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of many African states to violate the norm of non-intervention without host-stateconsent. This was clearly evident in Darfur’s case where, as Ge ´rard Prunier notes,not only did the AU regard the crisis as a case of ‘mass killings without any known

perpetrators’ it even coached the Khartoum government in how to ‘handle theWhites’.12 On paper at least, the new AU’s stated objective of moving from a‘culture of non-intervention’ to a ‘culture of non-indifference’ revolves aroundthe creation of an African Standby Force (ASF) based on five regional brigades.13

This ambitious plan was formally adopted in May 2003. The ASF was designedwith six scenarios in mind, from low-end military tasks (Scenario 1 – militaryadvice to a political mission) to AU intervention (Scenario 6). As discussedbelow, AMIS most closely resembled Scenario 5 (a multidimensional peacekeep-ing force confronted by low-level spoilers).14 However, the ASF was not evenremotely operational during the early stages of the Darfur crisis. In addition,because many of the AU’s members consistently fail to pay their dues, the organ-ization lacks funds and some important capabilities. There is also a lack of rel-evant doctrine (even at most national levels) for conducting civilian-protectionoperations.15 More generally, several other significant problems bedevils someof the AU’s key potential troop-contributing states; most notably perhaps,many African armies suffer from a lack of professionalism16 or are wracked byHIV/AIDS.17

Coalitions and Individual States

In theory at least, the military menu was not limited to international organiz-ations. There are examples of ad hoc coalitions of states using military force inoperations that involved civilian protection, usually with UN Security Councilauthorization. These include the French-led Operation Turquoise in Rwanda(1994), the Australian-led International Force in East Timor (1999) and theUK-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (2001).However, coalitions have also taken on such roles without Security Council auth-orization, such as the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the SolomonIslands (2003).18 Common to all such coalitions is a pivotal state prepared to

shoulder a significant proportion of the political, military and financial burdeninvolved. Indeed, during the cold war, the three most commonly cited instancesof halted mass killings were consequences of interventions by single states(Vietnam in Cambodia, India in Eastern Pakistan and Tanzania in Uganda), allof which acted without explicit authorization from the UN Security Council.

In Darfur’s case the list of potential pivotal states is short. Arguably, onlyFrance, the UK and the US openly endorsed the responsibility-to-protect ideaand possessed the military capability necessary to single-handedly conduct thekind of enforcement operation required to protect the local population.19 Of

course, there are other states – notably Sudan’s neighbour Egypt20

– that haveconsiderable military forces nearby, but they have not embraced the idea thatt i killi h ld t S d ’ i t 21


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French government did not publicly endorse the idea of committing those troopsto civilian protection inside Sudan’s borders. Indeed, the French governmentseemed more concerned with bolstering Idris Deby’s regime in Chad than with

stopping the violence in Darfur.22

A similar situation was evident in the UK,where Tony Blair’s government was engaged as part of the troika (with the USand Norway) in the diplomatic negotiations to end the long-running warbetween the GoS and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). As a result, Darfur was initially perceived as an unfortunate and badlytimed sideshow. In August 2004, however, after Blair suggested the UK had a‘moral responsibility’ to help resolve what his government routinely suggestedwas the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, up to 5,000 troops from the 12thMechanized Infantry Brigade were reportedly placed on standby for operationsin Darfur.23 By December none had deployed and the number on standby haddropped to 3,000.24 In June 2005, the government made it clear that it had ‘noplans to send UK troops to Darfur’.25 Beyond these largely symbolic militarygestures, it was only the US that could seriously contemplate providing the kindof force required.

On 9 September 2004, after receiving a report from the US State Department’sAtrocities Documentation Team (ADT), Secretary of State Colin Powell took theunprecedented step of accusing the GoS and the Janjaweed (militias used by theKhartoum government to assist in suppressing rebellion in Darfur) of committinggenocide.26 Despite this finding, the US government decided that it was not

obliged to take military action to stop it.27 Not only did the US possess the mili-tary capability to do so, in 1998 the Marine Corps had explicitly suggested that itcould stop a hypothetical future genocide taking place in a fictional West Africanstate.28 The limp US response can be explained through a combination of factors,not least, the importance given to its ‘war on terror’, its desire to prioritize the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the GoS and the SPLM/A overthe Darfur crisis, and the heightened international scepticism towards humanitar-ian interventions after the manipulation of humanitarian arguments during theIraq war in 2003.29 After Bush was re-elected in November 2004, Darfur

dropped considerably down the administration’s foreign policy agenda and washardly mentioned by the president.

Theoretically, any of these states could have justified a military response tothe Darfur crisis on either of two grounds. First, they could have appealed to anorm of humanitarian intervention and pleaded that the non-intervention normshould not permit the (well-documented) mass killings to take place unchecked.This line of action would have had several factors in its favour. First, two expertbodies – the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty(ICISS, 2001) and the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats,

Challenges, and Change (2004) – endorsed this approach. Second, during the1994 Rwanda genocide no state had publicly argued that intervention to stopth l ht ld h b ill l Thi ti l h d b i k d


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A second, admittedly untested avenue could have involved these states appeal-ing directly to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Although states are not legally obliged to stop foreigners com-

mitting genocide, and adopting this line of argument would have met with a pre-dictable degree of opposition from most international lawyers, there are at leastsome grounds for believing that such a case could be sustained in the court of world opinion.30 At the very least, it would have been interesting to see whichstates would have rebutted such an argument and how they would have done itin Darfur’s case.

In sum, there were potential options for a military response to the Darfurcrisis, although none of them was without significant problems and limitations.In practice, however, it was only AU troops that arrived in significant numbers.

The Darfur Crisis: A Problem without an African Solution?

The origins and dynamics of Darfur’s current crisis have been well described else-where.31 As Alex de Waal has suggested, the origins of the 2003 rebellions lie in acombination of four main factors.32 First, land rights were crucial because by the1980s the exhaustion of free cultivable land and the degradation of the range inDarfur meant that disputes over land ‘became more common and morebloody’. Second, the spasmodic functioning of Darfur’s systems of law andorder left the region without consistent mechanisms to resolve disputes peacefully.

Third, Islamist ideology was significant, though its influence was often misunder-stood by outside observers. Crucially, as de Waal observed, it was noticeable thatthe GoS did not attempt to provide an Islamist legitimation for its Darfurcampaign ‘not least because the JEM [the rebel Justice and Equality Movement]has better Moslem credentials than the government forces’.33

Finally, national (and to a certain extent international) politics are crucial tounderstanding the rebellion, particularly the ways in which Darfur was caughtup in wider struggles between Sudan’s ruling Islamist elites and attempts tocontrol developments throughout the state. In many respects, the Darfur crisis

is simply the latest round in Sudan’s post-independence history of protractedcentre– periphery conflicts. Significant political violence has been common inDarfur’s recent history, and previous clashes between locals and governmentforces provided fertile ground in which the most recent rebel movements haveformed. For example, as de Waal noted, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) thatemerged in early 2003 was largely the product of ‘Darfur’s radical secularists’who revived the resistance movement that had been aborted in 1991. On top of these centre–periphery struggles within Sudan, Darfur’s population also hadthe misfortune of being caught up in Chad’s civil war and Colonel Muammar

Gaddafi’s long-standing attempts to spread his influence across the region.But perhaps the most important immediate contributory factor to Darfur’s

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mind it is significant that the rebellion in Darfur coincided with the time that thetransitional areas (Abyei, Blue Nile state and Nuba Mountains) were first put onthe agenda in the Machakos/Naivasha talks in Kenya.35 In other words, it is likely

that Darfur’s rebels mobilized to ensure that their grievances against theKhartoum government were considered as part of the Naivasha process. Theproblem they faced was that it was widely believed that the GoS saw these nego-tiations as an opportunity ‘to co-opt an old and dangerous enemy [the SPLM/A]into its system of government without surrendering anything vital and with thehope of then making the co-opted enemy impotent’.36 In this context, afterinitially being somewhat confused about how best to respond to Darfur’s rebel-lion, the GoS soon decided that it would try to crush the rebels before theywere taken seriously enough by international society to jeopardize the Naivashanegotiations and the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

By May 2004 the number of ‘war-affected’ (the UN’s term for those killed,raped, displaced, malnourished, sick, etc.) civilians stood at one million. By

June 2005 the number had reached 2.9 million, with most estimates putting thedeath toll at over 300,000.37 More worryingly, perhaps, as late as July 2005the UN Secretary-General estimated that 25–35 per cent of the remaining war-affected civilians were still not receiving adequate assistance in the six ‘life-saving sectors’ of food, water, sanitation, shelter, health and nutrition.38

As noted earlier, in practice the only international military response camefrom the AU, which belatedly received some financial and logistical assistance

from various sources including the G8, NATO and the EU. In June 2004, theAU signalled its intention to deploy an observer mission (AMIS) of some 60–80 monitors and a Protection Force of approximately 300 troops. This was pro-vided for by the ‘Agreement With the Sudanese Parties on the Modalities for theEstablishment of the Ceasefire Commission and the Deployment of Observers inthe Darfur’ of 28 May 2004. In late July, the AU Assembly suggested that the Pro-tection Force’s mandate would include ‘the protection, within the capacity of theForce, of the civilian population’.39 Initially, however, the Nigerian and Rwandangovernments, whose soldiers made up the Protection Force, differed over how to

interpret this component of the mandate. While Nigeria’s government agreedwith Khartoum’s position that AMIS troops were not to use force to protectcivilians, Rwanda’s government said its soldiers were being authorized to usesuch force.

At this stage, the AU was still suggesting that AMIS would be transformed‘into a full-fledged peacekeeping mission, with the requisite mandate and size,to ensure the effective implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement, with particularemphasis on the disarmament and the neutralization of the Janjaweed militia, theprotection of the civilian population and the facilitation of the delivery of huma-

nitarian assistance’.40

From 4 August to 17 August the UN despatched a planningassistance team to help the AU mission. By October, this had been transformedi t f ll ti i t d li i ll t th AU C i i Th ll


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Despite these efforts, by late October 2004 it was clear that AMIS had beenunable to ‘neutralize’ the Janjaweed militia. It was in this context that the AUsought and gained the official consent of all the Sudanese parties (GoS, SLM/A

and JEM) to expand AMIS.42

On 20 October, the AU Peace and SecurityCouncil decided that ‘the enhanced AMIS’ would:

be deployed for a period of one year renewable, if need be, to perform thefollowing mandate:

† to monitor and observe compliance with the Humanitarian CeasefireAgreement of 8 April 2004 and all such agreements in the future;

† to assist in the process of confidence building;† to contribute to a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian

relief and, beyond that, the return of IDPs and refugees to theirhomes, in order to assist in increasing the level of compliance of allParties with the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement and to contributeto the improvement of the security situation throughout Darfur.43

In addition, AMIS was given a further 13 tasks. These included monitoring andverifying events throughout Darfur and checking that the police were performingtheir tasks properly, investigating allegations of violations of the ceasefire, pro-tecting civilians and conducting humanitarian operations. The protectionelement of the mandate, however, came with some rather significant caveats.

As the Peace and Security Council put it, AMIS was to:

. Protect civilians whom it encounters under imminent threat and in theimmediate vicinity, within resources and capability, it being understood thatthe protection of the civilian population is the responsibility of the GoS;

. Protect both static and mobile humanitarian operations under imminent threatand in the immediate vicinity, within capabilities.44

The next paragraph (7) declared that AMIS would consist of 3,320 personnel,

including 2,341 military personnel. Herein lay the political fudge: AMIS was sotiny it could cover only a fraction of Darfur and protect only a tiny percentageof the population. Whether AMIS was kept tiny for reasons of political expe-diency or lack of military capability remains unclear. However, the fact thatthe AU subsequently authorized the force to more than double (AMIS 2), andthen quadruple (AMIS 3), in size suggests that political preferences played agreater role in the decision than technical capability.

Two rules of thumb are commonly used to calculate the necessary force sizefor civilian-protection operations.45 The first is based on the assumption that

2–10 troops are required for every 1,000 inhabitants within the crisis zone.Given Darfur’s population of approximately 6 million, AMIS should have had12 000 60 000 l Th d th d i b d th t ti f


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forces were an estimated 10,000–20,000 strong.48 On this measure AMIS shouldhave comprised a minimum of 10,000 and potentially 45,000 troops. On either of these measures, AMIS was far too small to offer genuine protection to a majority

of Darfur’s civilians.In addition to AMIS’s small size, its mandate was not primarily designed toensure civilian protection. Victoria Holt has identified three broad approachesto civilian-protection mandates: operations where this is a primary goal; oper-ations where it is one component of a multidimensional mission; and operationswhere it is:

viewed broadly, part of the overall mission of peacekeepers to collaboratewith relief and development efforts in their support for the safety of intern-ally displaced persons, refugees and civilians in the local environment. In

this view, military forces or peacekeepers provide the ‘humanitarianspace’ for activities that result in civilian protection.49

According to Holt’s typology, the AU seems to have set out in July 2004 with theintention of adopting the first approach (including, crucially, neutralizing the Jan- jaweed ). But in practice, by October 2004 it had scaled down its objectives inrelation to civilian protection by settling for the second approach. In addition,it is important to recall that because of its small size, AMIS concentrated on pro-tecting particular locations rather than the civilian population spread throughoutthe province.50

In recognition of its limited effectiveness, by late April 2005 the AU acknowl-edged that AMIS was ‘extremely stretched to implement its mandate’.51 It alsorecognized that in spite of its efforts ‘the number of people displaced and atrisk in Darfur has doubled since last year and continues to rise’.52 As a result,the AU said it would increase AMIS to 6,171 military personnel, and upto 1,560 civilian police, by the end of September 2005.53 Following this decision,the Darfur Integrated Task Force, the strategic component of AMIS, developed aconcept of operations for AMIS 2. The plan for the enhanced force involved thedeployment of eight additional battalions (three each from Nigeria and Rwanda

and one each from Senegal and South Africa) bringing the total number of troopsto over 7,000 by 30 September 2005. Gambia and Kenya were also earmarked tocontribute soldiers. A battalion of 680 Nigerian troops was the first of these toarrive on 13 July. Rwanda’s battalions were deployed with US help, usingC130 aircraft flying between Kigali and El Fasher.54 AMIS 2 received additionalassistance in the form of French airlifts for the Senegalese contingent, as well as 25transport helicopters and 100 armoured personnel carriers from Canada.55 In itsthird phase, AMIS 3 was to be increased to over 12,000 troops by spring 2006.

AMIS: A Preliminary Assessment

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assessment of AMIS on the basis of its international legitimacy, its ability toachieve its mandate and its contribution to building stable peace in the area.56

International Legitimacy

AMIS received near universal support from international society, including theUN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General, the EU, NATO and the ArabLeague. In terms of the wider dynamics of contemporary peace operations,AMIS received Western support, partly because it was hailed as a concreteexample of the ‘African solutions to African problems’ philosophy. The highdegree of legitimacy international society accorded AMIS was hardly surprisinggiven that the operation obtained the official consent of the GoS and the other bel-ligerent parties. Those states, including the US, that called for a tougher responsethan that outlined in Security Council resolution 1556 (30 July 2004), whichendorsed AMIS, proved unwilling to respond militarily without Khartoum’sconsent.57 Some international nongovernmental organizations, such as ICG,Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, went further in their criticism.An Amnesty International spokesperson, for instance, described the approachadopted in resolution 1556 as ‘the abandonment of the people of Darfur andan abdication of the Security Council’s role as a human rights enforcing agent’.58

At least from a victim’s perspective, the central problems with internationalsociety’s collective endorsement of AMIS as the only acceptable military responseto the Darfur crisis are fourfold. First, the mass killing, torture, rape and forced

displacement of civilians is not an African problem, it is a global problem, andshould have been addressed using the best instruments available globally, notjust locally. Second, adopting the philosophy of ‘African solutions to Africanproblems’ placed the major burden of response upon the continent least able tomarshal the necessary troops, funds and materiel to conduct a large-scalecivilian-protection operation. The entirely predictable effects of this approachwere evident between May 2004 and July 2005, in the growing numbers of ‘war-affected civilians’. Third, viewing AMIS as the only viable response lentsupport to the idea that the GoS should retain the primary responsibility for pro-

tecting its own civilians, despite substantial evidence that it helped to orchestratethe mass killing and other crimes against humanity.59 As the ICG concluded, inthe light of such evidence, states that claimed to support the responsibility-to-protect idea should not have permitted the GoS to dictate how that idea wasput into practice in Darfur’s case.60 A fourth related problem was that the AU’sresponse did not tackle the problem at the Khartoum government level. Althoughthe AU had facilitated negotiations between the GoS and the rebels through theadmirable efforts of Salim A. Salim, the AU’s special envoy on Darfur, therewas no evidence of pressure being put on the GoS to broaden the Naivasha

process to include the rebels in Darfur and elsewhere.

Achieving the Mandate


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As the Joint Implementation Mechanism concluded in June 2005, AMIS’s pre-sence ‘provided a very positive influence’.61 In particular, the number of clashesbetween the belligerent parties diminished, as did the number of attacks on civi-

lians.62

However, as Kofi Annan noted, ‘the decrease in attacks may also be afunction of a reduced number of targets’.63 Or, as the head of the US Agencyfor International Development, Andrew Natsios, put it, ‘The major reason forthat, frankly, is there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy’.64

In terms of the wider elements of the mandate relating to civilian protection,AMIS did not fare so well. Indeed, it is important to recall that responsibility forthe direct physical security for the IDP camps lay primarily with the Sudanesepolice, not AMIS – a police force widely distrusted by the IDPs because manyof them turned out to be ‘re-packaged’ Janjaweed or GoS soldiers.65 Furthermore,AMIS was criticized for allowing militias to attack civilians and each other in itspresence.66 The force also suffered the indignity of having local SLM/A comman-ders impede its deployment to an increasing number of rebel-held areas.67

Of course, these problems do not mean that AMIS personnel performedpoorly as individuals. The peacekeepers on the ground should not be blamedfor factors beyond their control, including a lack of relevant training, doctrine,materiel (especially communications equipment and vehicles) and intelligence col-lection capacity. In short, AMIS’s personnel had insufficient resources to achievethe mandate. On the crucial issue of funding, for example, the AU continuallystruggles to ensure that its members pay their dues at all let alone on time. In

July 2005, a report produced for the AU Commission revealed that only sevenof the 53 members had fully paid their basic contributions, leaving the organiz-ation with a shortfall of about US$35 million.68 At the same time that theUnion – and the rest of international society – was proposing AMIS as a solutionto Darfur’s problems, the director of the AU’s Peace and Security Division, SamIbok, noted that it spent only $1.6 million (under $31,000 per member state) ayear on resolving conflicts throughout the entire continent.69 With regard toAMIS specifically, phase 2 was expected to cost over US$465 million for oneyear; yet the pledging conference chaired by the AU and UN in late May 2005

managed to raise promises (not actual donations) of only $291 million.70

Theannouncement made in early July by the AU Commissioner for Peace and Secur-ity, Said Djinnit, that AMIS faced a $200 million shortfall was thus entirelypredictable – as were the consequences.71

Did AMIS Contribute to Stable Peace in the Region?

Of all the criteria by which to assess peace operations, building stable peace is thehardest to achieve, especially since, in the Darfur case, dealing with the underlyingpolitical causes of the crisis was not part of AMIS’s mandate. Nevertheless, if

future mass killings are to be prevented this issue needs to be addressed. At aminimum, AMIS’s presence contributed to stabilizing the situation in those

h it h d f iliti d id d liti l b thi f th


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Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, suggested, in substantial terms the signing of this declaration ‘represents very little [because it was similar in content to manyprevious documents], but psychologically, it represents a lot’.72 Whether this

will produce a lasting resolution to the conflict remains to be seen but Khartoum’strack record does not inspire much confidence.After a year in the field AMIS proved unable to facilitate the return of the IDPs and

refugees to their homes, nor was it able to repair the damage done to the land, settle-ments and livestock by the Janjaweed and government forces. In addition, it wasunable to address the underlying governance issues that lay at the heart of theDarfur crisis. AMIS’s positive effect on the security situation was also ratherlimited. As Kofi Annan concluded in mid-2005, ‘active combat has been replacedby a suffocating environment of intimidation and fear, perpetuated by ever-presentmilitias’.73 In this sense, despite AMIS’s best efforts, stable peace in Darfur remainselusive.

Conclusions

What, if anything, changed in the way international society responded to the masskillings in Darfur compared to the 1994 Rwanda genocide? To help answer thisquestion it is perhaps useful to think of three different types of change.

A first type of change can occur in the collective belief systems and norms thatunderpin international society. International reaction to the inquiries into the

UN’s failings in Rwanda and Srebrenica and the reports by the ICISS and theHigh-level Panel suggest that there is growing support for the idea that state sover-eignty should not become a shield behind which mass killing and genocide can gounpunished. In this sense, it appears that international society is undergoing aperiod of normative turbulence wherein sovereignty is being rendered increasinglyconditional upon states upholding certain standards of domestic conduct. InAfrica, the most obvious outcome of this normative turbulence is Article 4(h)of the AU charter, which permits the organization to intervene in a memberstate in ‘grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide, and crimes against

humanity’. In the Darfur crisis, however, the AU showed no inclination to actu-ally invoke this article. This crisis was also notably different from Rwanda’sbecause the US government declared that genocide was being committed, thefirst such statement of its kind. The Bush administration’s subsequent decisionthat it was under no obligation to respond militarily to stop the genocide suggeststhat this change was not particularly helpful, at least for the victims.

A second type of change occurs at an institutional or bureaucratic level. Here,again, international society had made some progress since Rwanda. The UN’sDepartment of Peacekeeping Operations grew considerably and began to codify

a set of operational practices designed to prevent its personnel from standingby while civilians were slaughtered. In addition, in mid-2004 a UN SpecialAd i th P ti f G id t bli h d t d i th S it


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might facilitate effective military responses to mass killing. Aside from the ques-tion of whether the political will exists to deploy them, these initiatives remainedmost obviously deficient in relation to the training of personnel and the develop-

ment of relevant doctrine.74

A third type of change involves transforming the experiences of the victims of genocide and mass killing. At this level the evidence from Darfur is chilling andsuggests that little had changed since 1994. Given the evidence noted earlier,change did not come fast enough for the victims of extremist political campaignsin Darfur. This is all the more harrowing because it could probably have beenstopped. As a study by the US National Defense University concluded:

an intervening combat force would have had little trouble stopping killings bythe Janjaweed if it could have tracked and engaged them. The killers lack skill,

strong motivation, and capabilities, and with decent intelligence it is not verydifficult to distinguish them from their civilian targets. There was ample stra-tegic warning, and there could be ample tactical warning, if good sensors wereavailable and information shared – a significant but not insurmountable chal-lenge for a Western-augmented, net-capable African force in Darfur.75

For all the money governments spend on their militaries, it would appear thatinternational society is still not prepared to conduct effective responses to masskilling that prioritize the needs of the victims.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Amnesty International USA Annual GeneralMeeting, Austin, Texas, 8–10 April 2005. Thanks go to Alex Bellamy, Ian Taylor, an anonymousreviewer and the participants at Amnesty’s AGM for their constructive comments.

NOTES

1. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance, 2004–2005, London:Taylor & Francis, 2005, p.358.

2. Of course, as the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1998– 2003) demonstrates, whennational security is on the line as opposed to suffering foreigners, even relatively small militarypowers such as Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have been able todeploy and sustain considerable numbers of soldiers in difficult theatres.

3. For details of their proposal see Michael O’Hanlon and P.W. Singer, ‘The Humanitarian Trans-formation: Expanding Global Intervention Capacity’, Survival , Vol.46, No.1, 2004, pp.77– 100.

4. David C. Gompert, Courtney Richardson, Richard L. Kugler and Clifford H. Bernath, Learning from Darfur: Building a Net-Capable African Force to Stop Mass Killing , Washington, DC:National Defense University, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, 2005, p.5.

5. Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A MoreSecure World: Our Shared Responsibility, New York: United Nations, 2004, para.199.

6. See UN Security Council resolutions 1556, 1564, 1574, 1590, 1591 and 1593. For details see Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘The UN Security Council and the Question of HumanitarianIntervention in Darfur’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol.5, No.1 (forthcoming, 2006).

7. ‘UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report to the General Assembly,’ 20 Sept. 1999, cited byNi h l J Wh l S i S H i i I i i I i l S i


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genocide in Rwanda and a private military company, Executive Outcomes, was effective in contain-ing the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s. It is doubtful, however,whether private firms could deploy regiment-sized forces on civilian-protection missions. SeeO’Hanlon and Singer (n.3 above), pp.91–6. In relation to Darfur, the two rebel movements –

the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement – proved incapableof stopping the mass killing and forced displacement of Darfur’s civilians.9. For a discussion of NATO doctrine in relation to civilian-protection issues see Victoria K. Holt,

The Responsibility to Protect: Considering the Operational Capacity for Civilian Protection,discussion paper (revised pre-publication version), Henry L. Stimson Center, Jan. 2005,pp.23–4.

10. Stated on the NATO website (www.nato.int/issues/nrf /).11. ICG, The AU’s Mission in Darfur: Bridging the Gaps, Africa Briefing No.28, Nairobi/Brussels, 6

July 2005, pp.12–13.12. Ge ´rard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, London: Hurst, 2005, p.145.13. This phrase was used by the AU’s legal adviser, Ben Kioko, ‘The Right of Intervention under

the African Union’s Constitutive Act’, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol.85, No.852,Dec. 2003, p.819.

14. ‘Policy Framework for the Establishment of the African Standby Force and the Military Staff Committee (Part I)’, African Union: Exp/ASF-MSC/2 (1), adopted by the African Chiefs of Defence Staff, 15–16 May 2003, Addis Ababa, p.3.

15. On some of the problems encountered by the AU’s first peace operation in Burundi, see Bellamyand Williams (n.8 above), pp.189–93.

16. See Herbert M. Howe, Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States, Boulder, CO: LynneRienner, 2001.

17. Lindy Heinecken, ‘Facing a Merciless Enemy: HIV/AIDS and the South African Armed Forces’,Armed Forces & Society, Vol.29, No.2, 2003, pp.281–300. Indeed, the GoS required all AMIStroops to undertake HIV tests. Prunier (see n.12 above), p.121.

18. This operation did have the consent of the host government and the support of the Pacific IslandsForum. See Bellamy and Williams (n.8 above), pp.184–9.

19. For details of the military power projection of various EU states see Bastian Giegerich andWilliam Wallace, ‘Not Such a Soft Power: The External Deployment of European Forces’, Survi-val , Vol.46, No.2, 2004, pp.163– 82. In this context, note that a Canadian offer to send 100– 150military personnel into Darfur in support of AMIS was rejected by the GoS. ICG (see n.11 above),p.13, n.76.

20. In 2003 Egypt’s armed forces numbered 450,000. IISS (see n.1 above), p.354.21. One of the few attempts to focus attention on the indifference of Arab states to the Darfur crisis is

Joseph Britt, ‘Arab Genocide, Arab Silence’, Washington Post , 13 July 2005, p.A21.22. Prunier (see n.12 above), p.140.23. Robert Fox and Meera Selva, ‘British Soldiers on Standby to Avert Humanitarian Disaster in

Darfur’, Independent on Sunday [London], 1 Aug. 2004.24. Robert Fox and Francis Elliott, ‘Britain Prepares to Send 3,000 Troops into Darfur’, Independent

[London], 26 Dec. 2004.25. ‘DFID Response to the Report of the International Development Committee of 30 March 2005 –Darfur, Sudan: The Responsibility to Protect’, Cm6575, 7 June 2005, p.19.

26. For details of the ADT’s report see Samuel Totten and Erik Markusen, ‘Research Note: The USGovernment Darfur Genocide Investigation’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.7, No.2,2005, pp.279–90.

27. According to ICG research, some 84 per cent of respondents said the US should not tolerate anextremist government committing such attacks and should use its military assets, short of insert-ing US combat troops on the ground to protect civilians, to help bring them to a halt. ICG, DoAmericans Care About Darfur? An ICG/Zogby International Opinion Survey, Africa BriefingNo.26, Nairobi/Brussels, 1 June 2005.

28. See US Marine Corps, Expeditionary Operations, MCDP 3, 1998, p.134, cited in Holt (n.9above), pp.24–5.

29. For more detail see Paul D. Williams and Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and theCrisis in Darfur’, Security Dialogue, Vol.36, No.1, 2005, pp.27–47.

30 For a persuasive argument along these lines see Henry Shue ‘Limiting Sovereignty’ in Jennifer


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Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, London: James Currey, 2003; and ICG, DarfurRising: Sudan’s New Crisis, Africa Report No.76, Nairobi/Brussels, 25 March 2004.

32. Alex de Waal, Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press,2005, pp.xiii–xix.

33. Ibid., p.xviii.34. Prunier (see n.12 above), p.79.35. See Johnson (n.31 above), rev. edn, 2004, pp.xix– xx.36. Prunier (see n.12 above), p.105.37. For example, UK House of Commons International Development Committee, Darfur, Sudan: The

Responsibility to Protect – Fifth Report, 2004-05 Vols I and II , HC 67-I and HC 67-II, March2005. See also the thoughtful discussion of casualty figures in Prunier (n.12 above), pp.148–52.

38. Monthly Report of theUN Secretary-Generalon Darfur, UNDoc.S/2005/467,18July2005, pp.7–8.39. AU Communique ´, PSC/PR/Comm. (XIII), 27 July 2004, para.8.40. Ibid., para.9.41. UN Secretary-General (see n.38 above), p.10.42. See AU Communique, PSC/PR/Comm. (XVII), 20 Oct. 2004, para.2.43. Ibid., para.4.44. Ibid., para.6.45. O’Hanlon and Singer (see n.3 above), p.97, n.7.46. ‘Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the UN Secretary-General: Pursuant

to Security Council resolution 1564, 18 September 2004’, Geneva, 25 Jan. 2005, p.27, para.78.47. ICG (see n.11 above), p.10, n.60.48. The lower figure is from ibid., the higher from Gompert et al. (see n.4 above), p.10.49. Holt (see n.9 above), pp.17– 18.50. By mid-2005, AMIS divided its area of responsibility into eight geographic sectors, operating out

of 19 facilities throughout Darfur that were built by Pacific Architects and Engineering with USgovernment funding. ICG (see n.11 above), p.6, n.33.

51. AU Communique ´, PSC/PR.Comm. (XXVIII), 28 April 2005, para.3.52. Report of the Chairperson of the Commission on the Situation in the Darfur Region of the Sudan,

PSC/PR/2 (XXVIII), 28 April 2005, para.103.53. AU Communique ´ (see n.51 above), para.9.54. AU Press Release No.39/2005, 15 July 2005.55. Gompert et al. (see n.4 above), p.14.56. These criteria are taken from Bellamy and Williams (see n.8 above).57. See the US ambassador’s comments in UN Doc. S/PV.5015, 30 July 2004, p.4.58. Cited in David Aaronovitch, ‘Into Africa, Now’, The Observer [London], 1 Aug. 2004.59. See, for example, ‘Report of the International Commission of Inquiry’ (n.46 above) and Totten

and Markusen (n.26 above).60. ICG (see n.11 above), p.13.61. Monthly Report of the UN Secretary-General (see n.38 above), p.17.62. See, for example, ibid., p.2 and ICG (n.11 above), pp.5– 6.

63. Monthly Report of the UN Secretary-General (see n.38 above), p.11.64. ‘US Fury as Sudan Manhandles Staff’, BBC Online, 21 July 2005, accessed at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4702199.stm.

65. ICG (see n.11 above), p.6.66. Ibid.67. Monthly Report of the UN Secretary-General (see n.38 above), p.5.68. ‘African Body Admits to Financial Difficulties’, Government of Botswana Daily News, 6 July

2005, accessed at www.gov.bw/cgi-bin/news.cgi?d¼20050706.69. Anthony Mitchell, ‘African Countries should Refuse to Pay Debts, Anna Adviser Says’, Cape

Times [Cape Town], 6 July 2004.70. The estimate is from UN Secretary-General, ‘Statement to the Pledging Conference Co-chaired by

the AU and the UN on AMIS’, Addis Ababa, 26 May 2005, p.2. The pledged amount is from AUPress Release No. 027/2005, 30 May 2005.

71. ‘Sudan:AU$200 m Shortfor Darfur Peacekeeping’,IRIN , 8 July2005, accessed at www.irinnews.org.72. ‘Sudan: Interview with Amb Baba Gana Kingibe, head of AMIS’, IRIN , 19 July 2005, accessed at

www irinnews org


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