UNAMID: A Retrospective

The United Nations/African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID, for short) is coming to its conclusion, marking the first major UN peacekeeping mission to finish its tasks since the United Nations Missionin Liberia in early 2018. While the mission’s mandate ended with the new year, its actual drawdown will continuethrough the spring into early summer.

UNAMID was a bold, innovative, and controversial mission. This essay will be divided into three separate parts. First, I will examine the creation of UNAMID, then I will examine UNAMID’s effectiveness during its dozen years of service, and I will conclude by examining the present security environment in Darfur.

The Creation

UN Peacekeeping was in a strange position in the mid to late 2000s. The organization was still confronted by the endemic failures that had led to the mass killing of civilians in Rwanda and in Bosnia. Major policy papers, such as the 2000 Brahimi report, had outlined a more aggressive and more robust peacekeeping strategy that the architects of UN Peacekeeping were just starting to fully implement. The UN deployed a whole host of complex peacekeeping missions in 2004, sending forces into Haiti, Timor-Leste, Burundi, and Côte d’Ivoire, adding onto missions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

While the UN was sending troops all over the world, they didn’t deploy to Darfur. The western region of Sudan fell into brutal violence in 2003, when mobile Arab cattle herders known as Janjaweed began raiding the villages of Black Sudanese populations, frequently massacring, looting, and enslaving the population. The Janjaweed had the support of the Sudanese government, who wanted to wipe out Black Sudanese rebel groups in the region.

By 2004, the situation in Darfur had become one of the worst human rights crises in the world. A variety ofhuman rights organizations, civil associations, and celebrities formed the

“Save Darfur” campaign and began lobbying western governments. The United States and European Union both described the crisis as a genocide, and the UN Security Council recommended charges to the ICC. While the Security Council believed UN Peacekeepers were stretched too thin at the time, African Union peacekeepers would deploy in 2004. As part of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), thousands of African soldiers would deploy to the region. After several international observers questioned their ability to protect civilians and their willingness to confront the Sudanese government, the UN took over the mission in 2007, “re-hatting” the existing troops from AU green to UN blue, and deploying additional UN forces.

 This marked a new innovation in UN Peacekeeping operations. Prior to UNAMID, cooperation betweenthe UN and other regional bodies was still being developed. While UN Peacekeepers had worked alongside ECOWAS forces in West Africa, and NATO forces in the Balkans, UNAMID marked a new frontier in both inter-institutional cooperation as well as a new model for cooperation going forward. The UN would provide the peacekeeping expertise and the AU would provide committed troop contributors. Furthermore, there was also a key political divide that greatly increased effectiveness: the UN would engage with western partners, with whom they had a strong rapport and the AU would engage with the Sudanase government, who the AU had experience working with.

UNAMID also was a major innovator in Protection of Civilian mandates. While all missions created in the new millennium had a Protection of Civilians mandate, UNAMID was one of the few that was primarily focused on protecting civilians. Authorized under Chapter VII of the UN charter, rather than the traditional Chapter VI,UNAMID was deployed into a situation where there was, at best, limited peace to keep. It was also faced with a deeply uncooperative government in Khartoum. UNAMID was the one of the first UN Peacekeeping missions that deployed ready to, if needed, violently engage with its host state and its paramilitary provies in order to protect civilians.

UNAMID During Operations

UNAMID’s deployment was slow. Two years in, it had only deployed 79 percent of its authorized military personnel and 71 percent of the police contingent. Part of this was caused by many countries being unwilling to deploy peacekeepers to a dangerous environment, while part of this delay was caused by the uncooperative nature of the Sudanese government. In addition, UNAMID deployed five years into a brutal conflict. It’s estimated that about 300,000 civilians had died by late 2008, mostly from starvation and disease. UNAMID was authorized too late, and once authorized, the recruitment of additional forces took too long. This consistent late reaction has been a hallmark of UN peacekeeping missions, and unfortunately UNAMID was no exception. Once deployed, UNAMID was a mixed bag. While successful with the resources that it had, it lacked the resources it needed to adequately implement its mission.

Let’s start with the good. UNAMID was mostly able to protect civilians within its area of operations. UNAMID police forces were able to create a secure environment inside of the dozens of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout the region, and UN troops deterred combatants from attacking certain civilian population centers near UN bases. Furthermore, UN troops engaged in proactive protection of civilian patrols. The most notable of these were the “firewood patrols” which protected displaced women as they gathered firewood outside of the camps, a previously highly dangerous activity. UNAMID was able to protect humanitarian aid shipments, which helped alleviate someof the deep food and medicine shortages in the region.

Through negotiation and mediation, UNAMID was able to lay down the framework for a long term peace.

But UNAMID had its flaws. The mission was never strong enough to fully accomplish its mission. Darfur is a region with the size of California and the population of Michigan. While UNAMID’s 20,000 soldiers and police officers made it one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world, it was not large enough to fully protect a region of that size. In 2010, UNAMID would admit that it could only adequately protect half of the region's population, mostly those concentrated in IDP camps and urban areas. UNAMID was plagued with major transportation issues. Protecting civilians is a mostly reactive task, quickly deploying troops to areas where civilians are in imminent danger. To accomplish that rapidreaction capability over such large, sparsely populated areas, a peacekeeping mission requires transport helicopters. UNAMID was never able to scrounge up the helicopters it needed in order to complete its mission, with the ones it were able to requisition beingeither unsuited to the task, insufficient in number, or too short-term to make a difference.

Furthermore, the Sudanese government proved to be a nuisance at best, and a menace at worst. An agreement between the UN and the Sudanese government which allowed UNAMID to deploy with Sudanese consent stipulated that the mission must have a predominantly ‘African character.’ Khartoum would take great advantage of this provision, frequently vetoing the deployment of non-African contingents, leaving UNAMID undermanned and underequipped. As a 2014 Foreign Policy report had succinctly put it, UNAMID had ”been bullied by government security forces and rebels, stymied by American and Western neglect, and left without the weapons necessary to fight in a region where more peacekeepers have been killed than in any other U.N. mission in the world.”

UNAMID was a mixed bag. While it was successful in some respects, it failed in others. It’s failureshighlighted a continuing gap in almost all UN Peacekeeping missions between what is asked of them and the means they are provided with in order to actually accomplish that task.

The End of UNAMID

Several dramatic changes in both the Sudanese and UN situations in the late 2010s would lead to UNAMID’s eventual withdrawal. First, Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan since 1989, was overthrown in a 2019 military coup following months of extensive street protests.

Al-Bashir was was the one who funded the Janjaweed, and would the next year be extradited to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide charges. The new government in

Khartoum would be a hodge-podge transitional government of civilians activists and military strongmen, but theyproved to be a much better group of peacemakers than al-Bashir's regime.

The Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), the main opposition rebel group, would reach a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in 2020. The SRF would integrate with the Sudanese Armed Forces and they would get seats in government.

At the same time the UN was faced with a financial problem. Demands for budget cuts to peacekeeping,initially by the Trump administration and then later as a result of COVID, made eliminating one of the UN’s largest and most expensive missions a needed cost saving measure in the eyes of the Security Council. UNAMID began to hand over control of key military installations and protection of civilian missions to the newly integrated Sudanese Armed Forces in late 2020.

There are still reasons to be concerned. Violence is still common in the region, and the situation in Sudan as a whole is deeply unstable and unpredictable. Most of the military leaders who control half of Sudan's new government, and who are now charged with protecting the people of Darfur, were the same military officers who commited war crimes in the region while serving al-Bashir. But even with that in mind, it looks like Darfur has its greatest opening for peace since the war started in 2003.

While UNAMID’s withdrawl constitutes a severe reduction in the UNs presence in Sudan, it does not mark a total withdrawl. A special political mission, the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) will replace UNAMID as a successor mission, with a focus on peacebuilding and engagement with the Sudanese government. It won’t have any troops, and will lack the Protection of Civilians mandate that was present in UNAMID. This transition is emblematic of Secretary-General Guterres’ peacekeeping strategy throughout his term. He has consistently favored smaller, cheaper, and more agilepolitical missions rather than larger, more capable, more expensive multidimensional peace operations.

UNAMID was a strange mission. A UN/AU hybrid, created as a result of a primarily western human rightscampaign rarely seen in peacekeeping history, it was able to accomplish some of its goals with limited support from New York. While it was not a full success, UNAMID taught UN peacekeeping as a whole vital lessons in inter-organizational cooperation, troop deployment, and Protection of Civilian missions that will hopefully be taken to heart going forward.

President Trump's Travel Ban: 2020 Updates

On January 27, 2017, President Trump’s administration issued Executive Order 13769, formally known as “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”; this order is also informally known as either the “Muslim ban” or the “travel ban.” It prevented all immigration and most travel from the Middle Eastern and African countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Despite mass protests and legal challenges, the order was legally upheld by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Hawaii. On January 31, 2020, nearly three years later, the Trump administration expanded the list of countries to include Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. The amended order was implemented on February 21, 2020. 

While the impact of the travel ban will inevitably differ widely from state to state, there is no serious universal rationale for implementing these policies. The stated reason by the Trump administration for the order’s expansion is that the countries listed have “displayed an ‘unwillingness or inability’ to adhere to ‘baseline’ security criteria,” specifically citing “insufficient information sharing from the countries’ governments about criminal and terrorism data, a lack of electronic passport systems and issues with Interpol reporting methods.” Even if this is true, the Trump administration hasn’t explained why these travel restrictions were not implemented sooner, or why similar violating countries haven’t also been hit with a travel ban. The reasoning behind the expansions is flawed at best and points to an ulterior motive at worse. Whatever the cause, by adding more banned countries to the list, President Trump disrupts vital refugee flows from Eritrea and Tanzania, angers important allies in Nigeria and Tanzania, and disrupts peace processes in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Eritrea 

Eritrea is a small nation located in the Horn of Africa, bordering the Red Sea, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Economically underdeveloped and politically repressed, it has been under the authoritarian rule of strongman Isaias Afwerki since independence. In August 2018, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace agreement that resolved several land disputes between the two countries and brought the “frozen conflict” between the two nations to an end. Ethiopian president Abiy Ahmed's role in resolving the conflict earned him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Unfortunately, the peace deal has stalled. Major joint economic deals that were in the treaty have failed to materialize, as have attempts to move troops away from the border. The U.S. has significant political capital in the region and could have played an important role in ensuring the peace deal functions as planned, preventing a resurgence in conflict. Nevertheless, by accusing the Eritrean government of being unable to maintain even basic security concerns, the U.S. is burning a major bridge with the power-hungry Afwerki. Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed has directly stated that “the government saw the ban as a political move that would hurt the country's relations with the US.”  This reduces the U.S.’s ability to assist in the peace process and severely hampers its traditionally “outsized role in the region” and the peace process. Damaging the peace process is especially ironic as most of the refugees that the travel ban is trying to stop are fleeing because of the conflict and conscription efforts that have been implemented as a result of the conflict. In addition, the regional economic growth, increased U.S. influence in the region, and increased regional stability makes peace the desired outcome for the U.S. regardless of the refugee situation. 

Nigeria 

In contrast to Eritrea, Nigeria is one of the giants of Africa. As Africa’s most populous country and its single largest economy, Nigeria has been a major political force since it gained independence from Britain in 1960. Imposing a travel restriction on Nigeria harms a major strategic relationship and major U.S. economic partner.

The United States and Nigeria have been close military and political partners since the early 2010s when Nigeria’s northern regions were besieged by a violent insurgency from the Islamist group Boko Haram. Boko Haram, which swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, killed tens of thousands of Nigerian civilians and forced 2.3 million Nigerians from their homes. While the threat from Boko Haram and affiliated extremist groups has subsided since 2015, the threat has not been eliminated. Since Boko Haram killed at least 30 civilians in February 2020, U.S. military and political assistance remain crucial to ensure the group can’t regain the power it had in 2015. The U.S. has been extremely crucial in the fight against Boko Haram, deploying many trainers and advisors to support Nigerian troops in the field, as well as supplying the Nigerians with the military equipment they need to maintain their counterinsurgency effort. 

U.S. assistance is jeopardized by the travel ban. Nigerian foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama was “blindsided” by the decision, indicating a negative reaction from the Nigerian government. Any decreased trust between the two governments could lead to decreased cooperation on vitally important security matters.

In addition, these travel restrictions harm the U.S. and Nigerian economies. Both countries are among the world's largest economies and have a strong trading relationship. The travel ban jeopardizes the economic relationships between American and Nigerian companies, as face-to face-meetings and conferences become harder to organize due to decreased “access to business and visitor visas and diversity visa lottery eligibility.” This damage to economic relations couldn’t come at a worse time. The African Union is planning to implement the Africa Continental Free Trade Area in July 2020, one of the largest free trade zones in the world. These restrictions, which function as de-facto economic sanctions, could disrupt American access to the overall African market. 

The travel ban also deprives the U.S. of an incredibly economically beneficial source of manpower, as NPR explains “first- and second-generation Nigerians are typically more educated and more likely to hold professional jobs than the general U.S. population.”

Tanzania

Tanzania is a large nation in eastern Africa and can be defined as an anocratic state that has experienced a backslide into autocracy in recent years under President John Magufuli. This includes increased arrests on false charges, abductions, or extrajudicial violence. The government has also increasingly cracked down on the LGBT population, and homosexuality is punishable by a prison sentence of 30 years to life. The travel ban could prevent people fleeing from finding refuge in the United States. If no other options exist, these people will be forced to stay in Tanzania.

Despite its domestic policies, Tanzania is an important U.S. counterterrorism partner. Ever since Al-Qaeda carried out a 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, the U.S. has provided military supplies and training that has ensured that terrorism in Tanzania remains a much smaller threat compared to its neighbors Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia. In addition, U.S. training has helped turn the Tanzanian military into a peacekeeping force that has deployed on several major UN peacekeeping missions in recent years. The travel ban has the potential to jeopardize an incredibly successful security relationship between the United States and Tanzania.

Sudan

Finally, Sudan is a large and populous nation in Northern Africa that recently split into Sudan and South Sudan in 2011 following a long and brutal civil war. The nation had been ruled by dictator Omar Bashir from 1989 until 2019 when mass protests and pressure from the military forced him to resign. Sudan is currently ruled by a power-sharing accord between the protest movement and the military, with the overall head of the government falling to military leader and possible war criminal Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. 

Sudan was on the first draft of the travel ban back in 2017 but was later removed after diplomatic pressure from the United Arab Emirates, who was receiving Sudanese military aid. Sudan’s inclusion in the updated travel ban only serves to further destabilize a nation that is teetering on the edge between dictatorship and democracy. The ban has sparked feelings of disappointment towards the U.S. from many young Sudanese people who are at the forefront of Sudan's revolution. By failing to signal the U.S.’s full support for the Sudanese people and their freedom of movement, the U.S. increases the possibility that the spark of democracy in one of the world's most historically oppressed countries fails to light.

In summary, the travel ban expansion is a strategic miscalculation for U.S. interests and relationships in Africa. It weakens the U.S.’s ability to fight ISIS affiliates in Nigeria and harms the U.S.’s friendship with Tanzania. It weakens an already strained peace deal in Eritrea and ensures that Eritrean and Tanzanian refugees can’t find refuge in the United States. It even hurts the economy by harming U.S. ties with the massive Nigerian economy.