To mark the fifth anniversary of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the United Nations has announced that it will not be deploying any meaningful numbers of "peacekeepers" until the end of this year.
The UN-African Union peacekeeping force proposed for Sudan's Darfur region will take most of 2008 to deploy fully, the UN's head of peacekeeping has said.
Jean-Marie Guehenno said not enough troops had been contributed to the force. Only 9,000 of 26,000 planned troops have been deployed so far.It is the first time the UN has said there could be such a long delay.
About 200,000 people have been killed and two million displaced in five years of conflict in the western province.
The mission – United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid) – has been delayed by obstacles imposed by the Sudanese government, including restrictions on the force's communications and a ban on night flights.
The conflict began in February of 2003 and the UN has, so far, achieved a spiffy acronym for their nonexistent peacekeeping force. Thank heavens the UN has its priorities straight. After all, the Year of the Potato is a much more pressing concern than a bunch of people threatened with something as unimportant as imminent death.
Seriously, why in the world is there any thinking human being who believes the UN is good for anything at all?
Kosovo. Rwanda. Darfur. Burma. Kenya. God help them all. The UN hasn't.
