LONDON — From the air, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo looks like paradise on earth, a palette of rich, red earth, rolling green hills and crystal-blue lakes under a panoramic sky that seems to stretch on forever. But on the ground, the grim reality of one of the world’s most volatile and perennially ignored regions shocks, with its morass of frightened civilians, bellicose and well-armed fighters and an intractable conflict that threatens to boil over again into war. If that occurs, it will boost an already tragically bloody decade’s death toll, estimated at more than four million people, vastly higher. [...]
Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics [...]
The inadequate international reaction to September’s premeditated attack on the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) base in Haskanita, which killed 10 peacekeepers, has renewed concerns about the prospects for a successful peacekeeping mission in Darfur. Optimists hope that the conversion of AMIS into a joint African Union-United Nations mission (UNAMID) will prevent a recurrence of incidents like Haskanita by strengthening the peacekeepers’ military capabilities. Already, however, severe problems have arisen with the planned transformation, which call into question UNAMID’s ability to change matters fundamentally. Current plans are for UNAMID to have almost three times the number of troops as [...]
