Badru Mulumba
1 June 2008
Juba — Inside a lecture hall with dust freshly stirred from a last-minute effort to clean the seats and rows of desks, Maj Omar Hayat Choudhury casts a sweeping glance over his audience.
"The need for peacekeeping operations increases by the year, as do the number of people needed to participate in them," the Bangladeshi military officer says, outlining the achievements of United Nations peacekeepers ahead of the May 29 International Peacekeepers Day.
Then he asks the audience whether there are any questions.
The questions from the audience, seated in the neat rows, are obviously not what Maj Choudry expected.
"How can you say you are keeping peace in Sudan while some areas, such as Abyei, are at war," asks a student. Anthony Agyenta, the civil affairs officer of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) steps in to answer, saying the mission is in the country at the invitation of the north and South Sudan, both of which are aware that the resolution of the conflict there lies in implementing the recommendations of the Abyei Boundary Commission.
"You are biased," Deng Jok, another student says, pointing to the Sudan national flag and questioning its use when South Sudan has a flag.
"The second issue is, you provide books in Arabic," Jok adds. "You favour the 'other' side." Suddenly, there is a heated discussion in the room, pitting the students against a panel from UNMIS.
But such talk is common in Southern Sudan, often taking place in informal settings and even in bars, with the United Nations almost invariably on the receiving end. The main question is, how can the organisation keep peace if it can't stop the fighting, and for how long should it maintain its hands-off stand?
After the latest round of fighting in Abyei, the organisation has been widely accused, in Internet chat rooms and news websites of evacuating foreign staff before thinking of local ones.
UNMIS denies the charge.
In fact some people say the UN's behaviour has brought back memories of what happened in Rwanda, where most local UN staff left behind were butchered during the genocide.
A director at the Sudan People's Liberation Movement secretariat added a new twist to the controversy last Friday when he not only accused the agency of bias, but claimed that some UNMIS officers had fought alongside the Sudan Armed Forces.
"Absolutely nonsensical," Qazi Ashraf, the special representative to the UN Secretary General told the press in response to the report.
However, for a long time now people have harboured doubts about the UN's impartiality in the area, even though they have not voiced it in public.
One issue has been the broadcasts on UN radio, which are done in Arabic. Asked about these accusations in January last year, Judith Goetz, then UNMIS political affairs analyst, said the organisation's mandate is to monitor and help implement the peace agreement.
To a growing number of southerners, unity will not be achieved simply by learning Arabic or listening to Arabic music.
If anything, Arabic stirs up memories of what they grew up fighting.
The bombing in Abyei displaced nearly 50,000 in just two days. That Abyei is about five percent of Darfur - a land mass of half a million square kilometres -- where 2.5 have been displaced over five years, means that the scale of tragedy in Abyei is worse. It's the equivalent of displacing one million people in Darfur in a single week.
Yet, this time, as every time there's a flare up in fighting, the UN, and the international community call for dialogue between the two parties. Each time, fighting erupts again.
The Abyei crisis is, apparently, at a point were it may never be possible for the two parties to agree on anything. As with Rwanda, in Abyei, the UN Security Council has maintained a largely hands-off attitude.
In Rwanda, the UN called on both sides to calm the situation right until the genocide claimed an estimated 800,000 people.
Even if it, hopefully, doesn't deteriorate down the road into a re-enactment of the Rwanda genocide, the Abyei conflict is diverting attention from the Sudan reconstruction.
During the panel discussion at Juba University, the UN panel apparently hoped that the giddy audience would ask about the mines that the world body has helped remove from southern Sudan.
Or the roads that the UN has helped construct.
Or, the humanitarian aid the UN has helped deliver to the displaced persons in Abyei. The audience was more interested in what the UN can do to end fighting. After all, what good is reconstruction when war seems inevitable every single day?
"Suppose I am attacked, and I am unable to defend myself, what would be the role of UN peace keepers," a student asked, even after the panelists said there would be no more questions on Abyei.
Major Choudhury never got to answer the questions for which he had prepared.
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