Three years after the United States accused Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur and a full year after the United Nations began pushing to deploy its own peacekeeping force there, the conflict remains one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
There will be only about 6,500 UN peacekeepers in Darfur 10 days from now, when a new joint UN-African Union force (UNAMID) is scheduled to take over in western Sudan.
That's barely a quarter of the promised force of 26,000 peacekeepers who were supposed to replace 7,000 under-equipped, dejected and ineffective African Union troops who have been struggling to stop a conflict that has raged for nearly five years.
Before the UN even sets foot in Darfur, critics are predicting the mission could become the world's biggest peacekeeping failure.
It's too big, too disorganized and has no strategic plan. It lacks critical international support and is being hamstrung by the deliberate obstruction of the Sudanese government.
Last week, a coalition of 35 foreign aid groups working in Darfur issued a report that predicted "the deployment of this force is in danger of failing" and accused the government in Khartoum of "actively undermining the ability of the force to protect civilians."
"Sudan is saying 'yes' and then doing everything in its power to obstruct and undermine the hybrid force," said Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch.
"The Security Council has responded to this defiance with hand-wringing but nothing more."
"If it continues, the UN's hands will be tied as much as the African Union's have been, spelling disaster for the UN and more importantly for the Darfuri people," said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International's Africa director.
The new UN-led force is not expected to reach half-strength until March and UN negotiators are still unable to plan even the most basic elements of the Darfur peacekeeping operation.
General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan's President, has thrown as many roadblocks in the way of a UN deployment as possible.
He has refused to approve non-African troops for the combined forces, rejecting offers of help from Thailand, Norway and Nepal [emphasis added].
He has tried to impose limits on UN flights in Sudan, refusing landing rights to heavy-transport aircraft, restricting helicopter flights, and banning night flying. He has also refused adequate access to Port Sudan and refused to provide land or water for peacekeeping bases in Darfur.
Sudan has also demanded advance notification of all peacekeeping troop movements, which would cripple any rapid-response measures. It also wants the UN to shut down all communications systems when Sudan is conducting its own military operations...
...For the last five months the UN has been unable to find countries willing to supply two dozen helicopters needed to give peacekeepers the mobility they need to police Darfur, a region the size of France.
NATO members alone are said to own 18,000 helicopters but have not offered a single one for use in Darfur...
The conflict grows more complex by the day. It is no longer simply a fight between the Sudanese government and its Arab Janjaweed militias on one hand and African rebel groups on the other. The rebel groups and Arab tribes have fragmented and are now fighting among themselves.
Alliances constantly shift, banditry is rampant and violence threatens to spill over into neighbouring countries such as Chad and the Central African Republic.
Since the war over Darfur's resources broke out five years ago, more than 200,000 people have died from fighting, famine and disease, and 2.5 million more have been left homeless.
"While there are fewer deaths now than in 2003-04, the parties have splintered, confrontations have multiplied and violence is again rising," the Belgium-based International Crisis Group said in a recent report.
"Access for humanitarian agencies is decreasing, international peacekeeping is not yet effective and a political settlement is still far away," it said.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of UN peacekeeping, has already raised the possibility of abandoning the Darfur deployment [emphasis added], suggesting Sudanese restrictions on the force's movements and refusal to accept non-African troops could limit the UN's usefulness...
