Sudan, AU and UN weigh exit of UNAMID from Darfur

Sudan, the African Union and the UN continue their talks in Khartoum Monday on an exit strategy for the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), after Khartoum repeatedly demanded that the hybrid mission leave the area.

The meeting, which has no time ceiling, is expected to continue until a deal is reached on UNAMID's gradual exit from the country, according to Ambassador Abdalla Al-Azraq, head of the Sudanese side.

UNAMID was established by the UN Security Council in 2007 to protect civilians and help ensure humanitarian assistance in Darfur, where fighting between rebel groups and government forces, with its allied militia, has led to the deaths of about 300,000 people and displaced nearly two million over the past 10 years, a recent UN report said.

Khartoum has however many justifications to demand the exit of the mission, according to Sudanese officials, as they believe that UNAMID has failed to fulfill its task and become a burden for the Sudanese government instead.

UNAMID is "restricted in its movements and does not receive acceptance from all the conflicting parties, not to mention that it is suffering from lack of logistics," said Ambassador Abdalla Al-Azraq, head of the Sudanese side to the meetings.

He added that UNAMID has even failed to "provide security for its personnel, let alone the population of the region, where in many occasions it demanded the Sudanese authorities to provide protection for the mission personnel and bases."

Meanwhile, Khartoum has recently escalated its campaign against UNAMID due to the latter's media reports that accused members of the Sudanese Armed Forces of mass rape operations against women in Tabit village in North Darfur State.

Al-Saddiq Abdul-Jalil, a Sudanese political analyst, even believed that UNAMID has become a source for funding the armed movements in Darfur.

"During the past two years alone, UNAMID has lost 121 four-wheel-drive vehicles, 113 pieces of weapon, 30 shields and 122 barrels of fuel besides great amounts of ammunition. This has become like funding the Darfur movements," Abdul-Jalil told Xinhua.

UNAMID is considered the second biggest peacekeeping mission in the world, after the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It's consisted of over 20,000 personnel of military, police and civilian components, with a budget of 1.4 million U.S. dollars in 2013. Endit