AU boosts troop levels in Darfur

The African Union (AU) began boosting its peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region on Friday with the arrival of 50 Nigerian troops. A further 237 soldiers from Rwanda are expected to arrive on Saturday to help try and end violence that has driven more than 1.5 million people from their homes, the AU said. "More troops from Nigeria and from other African countries are expected to be deployed in the following days," the AU said in a statement from its headquarters in Addis Ababa. The 53-nation AU announced earlier in October that it would boost its force in Darfur from 390 to 3,320 troops and civilian police. The force will include 450 unarmed military observers, a major increase from the 80 currently deployed there to monitor a shaky ceasefire between two rebel groups fighting government troops and allied militia. An armed security force of 310 troops is protecting the observers. The force will be increased to 2,341. The new mission will also include 815 civilian police officers and 164 civilian staff. The US $220-million (€175 million) one-year operation will be funded mainly by the European Union and the United States. "These new deployments, together with the 310 military personnel from Nigeria and Rwanda that the AU had already sent to Darfur earlier in August, will bring the military component of the African mission in Sudan to 597 troops," the AU added. Darfur's troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and their African farming neighbours over dwindling water and agricultural land. Those tensions erupted into violence in February 2003 when two African-rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen. An estimated 70,000 people have died since the conflict broke out, according to UN figures. Nearly 1.5 million more have fled to refugee camps. American Secretary of State Colin Powell said in July that Sudan's government and allied Arab militia, the Janjawid, had committed acts of genocide against Darfur's non-Arab villagers.