Without helicopters from the international community, the joint African Union/United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur was "doomed to failure", the mission's force commander said in Pretoria this week.
Nigerian General Martin Luther Agwai said many countries, including South Africa, had been asked to supply the 18 utility helicopters, six attack helicopters and one civilian aircraft which the hybrid Darfur peacekeeping mission, named Unamid, badly needed.
Speaking at the Institute for Security Studies, Agwai said the aircraft were needed because of the great distances and bad roads in Darfur, the western region of Sudan which is about the size of Spain.
He said he was convinced that with helicopters Unamid could have saved the lives of some of its 12 Namibian, Nigerian, Malian and Senegalese peacekeeping troops who were killed when rebels attacked their base at Haskanita in September 2007.
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Agwai said Unamid's commanders at their large base in Al-Fashir knew of the evening attack within 35 minutes but it took them nearly 24 hours to reach Haskinita.
Civilian helicopter pilots working for Unamid refused to fly to Haskinita because they said they were not equipped to enter a war zone.
"I am positive that some of our troops would not have bled to death if we had helicopters," Agwai said.
Admitting that he had not wanted the job of commanding Unamid because of its huge challenges, the general lamented "the unpalatable truth that Unamid is a peacekeeping force with no peace to keep".
Although the Sudanese government and one faction of the rebel Sudanese People's Army had signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006, several other rebel groups had refused to sign it and so the fighting had continued and had proliferated as each rebel group fragmented into several smaller ones.
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