There is strong bipartisan support for stopping the bloodshed in Darfur, Sudan. Many rightfully cheered the peace agreement reached in Abuja last week, including PSA’s Brian Vogt.

The 150-page plus agreement is good news – and calls for disarming the Janjaweed militias by October and the rebel groups after that. The ambitious accord (summary or whole agreement here) also directs the creation of buffer zones around the camps of internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Sudan and providing for humanitarian access corridors where rebel forces and Sudanese Armed Forces cannot go. 

Ok, that’s really easy. 

To get a feeling of the scale of the problem, look at the humbling maps constructed by the State Department’s Humanitarian Information Unit, showing the vast areas of IDP camps — the places needing protection. Then look at their map demonstrating the wide areas of attacks during 2005, to understand how big a task it is likely to be.

Whose job will this be? Certainly the parties to the agreement are expected to live by it – including the Government of Sudan, the Janjaweed and rebel groups. But an expanded role is also being directed for the African Union (AU) mission in Sudan, now comprised of roughly 7,000 personnel. (FYI: The AU’s first peacekeeping operation was in Burundi, in 2003. Darfur is the second operation.) In March, the members of the Security Council directed the UN headquarters staff to prepare plans for the AU mission to transition to a United Nations operation. While Khartoum has opposed the UN deploying to Darfur, the AU commander recently called for the UN to provide support, as has the United States.

With the Darfur agreement in hand, planning for a stronger peace operation there can really take hold. The United Nations, however, is strapped, leading 15 other peace operations with over 80,000 military and civilian personnel in the field. A new mission in Darfur – the size of Texas – will need nations to provide more than lip service to the UN and offer capable and sizable forces, equipment and financing at a minimum. Congress is on the verge of approving $130 million in the fiscal year 2006 appropriations supplemental for peacekeeping in Darfur. This funding is badly needed, especially at a time when the US budget for UN peace operations is already short by hundreds of millions and the Bush Administration has not yet asked Congress for what it really needs for 2007, including for Darfur.  

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