NAIROBI, 20 May 2005 — Kenya will send 842 troops to a UN peacekeeping force being deployed in southern Sudan to back a January peace deal which ended more than two decades of civil war, the national security minister said yesterday.
The troops, who are currently being mobilized, will be part of a UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), John Michuki said in a meeting here with Sudan’s chief of general staff, Gen. Arabi Abdulla Ahmed.
“Some 842 personnel have been approved for deployment in southern Sudan under UNMIS,” according to a defense department’s statement seen by AFP.
The statement said 32 Kenyan army personnel are currently serving the African Union protection force in Darfur region and 10 others are based in the southern town of Juba for a demining program.
Years of conflict left most roads and vast swathes of arable land heavily-mined thus disrupting farming and pastoral activities and posing a danger to thousands of refugees returning home.
The UN Security Council on March 24 approved the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers to shore up a Jan. 9 peace agreement between Khartum and southern Sudan rebels which put an end to the 21-year north-south civil war in Sudan, Africa’s largest country.
The war in the south erupted in 1983 when the rebels rose up against Khartoum to end Arab and Muslim domination and marginalization of the black, animist and Christian south. While religion fuelled the conflict, vast reserves of oil, mostly in southern Sudan, played an increasingly dominant role in the war.
