Writing in Tuesday's International Herald Tribune, three German scholars -- and authors of a forthcoming study on "UN Peace Operations and Organizational Learning" -- provide an accurate summary of the challenges facing UN peacekeeping and its new chief, Alain Le Roy. What makes this op-ed so compelling is its authors' careful and consistent specification that member states -- not the amorphous collections of these member states, such as the "UN" or the "Security Council" -- are responsible for both the struggles of UN peacekeeping and their potential solutions. An example of this simple, but so frequently ignored, distinction:

UN member states have neglected making crucial investments in the support infrastructure for an expanding network of large peace operations with increasingly complex tasks, from protecting civilians to rebuilding defunct institutions in post-conflict states. [emphasis mine]

Far too often, the convenient shorthand "UN" replaces this specification, and the entire body is unjustifiably branded for the failings of specific countries to follow through on their words and commitments. This is why I was disappointed to read one particular word in the op-ed's subsequent sentence:

As a result, the UN apparatus is severely overstretched, exhibiting increasingly serious pathologies ranging from sluggish deployments to shocking sexual abuse scandals.

These are not pathologies. For one, the sexual abuse scandals, while indeed "shocking" and certainly unacceptable, are the deviations of a relatively small number of peacekeepers, not the symptoms of a systemic disease in UN peacekeeping. And as specified elsewhere in the piece, slow deployment should be chalked up squarely on Member States' insufficient offers of troops and political pressure. Yet the use of the word "pathologies" suggests that these blemishes -- manifestations of Member State shortcomings -- are somehow endemic to UN peacekeeping.

This is one minor slip-up, and goes against the tone of the piece as a whole, which I strongly encourage you to read, as it also offers welcome insight into the pressing -- and dangerously increasingly ignored -- stipulation that UN peacekeepers should only be deployed where there is a peace to keep.

Senator Bill Nelson is holding a hearing today on UN Peacekeeping. UN Dispatch got a peek at of one of his props.

The blue and red lines on the second chart denote the what the United States is assessed in peacekeeping dues and the administration's budget request for peacekeeping, respectively. Clearly, the trends elucidated in these two charts are simply unsustainable in the long run; the United States cannot keep approving mission after mission at the Security Council and then underfund the entire enterprise.

Check back for updates from the hearing throughout the day. [The hearing was yesterday]

This bad news out of Darfur puts an exclamation point on the danger of attempting to keep a non-existent peace in increasingly hostile territory.

A peacekeeper serving with the joint African Union-United Nations force in Darfur (UNAMID) was killed today while on patrol in the strife-torn region, just one week after seven blue helmets with the mission were slain. The peacekeeper was killed in Forobaranga in West Darfur state, according to preliminary information received by UNAMID, the mission said in a press statement.

The UN has insinuated that the attack last week was the responsibility of the Sudanese government, and at least one Security Council member is pushing a resolution officially condemning the attack (albeit not explicitly identifying Khartoum as the culprit). While no official word has come out of Forobaranga, I can't help but fear that this attack may be tied to the government's anger that its president has been recommended for indictment by the ICC. At any rate, the mission courageously keeps plugging on (though non-essential staff are being evacuated as a precaution):

UNAMID said its troops have been continuing to conduct patrols in the region on Sudan's western flank, despite the violence and instability, with 16 patrols conducted today. Humanitarian activities are also ongoing and a Chinese engineering company is due to join the mission tomorrow.

Whether the Sudanese government, militias, rebels, or armed bandits were responsible for this latest killing is immaterial. Whatever the reason, attacking those whose job is to protect displaced innocents is reprehensible, and UNAMID peacekeepers should not be treated as sitting ducks in a reactionary game of global politics.

When Megan McArdle poses the question, "To fight or not to fight?" she hypothesizes that the answer largely rests on whether the United States opts to involve itself in a foreign intervention. Without American participation, she contends, "no one else is going to do it for us--the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur, none of Iraq's neighbors can help it if it erupts into civil war, and so forth."

To this Matthew Yglesias adds the much-needed caveat that the participation of other countries in foreign interventions can in fact add value in terms of both military effectiveness and political legitimacy. He also rightly cautions that this argument -- that American initiative is the only way to mount a serious intervention -- can dangerously provide cover for a more naked unilateralist streak.

I would add the important reminder that not all "fighting" is equal, and, more significantly, that not all interventions must amount to combat. War-fighting, counter-insurgency, and peacekeeping are, just to name a few, all very different phenomena that each operate according to very different rules and whose effectiveness require very different types of involvement. To McArdle's example that "the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur," then, the obvious answer is of course not. The peacekeeping force in Darfur is exactly that: a peacekeeping force. Peace does not come at the barrel of a gun -- least of all at the barrel of an American gun -- and the only ones that can make peace, unfortunately, are the parties at war themselves.

This does not mean that the U.S. and other countries have no role to play in such peacebuilding situations. Rather, these type of scenarios demand, if anything, more multilateral involvement, as international diplomatic pressure -- particularly from neighboring countries with a stake in stabilizing their region -- will go a lot farther in pressing for a peace accord than will American troops.

According to the official Xinhua news service, China is sending a new deployment of 315 military engineers to Darfur.

With a third group of Chinese peacekeepers sent to Sudan to replace their predecessors, China has sent more than 10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions.

At the request of the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, China decided to participate in a hybrid force of the United Nations and the African Union.

China promised to send a 315-member engineering unit to Darfur. So far, the first group of 143 engineers has been dispatched to Darfur, where it is at work.

I'm not entirely sure how Xinhua came up with the claim that China has sent "10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions" as China is only the 13th largest (pdf) troop contributor with nearly 2000 military and police in the field. Still, China's stepped up participation in the Darfur - African Union mission is certainly welcome. Welcome too would be Beijing using its diplomatic suasion with Khartoum to help lift restrictions on the Darfur mission.

Meanwhile, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations announced a French successor to Jean-Marie Guehenno, the very capable Undersecretary General who headed peacekeeping operations since 2000. Alain Le Roy, who cut his teeth in the Balkans, will succeed Guehenno.

The struggles to deploy and fully equip the joint UN-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) are well-documented and oft commented-upon. Less frequently does one hear of what the peacekeeping force is doing to protect the people of Darfur. Yesterday, the mission's representative, Rodolphe Adada, took to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to give readers a sense of what peacekeeping on the ground actually looks like.

Writing from Al Fasher, Darfur, Adada confidently assures the world that, despite the international community's slow response in providing equipment and personnel, "We are not sitting on our hands waiting for the troops and material to arrive."

Every day our blue-helmeted peacekeepers carry out patrols right across Darfur, an area the size of Texas. They defend thousands of innocent Darfurians, such as women from the camps gathering firewood to cook meals for their families. One of the most disgusting aspects of this conflict has been the widespread rape of women by armed thugs on all sides. Unamid is carrying out more and more night patrols to increase this protection around the clock.

Critics say we are hunkered down, yet the facts speak for themselves: In January, when our mission began, we carried out 271 patrols. Last month, it was 644, or more than 20 a day.

Our peacekeepers intervene on a daily basis across the length and breadth of Darfur to calm tensions arising from cattle losses, water distribution and land ownership - issues at the heart of the conflict. These missions are critical, successful and welcomed by Darfurians, but they do not make international headlines.

Some of our more impassioned critics call on us to intervene more forcefully. I would remind them that Unamid is a peacekeeping force. We are here to keep a peace that doesn't exist. It is the duty of the belligerents - and there are many - to make peace. As Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, our force commander, stated recently, even if we were at full deployment our peacekeepers are not here to stand between rival armies and militias engaged in full-scale combat.

Adada's last point bears remembering. Peacekeepers are deployed to ensure compliance with an existing ceasefire, something that does not exist in Darfur right now. They are not armies, and are not meant to square off against opposing armies. Given the unwillingness of both sides of Darfur's conflict to commit to a meaningful peace accord, as well as the inability of Member States to furnish UNAMID with what it needs, Adada's peacekeepers are doing the best they can.

Read the whole op-ed here.

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai writes a powerful op-ed in the Guardian today extolling the international community to intervene in Zimbabwe.

[w]e need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns...

Intervention is a loaded concept in today's world, of course. Yet, despite the difficulties inherent in certain high-profile interventions, decisions not to intervene have created similarly dire consequences. The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong. It is one in which the international community must become more than a moral participant. It must become mobilised.

Even if the cause is just, the big question here is who should intervene? Tsvangirai envisions a UN peacekeeping force, and that very well may be an option down the road. But for now, it is important to keep in mind that the United Nations has no standing peacekeeping force ready to be deployed at the drop of a hat. So far, member states have not yet made that kind of investment in UN peacekeeping, so as a result, UN peacekeeping does not have capacity simply waiting to be deployed.

That said, the Security Council could very well approve the intervention of a multi-national force operating under Chapter VII authority. Eventually, that force might transition to a standard UN peacekeeping mission. This was the model used for East Timor; in 1999 the Council authorized an Australian-led multi-national force, which transitioned into a standard UN peacekeeping mission that helped prepare for East Timor's elections and independence. The big difference between Zimbabwe and East Timor, though, is that no member state with a sophisticated military (aside from Great Britain, which is burdened by its colonial past) seems willing to take on this mission. Until a member state or group of states decides to step up, it is hard to imagine Zimbabwe will play host to the kind of intervention for which Tsvangirai is pleading.

(Image: An Australian peacekeeper patrols the streets of Dili, by David Axe. From World Politics Review)

UPDATE: In a letter to the editor of the Guardian, Tsvangirai denies authorship of the op-ed

Yesterday, The New York Times published an editorial criticizing the UN Security Council for demonstrating insufficient "will" and "urgency" to stop the genocide in Darfur. The Times is rightly frustrated with both the Sudanese government's persistent obstructionism and the international community's failure to pony up sufficient funding, supplies, and troops for the peacekeeping force there. The editorial also urges all the right policy steps, including additional sanctions, pressure on China, and support for the International Criminal Court.

So what's wrong with the Times' well-meaning and largely on-target editorial? Well, only that it may be aiming at an overly broad target . This complaint may seem nit-picky, but the Times, by focusing its indignation on the Security Council "as a whole," is problematically conflating the umbrella of the "Council" with its component parts -- the member states that make up the body and guide its decisions and courses of action. In a sense, then, the Times is missing the trees for the forest -- and individual trees, particularly those falling out of line with the rest of the forest, make far better targets than the entire forest.

While unanimous Security Council action is always the goal -- with regards to Darfur as well as any other subject of the Council's attention -- this cannot be achieved by simply chastising the entire institution; this is akin to blaming the Times "as a whole" for the words of, say, its editorial board. Using the term "Security Council" may often be convenient, but it casually glosses over the fact that the group -- like the whole UN system -- is no more than the sum of its parts, and that addressing criticisms to these individual countries, all of which act and vote according to their own interests, is both more effective and more intellectually honest. The Times' editorial in fact acknowledges that member states bear the greatest responsibility for the Council's action or inaction:

But a minority of Council members, led by China, have let their economic interests -- in Beijing's case substantial investments in Sudan's abundant oil supplies -- trump their moral and legal responsibility to thwart genocide. Last week, China's president, Hu Jintao, used stronger-than-usual language to urge Khartoum to cooperate with United Nations peacekeepers and enforce a cease-fire in Darfur. If China is prepared to back up those words with a tougher line in the Security Council, it could make a huge difference.

China is not the only Security Council member that needs to step up its action on Darfur. Greater individual commitments from all 15 nations -- particularly the "P5" of China, Russia, the U.S., U.K., and France -- are prerequisites to stronger and more concerted pressure on Sudan. With the signs coming from President Hu's language, from yesterday's unified support for ICC prosecutions, and from the U.S. Congress' progress in allocating funds for desperately-needed helicopters, these stepwise requirements seem to be gradually being notched up.

Kosovo's constitution went into force on Sunday, but unsurprisingly, this has not ended disputes over the country's status. The UN has been running Kosovo since 1999, and the new constitution envisions handing power over to the ethnic Albanian government, with assistance in key areas from the European Union.

Russia and Serbia, however, say that an E.U. presence violates international law unless it is approved by the UN Security Council. Russia, a long time opponent of Kosovo independence and a veto holding permanent member of the Security Council, would most likely stand in the way of any move toward autonomy in the province. This means they are not likely to allow the UN to fully hand responsibility over to the E.U., and it looks like the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is in for the long haul.

But even though UNMIK is not allowed to leave, the head of the mission, Joachim Ruecker is. He announced his departure today during a meeting with Kosovo's President. He has been the head of the mission since 2006.

Read more here and here.

Today is International Peacekeeper's Day. In a new video for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations Messenger for Peace George Clooney explains what peace is not...

To send a note of thanks to the over 100,000 peacekeepers serving in 17 conflict zones around the world, click here.

Last week's ambush of a convoy of Nigerian peacekeepers in Darfur -- at the hands of 60 well-armed bandits (likely janjaweed militias), wearing military uniforms and wielding machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades -- adds yet another exclamation point to the urgent need to bolster UNAMID, the joint UN-AU peacekeeping force still struggling to patrol an area the size of France with just 9,000-odd troops. UNAMID's spokesman, Norredine Mezni, captures the difficulties faced by the force well:

"We have bandits and we have armed groups and we have the (rebel) factions. With our very limited number of troops, it is not an easy job," Mezni told Reuters.

"We are a peacekeeping organisation but there is no peace on the ground to keep. We are appealing for the cooperation of all sides in this conflict. We are here to help."

Mezni could not be more on the mark. As much as the attack underscored the urgency both of deploying more peacekeepers and of better supplying those currently on the ground, the need for "cooperation of all sides" is ultimately the bedrock on which UNAMID -- as a neutral, peacekeeping force -- must operate. NYT correpondent Lydia Polgreen characterizes the attack as "a humiliating blow," but the scales seem far too overwhelmingly stacked against UNAMID to justify calling this an embarrassment. Rather, the ambush emphasizes how unattainable the mission's goals are in an atmosphere of such uninhibited obstruction from all sides. UNAMID simply cannot function when continually harassed by rebels, militias, government bureaucracy, and opportunistic raiders. Instead of depicting the UN-AU peacekeepers as hapless victims, though, the international community should recognize their unsustainable position, and take stronger steps to address the root causes of their situation.

In such a lawless society, perhaps this is not surprising:

U.N. experts investigating violations of an arms embargo against Somalia report that countries and private traders are supplying weapons to warlords and militants, South Africa's U.N. ambassador said Thursday.

Even more disturbing, though, is who seems to be providing the weapons. The UN monitoring group contends that the presence of Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's unstable government itself violates the arms embargo and that, in addition, some Ugandan members of the African Union peacekeeping force in the country have been selling weapons back to the insurgents that they are disarming. Both Ethiopia and Uganda have denied the allegations, but they nonetheless reflect the dangerously complicated situation in a country with all too many weapons and armed groups, and not nearly enough food or humanitarian involvement.

Many Somalis already resent what they term the Ethiopian "occupation" of their country, and the UN group's findings certainly will not improve Ethiopia's image in their eyes. The news about the peacekeepers from Uganda, which was one of only a few countries willing to contribute troops to the severely undermanned AU contingent in the country, helps explain why South Africa's UN ambassador -- who was also the head of the committee monitoring Somalia's arms embargo -- was so excited about the Security Council's recent agreement that they should begin planning to step up the UN presence there.

Oh yes, and pirates may be involved in the arms smuggling as well.

"Who will watch the peacekeepers?" asks a former UN internal investigator in a New York Times op-ed today. The issue at hand are allegations that a contingent of Pakistani peacekeepers in eastern DRC trafficked in arms for gold with a local militia. The allegations are serious, and at least one prominent human rights organization has taken issue with the way the United Nations has handled the situation.

But the op-ed today drives at a deeper question: what to do about miscreant peacekeepers in general? Right now, there are over 100,000 peacekeepers in 19 missions around the world. The vast majority are putting their lives on the line every day to help bring peace to the most troubled places on earth. But by the laws of averages, a certain percentage is going to be bad apples. The challenge, therefore, is to reduce the percentage of bad apples through strengthening procedures that ensure individual criminal accountability.

This is much easier said than done. One of the main hurdles is jurisdiction; where should Pakistani soldiers who commit crimes in DRC be held accountable? Principals of justice would demand that the crimes be tried locally, but most places where peacekeepers are deployed don't have functioning judiciaries.

The other option is to send them home. As of June 2007, there is a new "Model Memorandum of Understanding" between a troop contributing country and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations which obliges countries to forward allegations of improprieties to national authorities. In practice, though, once a peacekeeper is repatriated there is no way for the DPKO to force prosecutors of his home country to actually take on the case. To further complicate things, the growing demand for peacekeepers around the world means there would be grave consequences for missions around the world should the DPKO refuse troop contributions from a country that does not adequately punish its miscreant peacekeepers. With demand for peacekeepers so high, punishing a major troop contributing country for reneging on its agreement with the DPKO may simply not be feasible.

One possible solution to the jurisdiction problem may be the use of on-site courts-martial. In a landmark report on peacekeeper accountability, Jordanian UN Ambassador asked Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, (a former civilian peacekeeper) recommended this option because of its potential to demonstrate to the local population that peacekeepers do not enjoy immunity and do not go unpunished. (And because troops would still fall under national jurisdiction.) Member states and troop contributing countries have yet to fully get behind this idea. But to the extent that scandals like the current one in eastern DRC raise questions about the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping operations in the minds of locals, there must be stronger accountability mechanisms for miscreant peacekeepers.

(Image: Peacekeeping forces at a ceremony in East Timor. From Britannica. )

At least one person on the UN Security Council is enthusiastic about the possibility of a robust UN peacekeeping force deploying to Somalia.

"I am so excited! I'm over the moon!" South Africa's jubilant U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo told reporters afterwards.

Somalis are also likely to be pleased by the news, because it indicates a firm UN commitment to help alleviate the deteriorating humanitarian and political situation in their country. The African Union also welcomes UN involvement, as its contingent of 2,600 Ugandan and Burundian troops is not sufficient to maintain security as the country slowly opens up a peace process. One reason that this force has remained so deeply undermanned is because neighboring countries are loathe to involve their troops in a regional conflagration; UN peacekeepers from all over the world will not have this problem.

Possible troop-contributing countries may be less ecstatic, however, at the prospect of ponying up additional contributions to the over 110,000 blue helmets already deployed around the world. Other commentators are also likely to question the feasibility of rounding up troops for another UN peacekeeping mission when the force in Darfur remains over 16,000 personnel short of its target size.

These are legitimate concerns, and, in calling for preparations for possible UN deployment, the Security Council is in fact anticipating the difficulty of obtaining peacekeepers. Setting out the conditions for dispatching a peacekeeping mission to Somalia -- while simultaneously pushing for more concerted pressure in broader peace negotiations -- is not mere bureaucratic red tape; it is a prudent recognition that simply throwing in troops that the international community cannot yet provide would not solve either Somalia's political or humanitarian woes. Pragmatism is necessary on deliberations of whether, when, and how UN peacekeepers -- or a coalition under a different guise, which was one of the options laid out in the Secretary-General's most recent report on Somalia -- deploy to Somalia, but to allow the weight of the difficulties of achieving such a deployment to trump the actual needs of the situation on the ground would smack of expediency and perpetrate a great disservice on Somalis.

Another sign of UN success in West Africa. From the UN News Centre:

The United Nations mission in Sierra Leone has made "significant progress" in supporting the Government to consolidate peace in the country, by strengthening the security sector, by promoting human rights and the rule of law, and by helping prepare for upcoming elections, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report.

However, Mr. Ban also cautions that the "the country continues to experience political tension along ethnic and regional lines" and cites high unemployment, poor economic and social conditions, and the rising price of food and gasoline, as other factors which "have the potential to derail the peace consolidation process."

This update on the improving situation in Sierra Leone follows similarly encouraging news out of neighboring Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. As Ban's prudent warning suggests, however, these transitions toward peace and democracy in West Africa do not come unaccompanied by serious lingering problems and potential pitfalls. After easing violent societies into stability, the UN faces perhaps the even steeper challenge of consolidating these gains and ensuring that former war zones become politically and economically sustainable. That's why the peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, scheduled to withdraw in September, will be replaced by a peacebuilding office.

These peacebuilding efforts will be funded out of the UN's relatively new Peacebuilding Fund, created in late 2006 to provide societies transitioning toward peace with "a crucial bridge between conflict and recovery at a time when other funding mechanisms may not yet be available." Despite the enormity and importance of its work, though, the Peacebuilding Fund has received less than a third of the money it needs to operate -- including zero contributions from the United States.

As Bill Durch pointed out in his launch of the UN Dispatch/FP Passport online salon, UN peacekeeping is, on the whole, experiencing a tremendous period of growth. Lest we assume that this is unrestrained growth, however -- a criticism levied by UN skeptics who bemoan what they perceive as an excessive number of UN mandates -- it bears reminding that, as I've argued before, the most successful peacekeeping missions are those that are able to decrease their presence. Responding to David's comment, the UN, despite the overall expansion of its responsibilities around the globe, has indeed shepherded a number of peacekeeping missions toward this mark of success.

I wrote previously about Cote d'Ivoire's transition toward a peaceful drawdown of UN peacekeepers. Now, visiting the neighboring West African country of Liberia, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged continuing support for that formerly war-torn nation, as the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force there gradually begins its carefully structured process of withdrawal. While problems of poverty, corruption, and an inadequate justice system still trouble Liberia, UN peacekeepers have had remarkable success calming the country's civil war, bringing its former dictator to justice, organizing its historic elections, and helping to restitch the fabric of its society. The withdrawal, moreover, is timed according to specific benchmarks and the requirements of Liberia's situation.

The mission's chief, Ellen Loj, said drawdown, agreed in UN Security Council resolution 1777 in 2007, is planned meticulously so as to "minimise all potential security threats to the state".

AFP also gives a snapshot of the mission's achievements:

Between November 2003 and October 2004, 101,495 fighters were disarmed and demobilised, with 90,000 resettled back into civilian life, mission statistics showed.

More than 500,000 displaced persons have also returned, while UNMIL has trained 3,662 new police agents who are gradually assuming their roles.

A total of 358 presidential guards, 139 prison guards, 37 immigration officers and 210 customs officials have also been groomed for duty.

The UN peacekeeping force has helped rebuild 3,000 (1,875 miles) kilometres of roads and worked on some 300 projects to restore and repair schools, health centres, wells, courts and police stations.

Most indicatively, the mission inspires confidence in Liberians, even as it begins its drawdown:

"As long as the UN forces are here, I don't see why we have to worry about the possibility of destabilisation," Moses Gbartu, a traditional chieftain in the country's north told AFP.

"I thought there was going to be confrontations during disarmament, but UNMIL showed prudence, vigilance and strictness," added shopkeeper Miattah Duago.

UN peacekeepers are not going to disappear from Liberia overnight -- this round of troop withdrawals will still leave around 12,000 blue helmets there in October -- and problems are likely to remain during this period, and persist after the UN's departure. Increasingly, however, Liberia's institutions will assume control of these problems, and the UN's role there will increasingly shift to one providing political and humanitarian support. In the world of peacekeeping, results may come in fits and starts, and only manifest themselves slowly, but it is important to appreciate the positive signs along the way.

Very disturbing news out of Darfur, from The Guardian:

The World Food Programme is to halve food rations for up to 3 million people in Darfur from next month because of insecurity along the main supply routes. At least 60 WFP lorries have been hijacked since December in Sudan's western province, where government forces and rebels have been at war for five years. The hijacks have drastically curtailed the delivery of food to warehouses ahead of the rainy season that lasts from May to September, when there is limited market access and crop stocks are depleted.

Instead of the normal ration of 500 grams of cereal a day, people in displaced persons' camps and conflict-affected villages will only get 225 grams from next month, the UN agency said yesterday. Rations of pulses and sugar will also be halved, giving people barely 60% of their recommended minimum daily calorie intake.

The WFP said that while Sudan's government provided security for convoys on the main supply routes, the escorts were too infrequent, given the huge demand for food at this time of year. "Attacks on the food pipeline are an attack on the most vulnerable people in Darfur," said Josette Sheeran, the agency's executive director. "With up to 3 million people depending on us for their survival in the rainy season, keeping WFP's supply line open is a matter of life and death. We call on all parties to protect the access to food."

Sheeran's exhortation painfully underscores the urgent need for a larger and more robust peacekeeping force in Darfur. The parties responsible for disrupting WFP's supply lines -- government and rebel forces, as well as opportunistic bandits -- are not going to police themselves, as severing -- or appropriating -- humanitarian aid is often, perversely, the exact purpose of these groups. Protecting humanitarian supply lines, then, is one area in which a neutral peacekeeping force can have an immediate impact -- even before Darfur's sputtering peace process can achieve a sustainable political solution.

At a Global Day for Darfur event here on the Mall in Washington last Sunday, Amnesty International and Tents of Hope had set up an evocative display of little baggies containing the amount of food that each Darfurian in an Internally Displaced Persons Camp receives each day. The small piles of lentils and flour were not much, and halving even that meager amount bodes very poorly indeed for the future of Darfur's displaced.

At a press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday afternoon, President Bush sought to explain why stronger action has yet to be taken vis-a-vis Darfur.

We shared our deep concern about the people in Darfur. And I -- I share frustrations that the United Nations-AU peacekeeping force is slow in arriving. I made the decision not to put our troops in there on the expectation that the United Nations, along with the AU, could be effective -- and they haven't been as effective as they should be, and we'll continue to work to help them.

The slow deployment of UNAMID -- the peacekeeping force scheduled to reach full deployment in Darfur over three months ago -- is indeed frustrating. But the argument that Bush is making here -- a myth that he has promulgated before -- is deeply disingenuous. The alternative to a slow-deploying UN force was never sending U.S. troops into Darfur; this option was simply never on the table. No U.S. troops have been available for this kind of peacekeeping mission -- let alone those in Liberia, Congo, Lebanon, and the other various war zones where the UN is deployed -- nor would sending U.S. troops to these places, or to Darfur, necessarily have been a good idea. As Condoleezza Rice reminds Bush in Nick Kristof's imagined rendition, "you can't invade a third Muslim country, especially one with oil."

No, the alternative to U.S. troops in Darfur was, is, and will continue to be putting an effective UN peacekeeping force on the ground there, which the U.S. has been in the most opportunistic position to ensure. By failing to provide more robust support for UN peackeeping, to invest a deeper commitment in Sudan's tortured peace processes, and to exert more concerted pressure on Sudan and its enablers, the U.S. has consistently watched opportunities for peace and protection in Darfur sail by. Faulting the UN for a slow-deploying and under-resourced peacekeeping mission is a bit like blaming one's shadow. If the U.S. is going to cast stones at the UN, it would do well to remember that the UN is no more than its Member States, and that the U.S., with the huge amount of influence and funding that it brings to the world body, may well end up looking to itself, with a stone in its hands.

Yet President Bush continues to present this false dichotomy: unilateral U.S. military action, for which the American population largely has no stomach, versus a failed UN mission, which the U.S. can conveniently scapegoat for the continually deteriorating situation in Darfur. The media should call the administration out on this self-exculpatory tactic, and the U.S. should discard its smoke and mirrors and work honestly with the international community to achieve real, tangible progress in Darfur.

MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is typically -- and accurately -- described as, at over 17,000 uniformed personnel, the largest such mission currently deployed. What is less frequently considered, however, is the sheer size of the ground that these 17,000 peacekeepers have to cover. Just take a look at a map.

DR Congo is about the size of Western Europe. With that perspective, it's easy to understand why the Secretary-General, in his most recent report on the mission, worries that it risks becoming "stretched to the limit" as it transitions almost entirely to the eastern part of the country. Indeed, at a press conference in New York yesterday, the Secretary-General's Special Representative to MONUC, Alan Doss, confirmed that 92% of the mission's forces were now deployed in eastern Congo -- a crucial repositioning that will help the mission build on January's ceasefire in the volatile region.

Even in just two of Congo's smallest provinces, though, UN peacekeepers still have to patrol an area the size of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg combined. Speaking today at the Wilson Center, Mr. Doss made the telling analogy that MONUC's task of patrolling one of these provinces, South Kivu, is equivalent to having one police officer cover all of Manhattan, plus a sizable chunk of Brooklyn.

We often don't appreciate how tall of a task UN peacekeepers in remote, expansive , violent locations face. Give that statistic to a police officer in New York City, though, and I imagine s/he'll appreciate it a whole lot more.

For all intents and purposes, many analysts have argued, the conflicts in Chad, Darfur, and the Central African Republic essentially amount to one regional war. Today, the U.S. Senate officially recognized this interconnectedness, and called on the parties involved to cease all violence, push for peace, and stop supporting rebel groups in one another's territory. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), the sponsor of the bipartisan resolution:

"The conflicts in Chad, the Central African Republic, and Sudan cannot be resolved in a vacuum because they have both domestic and regional implications. A sustainable peace requires good-faith negotiations both within and between the countries with strong monitoring by the international community," Feingold said. "I am pleased the Senate has sent such an important and timely message. The international community cannot ignore the complex cross-border problems that have resulted in great suffering."

While the resolution is largely hortatory, it takes an important step in addressing the chaos spawned by the Darfur genocide holistically, rather than as an insulated humanitarian imperative. Civilians in the region have long been caught in the middle of their governments' political machinations, and ending the practice of interference by proxy will go a long way toward ensuring the security of vulnerable refugees and displaced persons. The international community has a large stake in resolving this situation, and Feingold's resolution rightly calls on countries to support peace efforts and the deployment of multilateral peacekeeping missions.

Having brokered a ceasefire in late January between warring parties in eastern DR Congo, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, known by its acronym, MONUC, now risks becoming overstretched, according to the Secretary-General's latest report [pdf]. The danger stems from two interrelated developments:

First, having achieved the success of a peace deal, MONUC is responsible to help implement it. In this case, that requires pursuing three objectives: monitoring the ceasefire; supporting the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR); and securing the return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). This latter task is particularly daunting, as more displaced persons are crowded into Congo's eastern provinces than anywhere else in the country.

Second, to achieve these goals, MONUC has needed to relocate significant numbers of its personnel eastward. While this is an understandable and laudable move -- particularly because of the persistent insecurity in IDP camps -- it runs the risk of pulling much-needed peacekeepers from other volatile areas, which, as Ban notes in his report, "might jeopardize important progress towards peace and stability elsewhere in the country."

It is perhaps the lot of UN peacekeeping that, as soon as one fire seems close to being put out, another ignites, and the UN, in Kofi Annan's memorable formulation, then needs to go around begging for the parts to build the firetruck. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, just as the need to consolidate peace in eastern Congo looms large on MONUC's agenda, the western part of the country has experienced a disturbing uptick in violence.

As I've previously articulated, a peacekeeping mission's success, in one sense, can be measured by its readiness to minimize its presence and eventually depart. Sometimes, though, en route to drawdowns, a mission must beef up its presence in the short-term. That appears to be what is happening in DR Congo, where Ban, in the report that preceded this one, had laid out benchmarks for a process of eventual withdrawal. Here, however, he has determined that "the Mission's current force levels...do not reflect the critical role MONUC is expected to play" in securing peace in the east, while still maintaining stability in the rest of this enormous country.

Yes, MONUC is currently (at least until UNAMID fully deploys in Darfur) the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation in the UN's history. But a rapid drawdown in the interests of financial expediency flies in the face of facts on the ground in Congo and would deeply unsettle the only thinly etched lines of peace that are developing in the country. For such a resource-rich behemoth in central Africa, whose post-independence history has been racked by over four decades of war, corruption, and disease, the prospect of a sustainable peace is in all respects worth the investment of continuing to support MONUC.

In honor of Petraeus day on Capitol Hill, I thought I'd flag two video posts on our sister site On Day One in which Cato scholars Justin Logan and Chris Preble say that the United States should swear off nation building. The lesson of Iraq, they say, is not that the United States should learn how to do nation building better, but that the United States should not do it at all. Personally speaking, I'm sympathetic to this view. That said, I still think that there is a great need for nation building and post conflict reconstruction in today's world. Enter UN Peacekeeping, which has a demonstrated (if under-appreciated) record of success in post conflict zones. Rather than trying to do a better job of invading and occupying countries, it may make more sense to broaden our support for the one organization that has some experience and expertise in this line of work.

Watch their videos and let us know what you think.