The 2,500 Kenyan and Ethiopian troops soon to be sent to South Sudan under United Nations auspices may face challenges from rebel forces, an opposition spokesman warned last week.

“By stepping in to protect oil installations on behalf of the government, UN military mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) will have sided with one of the parties to the conflict and inevitably become part of the problem, not solution,” said a statement issued by Lul Ruai Koang, a spokesman for South Sudan’s armed opposition.

He was responding to the Security Council’s decision last week to broaden the mandate of the Unmiss and increase its size substantially with troops from neighbouring countries under the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad).

A resolution adopted by the Council instructs Unmiss to focus on protecting civilians rather than helping build state institutions in South Sudan.

The Council specifies that Unmiss is to protect “areas at high risk of conflict including schools, places of worship, hospitals and the oil installations, in particular when the South Sudan government is unable or failing to provide such security.”

The Council extended a plan it adopted in December to add 5,500 soldiers to the 7,000-member Unmiss force to make it a 12,500-strong force.

READ: UN extends South Sudan mission

UN peacekeeping officials have only been able to muster about half of those additional troops from operations elsewhere in Africa, so they have turned instead to Igad to help bring about the planned military surge in South Sudan.

On Thursday, Igad executive secretary Mahboub Maalim told The EastAfrican that plans were going on well but admitted the intended time of deployment has already elapsed. This has been blamed on bureaucracy and budgetary requirements on the part of Igad.

“The instructions we had were that we do that in mid-April. So we are a little bit out of schedule for obvious reasons,” he said in an interview in Nairobi.

“We are initially limiting it to members of Igad plus member states of the East African Community. We hope to have contributions from Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Burundi for example,” he added.

The Igad diplomat said the bloc will initially contribute a total of 3,000 soldiers. Their role will depend on what the UN prescribes for them but it will generally include protecting civilians and humanitarian workers, as well as the monitoring and verification teams, which Igad has sent to South Sudan to inspect the key principles of the cessation of hostilities deal reached earlier in May.

“We think this is going to be very nominal. I can’t tell you the budget right now simply because you have to understand deploying troops is a very expensive venture. But basically we do think that this is going to be done through the United Nations and we have already got in touch with the UN Security Council. Recently, we had a team from the Department of Peace Keeping, who are in agreement with us on how to spell this out,” said Mr Maalim.

Igad intends to deploy several hundred Ethiopian troops in the next two weeks, Herve Ladsous, the head of the UN peacekeeping department, said last week.
“A supplement of Kenyan troops” will be made available through Igad as well, Mr Ladsous added.

Rwandan soldiers are being redeployed to South Sudan from the UN mission in Darfur, he said. And in what amounts to a historic initiative, a battalion of Chinese troops will be taking up positions in South Sudan “later,” the UN peacekeeping chief said.

That will mark the first time China has assigned combat-capable forces to a UN peacekeeping operation.

The presence of a large East African contingent, along with troops from China, could serve to deter South Sudan rebel forces from engaging in hostilities with Unmiss in the coming months.

Rebel leader Riek Machar, who met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi last week, will not want to be seen as picking a fight with Igad, a regional entity that includes all of South Sudan’s neighbouring states.

Complicating the emerging situation, however, South Sudan is itself a member of Igad, and rebels may thus view the new East African force as aligned with the government in Juba and not as an impartial peacekeeping unit.

Regional dimension

Kenya and Ethiopia are therefore running the risk of the South Sudan conflict taking on a regional dimension. The rebels have denounced the role being played by troops from Uganda, another Igad member-state, in protecting South Sudan government installations and fighting alongside troops loyal to President Salva Kiir.

The Kenya government’s decision to send troops into South Sudan follows the move in 2011 to intervene militarily in Somalia. Kenya initially acted there on its own, in response to attacks on its territory by Al Shabaab insurgents, with its troops later incorporated in the African Union mission in South Sudan (Amisom), which now also includes Ethiopian forces.

By agreeing to send 2,500 soldiers to South Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia are continuing to play what they see as a stabilising role in East Africa.

The UN is meanwhile seeking to enhance Unmiss’ technological capabilities by equipping it with drones.

Mr Ladsous told reporters at UN headquarters last week that he wants to provide the South Sudan peacekeeping force with unmanned aerial vehicles, which UN officials prefer to call drones.

They would likely be used solely for surveillance. Drones operated by the UN in the Democratic Republic of Congo gather intelligence and are not equipped with firepower.

By Kevin J Kelley and Aggrey Mutambo