/ 10 October 2007

African nations mourn peacekeepers killed in Darfur

A woman stuffed the ends of her veil in her mouth to choke her cries, as men carried the wooden coffin of a 48-year-old Senegalese officer killed in the deadliest blow to peacekeepers trying to sow peace in troubled Darfur.

A thousand kilometres away across scrubgrass and parched savannas in the capital of Mali, women wailed as the body of a Malian soldier killed in the same attack was lifted onto the shoulders of his fellow soldiers.

Ten peacekeepers, including both soldiers and policemen, were killed in Darfur when an estimated 1 000 rebels stormed an African Union base 11 days ago. The battle lasted for hours and when the peacekeepers ran out of ammunition, they lay down in a ditch and prayed for it to end.

One by one, their bodies are now being returned to their homes in Africa in simple wooden coffins. Those that came to pray over their bodies vowed to not let their personal loss cloud their commitment to Sudan’s war-torn region.

”Peace takes sacrifice,” said Senegal’s Minister of the Interior Ousmane Ngom standing over the coffin of Mayoro Kebe, a police officer who is the sixth Senegalese peacekeeper killed in Darfur.

”But our country will respect the commitment we have made [to Darfur] because we cannot live in a world without peace,” he said.

Similar sentiments were expressed in Nigeria last week, when seven Nigerians killed in the attack were buried.

At an army camp in Bamako, the capital of Mali, President Amadou Toumani Toure leaned over the body of 52-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Diagne to pay his respects, but did not speak. Tears coursed down the faces of women, who cried out to God as the flag-draped coffin was lifted skyward.

The violence on the ground in Sudan is threatening what is meant to be a new push for peace in Darfur, where more than 200 000 people have been killed and 2,5-million driven from their homes in four years of fighting. The attack that claimed the lives of Kebe and Diagne brings to at least 26 the number of African Union peacekeepers killed there since the forces’ arrival in 2004.

”It was the gloomiest day in the history of African Union peacekeeping. And it was the saddest day in my life,” said the African Union’s Hassan Gibril, the deputy head of the peacekeeping mission in Sudan who attended the funeral in Senegal.

In an open courtyard, three dignitaries approached Kebe’s coffin and pinned small medals of honour for the fallen policeman. The coffin was draped in Senegal’s red, yellow and green flag, upon which lay Kebe’s green beret. On one end, a paper printout read: ”WO2, Mayoro Kebe, Senegal” — the identifying paperwork that was attached to the corpse in Darfur.

His brother, whose glistening eyes betrayed pain, fingered a strand of Muslim prayer beads as he described the last time he saw his brother. Kebe, who had already spent several months in Darfur, had returned to see his family brimming with the suffering he had seen there.

The usually playful man, an amateur boxer, had become darker, more sombre, said Mbaye Kebe, his younger brother. When it came time for the peacekeeper to return, the younger brother drove him to a taxi stand in the Dakar suburb where they live.

”I watched the taxi until it disappeared. I don’t do that. Usually I just walk away, but this time I watched until I couldn’t see it anymore. It was as if I knew I’d never see him again,” said the younger brother. – Sapa-AP