BRUSSELS – Just back from eastern Chad and the border area with Darfur and Sudan, actor George Clooney said in an interview with CNN that the European Union’s military mission in the country has achieved “a certain degree of success” in protecting refugees from the Darfur crisis because the mission had a stronger mandate than that what is usual for UN troops.
The mission, known as EUFOR Chad/RCA, is a bridging mission for the United Nations, which will fold EUFOR it into the MINURCAT mission in Chad and Darfur at the middle of March. EUFOR Chad includes about 3700 European troops, mostly from France, Poland, Ireland but also from Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and several other EU member states.
Clooney travelled to Chad last month as a UN peacel ambassador to draw international attention to the plight of the refugees and internally displaced people here.
“I was in Darfur last a year ago,” Clooney told CNN in an interview dated March 5.
“This — about eight days ago, nine days ago I was right at the border of Darfur and Chad. And what you found was that the — the European forces, which are going to be changed over to MINURCAT, but the EUFOR forces in Chad have had a certain degree of success in being able to protect the refugees who’ve come over the border because they’ve had a chance to be — because they’ve had a much stronger mandate.
“The problem is across — over the border, the U.N. forces, the U.N. peacekeepers have been given such a watered-down mandate because the Security Council has given them such a watered-down mandate, that they’re not really able to do much. They can’t — they don’t have helicopters, you know, which they could really use, to get there. Their communications are not good. They’re still understaffed, and they’re not really able to react in time to bring safety. So you find that just across the border, it’s much more dangerous than it is in Chad.
“What’s interesting, you know, when you talk to people who’ve just come over the border, their reaction — anyone who gets to Chad, of course, immediately says “justice,” which is what the ICC indictments are, is they’re asking for justice, which in a normal world, of course, is the only answer. But unfortunately, in the world they live in, it’s not always normal.
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