Isn’t Sudan at peace?
The 2005 peace agreement required that civilian militias from the civil war era lay down their weapons. Some ethnic groups disarmed, but others refused and later took advantage of their disarmed neighbors (UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Aug. 3, 2006). South Sudan’s public infrastructure is weak: Local police forces have little staff and virtually no vehicles or communications equipment. That leaves a security vacuum. The United Nations Mission in Sudan is mandated to protect civilians under threat and to promote human rights, but its 10,000 personnel must cover a country a million square miles in area with a population of 37 million.
