Sudan Watch (to July 2012)

[Randy Brown]

This topic is outside my usual Priority Information Requirements, but I thought I'd relay this David Axe posting on Wired.com's "Danger Room." Eye-catchingly headlined "When Soft Power Backfires", and linked to an American Prospect article also penned by Axe, it discusses an French-Swedish-Polish-Irish-stew (given the recent deployment of a brigade of EUFOR peacekeepers) of challenges:

The Darfuri refugee camps in Chad are key. The U.S. and Europe fund layers of defense for the dozen large camps and their 250,000 residents. The defenses range from Chadian paramilitaries to a new E.U. peacekeeping force (pictured) with armored vehicles, helicopters and drones.

Problem is, the rebels fighting in Sudan use the Chad camps as bases, traveling in at night when the camps' defenses are down. Worse, they use the camp populations as recruiting pools, luring or forcing kids as young as ten to join the fighting, ensnaring the next generation of Darfuris in the cycle of violence.

I'd originally thought to post this to the peacekeeping or NGO thread, but instead ended up running toward the sound of the gunfire (or was that typing?) over here, where y'all seem more actively engaged on current-events implications for UN/AU in Sudan. I hope you find this germane ...