Oops!

Sudan acknowledged Thursday that its troops shot at a United Nations convoy in Darfur, reversing an initial denial, but it in part blamed the peacekeepers saying they should have notified Khartoum of their movements.

I'll paraphrase: if you guys hadn't gotten in the way of our bullets, we wouldn't have had to shoot at you.

On a serious note, let's hope this is not a harbinger of what's to come in Darfur. I have to wonder out loud if this was an "oops" at all or rather a premeditated attack intended to suggest that Khartoum's ridiculous conditions for UNAMID -- that it not move at night and communicate about all other movements in advance -- are reasonable given the confusing conditions on the ground. In either case, an already difficult peace operation is becoming even more complicated.

-- Scott Paul

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