The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur is set to take over from the current under-manned AU force tomorrow in a bid to end years of bloodshed.
The UN Mission in Darfur will eventually consist of 20,000 troops and 6,000 police and civilian personnel, although only around 9,000 troops and soldiers are currently in place.
The bulk of the current force comes from the 7,000 AU troops who have been trying to bring peace to the western Sudanese region for the last three years.
During that time 50 African troops have died, including 12 in the deadliest attack on an AU base of Haskanita in September in an attack widely blamed on Darfur rebels.
The bolstered force was authorised by the UN Security Council in July but it will not be fully operational until well into 2008 amid accusations Khartoum is stalling on the deployment and that contributing countries are not supplying enough hardware, in particular helicopters to patrol the vast region.
An official handing-over ceremony attended by Sudanese officials will take place tomorrow, during which the AU troops will swap their green berets for the blue of UN-mandated missions.
However, Rodolphe Adada of UNAMID has warned that the situation in Darfur will not be transformed overnight.
He said he is optimistic that the deployment of UNAMID will help to begin to improve the security situation in Darfur and create a climate favourable to the achievement of a negotiated settlement of the conflict.
The conflict erupted in February 2003 when ethnic minority rebels rose up against Khartoum to demand an end to the political and economic marginalisation of their huge region the size of France.
Khartoum's response was to back the Arab Janjaweed militia and give it free rein to crack down on the rebels and their backers.
