IT was during Haroun Abdullah’s Arab class that the rebels arrived. The 14-year-old watched, helpless, as they carted away 15 of his classmates. “They had knives and sticks,” he said, eyes downcast.

According to the United Nations, the children were among as many as 5,000 male Sudanese refugees from the Darfur conflict who over the past two months have been abducted from camps in neighbouring Chad.

In a crisis that refuses to yield to international intervention and peacekeeping efforts, the snatching of children to be forced to become soldiers is the latest horror in three years of bloody fighting between black rebel farmers and Arab militias known as Janjaweed, backed by the Sudanese government. About 200,000 people have died and 2m have been driven from their homes.

In New York tomorrow the United Nations Security Council is expected to back a peace deal thrashed out in Nigeria between the Khartoum government and the rebels. But few diplomats believe there will be any let-up in the fighting unless an African Union force of 7,000 peacekeepers is given more clout.

Aid agencies such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have confirmed they are still treating rebel fighters for injuries, and that refugees are regularly raped and attacked.

While the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), has signed up to the peace deal, encouraged by offers of regional autonomy and a greater share of Khartoum’s oil revenues, splinter groups remain defiant.

How the small peacekeeping force can assert any control over an area the size of France clearly worries diplomats. “We can’t say with any certainty it won’t go pear-shaped,” said one official. “You can cause enormous trouble with a few Kalashnikovs and a couple of hundred people.”

Another western diplomat said the only hope lay in rebadging the African Union troops under the UN and giving them more firepower and training.

“It will inevitably take time,” he said. “We shouldn’t throw our hands up and say the peace deal isn’t worth the paper it’s signed on, but in practical terms it’s not easy. We have to somehow keep up the pressure, make people know they are being watched.”

Britain will be represented at the meeting by Sir Emyr Jones Parry, its ambassador to the UN. The government is considering sending trainers, vehicles and logistical help for the new force.

Additional reporting: Tom Walker

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