An unpopular solution?
In a subscribers-only piece in today's Wall Street Journal Max Boot suggests that those people who are truly concerned about the slaughter in Darfur consider doing something more substantive than TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads.
Case in point: Darfur. A force of 7,000 lightly armed African Union peacekeepers has been helpless to stop the genocide being carried out in this region of the Sudan. Odds are that a contingent of U.N. blue helmets, if and when they finally arrive, won't do much better. Why not turn to the private sector?
Mercenaries have committed their share of abuses in Africa. (See "The Wild Geese" and "The Dogs of War," both based on real events in the 1950s and 1960s, the heyday of "Mad" Mike Hoare, "Black" Jacques Schramme and other notorious swashbucklers). But they have also been effective in stopping human-rights abuses.
In 1995-96, Executive Outcomes, a South African firm working for the government of Sierra Leone, made short work of a savage rebel movement known as the Revolutionary United Front that was notorious for chopping off the limbs of its victims. As a result, Sierra Leone was able to hold its first free election in decades. The now-defunct Executive Outcomes also helped the Angolan government quell a long-running insurgency by Jonas Savimbi's Unita, leading to the signing of a peace accord in 1994. Another private firm, MPRI, helped to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 by organizing the Croatian military offensive that stopped Serbian aggression.
Hired guns could be equally effective in stopping the campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia in Darfur. In fact, several firms have already offered their services. They could be employed by an international organization like the U.N. or NATO, by an ad hoc group of concerned nations, or even by philanthropists like Bill Gates or George Soros.
But can the caring, empathetic left overcome their aversion to "mercs" to save the people of Darfur?
Sadly, I wouldn't bet a nickel on it.
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The French have now been found to have been behind the massacre and mass slaughter in Rwanda. Any chance that the Frenchies are aiding the Sudanese in Darfur? I don't have any proof, but seeing as to what backstabbers the Frogs are, I wouldn't be in the least surprised.