Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
In the examples you use (Darfur and Ethiopia) and to which you can add Congo, Somalia and others the best route is to use proxy forces from the AU (like Uganda in Somalia) and let them deal with it to the best of their ability.

This way western countries will be able to avoid the angst and hand-wringing that goes with engaging children in combat.
Agreed,

But that's assuming they'll fight as cleanly and legaly as we would have..after all, being branded child killers by proxy is the same as doing ourselves, in fact possibly worse. Anyone remember the ECOMOG/Nigerian intervention into Sierra Leone?.

And here...
ECOMOG soldiers always disgraced themselves first before they would begin to disgrace those they were deployed to help. How long did Lieutenant-General Arnold Quainoo remain in his post as ECOMOG commander in Liberia before he surrendered his headquarters to Prince Johnson, a known warlord, to slaughter the Samuel Doe presidential party he was hosting? He had been in Liberia fewer than three weeks. He arrived in Liberia in mid-August 1990. On September 10, 1990, General Quainoo was holed up at the fortified ECOMOG base in the Port of Monrovia, waiting for his ship to come in to take him home to his native Ghana. He probably had no plans for keeping warring factions apart, and perhaps felt he might lose his life to another mistake of similar magnitude.

Gen. Quainoo's departure was followed by a half dozen fire-breathing Nigerian commanders in successive order. But each was compromised by either bribes or the structural ineptitude that was evident before he arrived. All this never prompted any soul searching in ECOWAS.

I met Gen. Quainoo and asked him what went to wrong, he shrugged his soldiers and said "It's Africa, what do you expect" and downed his whisky (we met at a Conflict Resolution workshop to boot!)

IIRC it took UK forces to actually get the job done. Sure, proxy forces are OK so long as they know what they're doing and won't cause even more trouble for their "sponsors" to deal with.