Matters Blackwater (Merged thread)

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23 April Boston Globe - Peace Corp.

Three years of fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan have left an estimated 180,000 dead and nearly 2 million refugees. In recent weeks, both the UN and the US have turned up the volume of their demands to end the violence (which the Bush administration has publicly called genocide), but they've been hard pressed to turn their exhortations into action. The government in Khartoum has scuttled the UN's plans to take control of the troubled peacekeeping operations currently being led by the African Union, and NATO recently stated publicly that a force of its own in Darfur is ''out of the question." Meanwhile, refugee camps and humanitarian aid workers continue to be attacked, and the 7,000 African Union troops remain overstretched and ineffective.

But according to J. Cofer Black, vice chairman of the private security firm Blackwater, there is another option that ought to be on the table: an organization that could commit significant resources and expertise to bolster the African Union peacekeepers and provide emergency support to their flagging mission.

A few weeks ago, at an international special forces conference in Jordan, Black announced that his company could deploy a small rapid-response force to conflicts like the one in Sudan. ''We're low cost and fast," Black said, ''the question is, who's going to let us play on their team?"

Private security companies like Blackwater have thrived in Iraq, where the US military has relied on them for everything from guarding convoys to securing the Green Zone. But these companies recognize that the demand for their services in Iraq will eventually diminish, and Blackwater, for one, is looking for new markets. It's not alone in seeing peacekeeping as a growth area. Competitors such as Aegis and Dyncorp have also realized that while conflicts like the one in Darfur may not bring them profits on the order of Iraq, there's no shortage of them. And if such companies are able to help the international community succeed in peacekeeping, it could improve the image of an industry that hasn't enjoyed much support from the press or the public.

Private military companies have had a hard time convincing the international community that privatizing peacekeeping would be as good for Darfur, and for the rest of the world, as for their industry. In part that's because of the mixed reputation their work in Iraq has earned them and because the explosive growth of the industry has raised fears that security contractors working for the US government in Baghdad (and post-Katrina New Orleans) could become bona fide armies for hire. But the discomfort also has deeper roots, in the complicated history of private intervention in these kinds of conflicts. When Kofi Annan was UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping, he explored the option of hiring the South African private military company Executive Outcomes to aid in the Rwandan refugee crisis. He ultimately decided against the option, declaring that ''the world is not yet ready to privatize peace."...

Much more at the link...

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3 May Tech Central Station - Send in the Mercenaries by J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss.

The crisis has taken another turn for the worse in the Darfur region of western Sudan. On April 26, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that the security situation has so deteriorated that international aid agencies are no longer able to gain access to some 700,000 internally displaced people who thought they were "safe" because they had managed to get inside UN-managed camps. The latest attacks by government forces, Human Rights Watch reports, occurred on April 24 on a village in South Darfur state called Joghana, which is about 6 miles from the town of Gereida, where about 80,000 refugees live...

Meanwhile, the most the international community has been able to agree to do is to reluctantly pass a Security Council resolution sponsored by the United States barring four Sudanese nationals accused of war crimes from international travel and freezing any assets the four may have abroad. Were it not for the seriousness of the crimes of which the four men are accused, the whole exercise would make great comedy...

U.S. forces are stretched thin by ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are rightly distracted by the need to keep military options open against soon-to-be-nuclear, apocalyptically minded, Iran. Meanwhile, as we noted in our earlier essay, other nations are reluctant to commit enough forces to shore up the undermanned "peacekeeping" operations of the African Union. So it's hard to imagine how sufficient resources will be found to take care of one task that could literally mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands in Darfur: the protection of the camps where they have gathered and where they receive humanitarian relief. It's not asking much, but for now protection of these camps from Janjaweed killers seems beyond the capabilities of the international community -- unless, that is, we are willing to look outside the box and turn to private military companies (PMCs).

Generally, modern states have been reluctant to recognize the existence -- much less advocate the use -- of PMCs, viewing the enterprises as "mercenaries" who threaten the monopoly of states on the use of force. There is certainly a historical basis for this hostility towards private armed forces, especially in Africa...

On the other hand, there is an increasing amount of state practice -- the basis of a ius cogens legal argument of general acceptance -- in favor of the activities of PMCs...

...the role that PMCs play in international security has become even more significant, not only in providing armed support and peacekeeping services for weak states, but also an array of military services that major powers have outsourced. Analysts estimate that the PMC business is a $100 billion industry with several hundred companies operating in more than one hundred countries. In Iraq, for example, PMCs are a vital component in the U.S.-led coalition's efforts, with some 20,000 workers from Blackwater Corporation and other firms engaged in "security" tasks. Taken as an aggregate, PMCs in Iraq constitute the second largest contingent in the "Coalition of the Willing," handling everything from feeding soldiers to maintaining weapons systems for the U.S. military to guarding convoys and training a new police force for the nascent Iraqi government.

If no one else has the courage and will to act in Darfur, why doesn't the UN, or NATO for that matter, contract out the problem and let the free market save countless lives? If the African Union, whose troops are notoriously ineffective, finds the PMC option unpalatable, perhaps the credible threat of its use might compel the regional organization to come up with an alternative that will actually save the lives of innocent Darfurians, rather than merely observe their extermination.