Max Says Send Mercs to Darfur

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Wednesday, Max Boot offered an unusual suggestion to solving the ongoing genocide in Darfur: the UN, NATO, or even Bill Gates or George Soros should hire mercenaries to stop the Sudanese government’s campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing. After all, argues the senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, they have a long track record of “good service” quelling insurgencies, from the Hessians (er, maybe not the best example) to today’s Dynacorp, Vinnel and Blackwater operating in Iraq (ok, also not the best example).

According to Mr. Boot, several private military firms have already offered their services in Darfur. And, while mercenaries do not have the cleanest of reputations, “the record of privateers compares favorably with that of U.N. peacekeeping forces, which have been distinguished more by their propensity for committing sex crimes than by any success in keeping the peace.”

Invectives against the UN aside, Mr. Boot points out that, unlike U.N. peacekeepers—and as NewsShark adds, US troops—mercenaries could be hired under an employment contract that would hold them liable for war crimes in the ICC or another jurisdiction.

NewsShark Verdict: The often supercilious Boot may not win any friends in the UN General Assembly, but destitute refugees in Darfur would most assuredly welcome any protection from the Sudanese government, janjaweed militias and now, apparently, from non-Arab tribal factions.

The question is, does the world have the will for an intervention action—whatever the form—when Khartoum will accept nothing more than the present impotent and pitiful African Union force of 7,000, which it too has said must leave now if it cannot operate alone?

Clearly, sending in mercenaries will not solve the myriad conflicts raging in Sudan and now spreading into Chad. But they could be a temporary way to protect humanitarian organizations, which have been forced to abandon many parts of the region due to attacks on aid workers. (Twelve aid workers have been killed in one town alone in Darfur, since May, according to the New York Times.)

While it is extremely unlikely that the UN would ever hire mercenaries, since it balks at even outsourcing administrative tasks, NATO, or an ad hoc coalition of countries should consider funding private security for aid groups. No one else will step up to the plate, and the disgraceful alternative is what exists now: little or no presence of aid organizations in many parts, which means no food, medicine or other vital supplies for many of the 2.5 million refugees created by the fighting and the more who are created each day. As for Boot's suggestion that Bill Gates hire a private army to deploy in Darfur, he would be wise to heed the advice of Julius Caesar, who once said that "all bad precedents begin as justifiable measures."

Read Max Boot’s op-ed at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116173782126202804- search.html?KEYWORDS=Sudan&COLLECTION= wsjie/6month