The Final Solution

By SAHIL K. MAHTANI

By now we are all familiar with Darfur. For several years now, the Sudanese army and the Janjaweed militias have been killing, raping, and pillaging black Sudanese. The latest available data strongly suggests that 400,000 people are dead and that 3 million have been displaced; every month, 100,000 people are dying.

The international community’s response has been depressingly predictable. One attempted remedy was the deployment of 2,200 African Union (AU) troops to monitor a nonexistent cease-fire. But the troops are under-trained, under-funded, and under-supplied. The AU’s mandate does not even extend to civilian protection; these troops cannot stop killings and are useless. And since the embarrassing quagmire of Somalia in 1993 and the killing of Belgian United Nations peacekeepers in Rwanda in 1994, there seems to be no political will to send American or European troops to fight another African war.

Yet there may be a timely and effective solution to halt the killing sprees in Darfur: a mercenary army. Mercenary armies are often composed of former or current soldiers lured away by the high pay of the private sector. As New York Times reporter Elizabeth Rubin puts it, they are “willing to do what the United Nations cannot: take sides, take casualties, deploy overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively.” In Sudan, they would come in, protect the civilians from the Janjaweed and the Sudanese army, and remain until the international community asked them to leave. In the meanwhile they would establish a peace, which could actually be kept by peace-keepers. Call it outsourcing.

Lest one think this impossible, take a look at Sierra Leone in 1995. With rebels 20 miles away from the capital, Freetown, and with the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity unable to help, the Government of Sierra Leone hired Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary army, to establish peace in return for $15 million and access to some diamond mines. With 200 soldiers and a helicopter gunship, Executive Outcomes managed to quell the rebels and restore order. Three hundred thousand refugees returned home, and within a year, Sierra Leone had its first presidential election in 28 years. The soldiers of Executive Outcomes are regarded with immense respect by Sierra-Leonians, many of who owe their lives to the soldiers.

One may doubt the legality of this method, but international law sanctions humanitarian intervention. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which 133 states are party (including the United States), actually obligates states, under the auspices of the Security Council, to prevent and punish genocide when it is happening in the world.

One may argue—as the Chinese do—in favour of complete state sovereignty, but a state that is actively killing a segment of its population has lost its right to sovereignty. It’s actually quite simple: genocide is a crime of the highest order, and we have a full right—some even say duty—to stop it.

One might argue that state sanctioning and, indeed, funding of contracted armies is a dangerous precedent to set. But veritably, we have already set it. In Iraq, “security firms” and “military consultancies” are paid to fight rebels much in the same way the military does. Furthermore, such armies will continue to exist whether we sanction them or not—it makes sense to accept reality and use the mercenaries for good ends.

Moreover, compared to our current non-solutions for Darfur, a mercenary army is cheap. Executive Outcomes’ Sierra-Leonian adventure cost $1.8 million dollars a month, but prior to that, the international community was paying $60 million for fetid refugee camps in Guinea that were not a sustainable solution to begin with. Refugees from Darfur are flowing into Chad, piling into bursting refugee camps that cannot even ensure basic hygiene. Human security, too, is not guaranteed. Poorly-drawn African borders have ensured the Janjaweed a trans-national cohort of persecutors. Even in Chad, women are beaten and raped as they leave the camps in search of the water and firewood necessary to cook the international food aid. What we have now is not only expensive, but it isnít even working.

One may worry that hiring a mercenary army would send the signal that the international system has failed and that the West has no political resolve to stop genocide. But this would be the truth. Indeed, if the international community cannot offer a solution to this genocide, perhaps it is in no position to object to mercenary armies.

This is not a perfect solution, and there are inherent dangers in a non-governmental army. Accountable to no one and fighting for top dollar, mercenary armies can surrender their loyalties to the highest bidder. But recognize that it is in their best interests to be on the side of states rather than against them; if they do a poor job, they will get fired; if they turn against us, we will turn against them. But more importantly, recognize that we have run out of ideas, and perhaps it is only an extreme solution that will solve an extreme problem. It may not be the most likely remedy, but not to even consider it would be a first-rate failure of imagination on the part of policy-makers.

Today is Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day. Never again, today we shall say, never again. But unless we find a solution, perhaps we ought to say: again and again, and again.

Sahil K. Mahtani ’08 lives in Lionel Hall.