Back to the Future?

Abstract

As the crisis in Darfur drags on - a crisis that has consumed the lives of 400,000 people and displaced two million more since 2003 - the international community's response to the tragedy faces increasing scrutiny and criticism. In particular, two internationally sanctioned military operations, the hybrid United Nations African Union Mission in Sudan (UNAMID) and its predecessor, the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), have received considerable negative attention. These forces, mostly drawn from African states, are noted for their inability to hold the Sudanesegovernment-backed Arab militia - the Janjaweed - at bay, to protect ordinary Darfurians, and to sustain the humanitarian space that would allow for relief efforts by nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations to proceed. Several variables have contributed to these weaknesses: a shortage of readily available and well-trained troops, a lack of appropriate communications and transportation equipment, insufficient funding, a poor management structure at the strategic and operational levels, an overly constraining mandate, and, not surprisingly, poor morale among the troops. Compounding this predicament has been the intransigence of the Sudanese government and the antagonism of the different Darfurian rebel movements.In hopes of putting more, or more effective, boots on the ground, several proposals have been made in recent years. They range from intervention by the major powers - possibly from NATO and the European Union - to the development of a United Nations standing force, to the creation of a genocide prevention division within the US army. However, military overstretch of key western states already occupied in Afghanistan and Iraq, strategic indifference, the time required to develop special military units, and concerns about casualty tolerance have collectively blunted these options.In light of the inability or undesirability of further using state militaries, one proposal has been to seek a nonstate solution to the crisis by relying upon the international private security industry. The logic is that higher calibre, better organized, and more effective forces can be taken from the private sector. In particular, proponents such as Max Boot of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes and a past seeker of the US presidency, look back to the 1990s and cite the activities of Executive Outcomes, a now defunct South African-based firm, as conclusive proof that private security companies could play a catalytic role in bringing peace and stability to Darfur.1 The seeming attraction of the Executive Outcomes example is that in its operations in Sierra Leone from 1995 to 1997, it brought to heel the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), an organization with murderous intentions similar to those of the Janjaweed, given its penchant for terrorizing civilians with amputations and summary executions. As well, from 1993 to 1995, Executive Outcomes, through its contract with the Angolan government, was instrumental in bringing the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to the negotiating table, which resulted in the subsequent creation of the Lusaka protocol. What is more, in both cases Executive Outcomes was willing to do what the United Nations could not - sides, take casualties, deploy overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively.2The objective here is not to delve deeply into Executive Outcomes' exploits; that has been done thoroughly elsewhere.3 Instead, this article argues that employing the historical Executive Outcomes example as the template for success in contemporary Darfur is faulty for three reasons. First, it ignores how the company drew upon, supported, and interacted with other armed actors of a type not readily available in Sudan. Second, it does not recognize the sensitive nature of the mercenary issue in Africa specifically, and how states generally have approached the application of nonstate violence. …