Anyone who stoops so low as to rape girls as young as 8 deserves eternal damnation. Yet what the Sudanese Arab militias who are systematically raping and killing black girls in Darfur are getting from the U.N. and the world are threats and empty rhetoric.
In the face of an ongoing genocide in Darfur, we are reduced to noisy immobility.
It’s farcical for the U.N. to ask Khartoum for permission to send troops to Darfur to protect victims of Arab violence. It’s like asking rampaging murderous Hutus to allow the U.N. to go protect Tutsis. There are, however, some practical things that can be done: institute a no-fly zone or send seasoned mercenaries to Darfur.
Since Sudan won’t allow U.N. troops into Darfur, I have proposed arming black rebels to protect their own kin from Arab violence. My suggestion has been met with skepticism by several Darfurian leaders who believe in a peaceful, passive approach to the crisis.
When dealing with cold-blooded murderers, passive resistance won’t work. (For Sudan’s Arab bullies, brutality and murder are the only currency.) In their 50-year war with the black South, they raped and enslaved black Africans, killing 2 million of them. Northerners historically have a penchant for spilling black blood.
In 2005, Congressman Tom Tancredo suggested a no-fly zone over Darfur to ensure that Omar al-Bashir’s planes and helicopters didn’t bomb the few remaining Darfurian villages and farms. The idea was ignored; the U.S., NATO, and the U.N. seemed content with communal hand-wringing from the sidelines.
Others, including Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal, advocate a mercenary force for Darfur. At first I felt queasy about the idea, but then remembered that Khartoum’s Arab fighters in Darfur – the janjaweed – are a mercenary force.
Mercenaries have played important roles in world history. The mercenary Hessians served Britain in the colonies in the American War of Independence. “Freelancers” were used by kings all over Europe and overseas to carve out vast empires. Mercenaries are used in Iraq today, working for KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary. According to Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute, 20,000 private gunslingers are employed in Iraq alone.
Boot believes that just as 7,000 African Union peacekeepers have failed to make a dent in the security situation in Darfur, U.N. troops would fare no better. He thinks, and I agree, that we would do well to look at an alternative: The mercenary soldier.
Mercenaries have been helpful in many African crises. South African “Executive Outcomes” worked for Sierra Leone in 1994, efficiently handling a group notorious for chopping off limbs. They helped Angola neutralize Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, leading to the 1994 peace accord. In 1995, the American security group MPRI organized a Croatian military offensive that stopped Serbian aggression.
Already several firms have offered their services to stop the Arab campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Sources of funding could be governmental or private; wealthy individuals: e.g., Bill Gates, Phil Anschutz, etc., who detest the murder and rape of young black girls.
What’s happening in Darfur in humanity’s full view is unconscionable. This late in the history of the world, we must not let another genocide drag on for a decade. If we can’t be depended upon by the world’s innocent to do whatever it takes to stop their suffering, repeating “Never again” becomes an empty mantra.
As an African, I detest the thought of using white South African mercenaries. But I also know that what’s happening in Darfur is racist in every sense of the word, by Arabs who think blacks deserve one of two things: slavery or death. I am convinced that the time to organize such a force is now, realizing that Khartoum’s Arabs respect one thing only: force.
They should also be reminded that they will be held liable for genocide as a result of “systematic rape in order to destroy a group.” Already, the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda indicted and sentenced criminal rapists in 1990 and 1994 respectively.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
