An international mercenary army could save the people of Darfur, says tim collins |
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Imagine a scenario where Sir Bob Geldof is on stage, urging a crowd to 'give me yer focken money - for guns'. The crowd is rocking to fund a war, while celebrities, writers and intellectuals flock to drill in an International Brigade.
Unlikely? Sadly, for the people of Darfur, cursed to live on the wrong side of a predominately Arab boundary drawn by long-dead British and French empire-builders, it is only too improbable. But as the talking drags on and the slaughter continues, force - or the threat of force - is almost the only hope for these hard-pressed people.
The Africans in Darfur share their plight with the common fox here in the UK: their lives are not about getting enough to eat, they are about the right to exist without being hunted down and killed. Luckily for the fox, hunting them is now banned. But surely someone
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| Force – or the threat of force – is the only hope of salvation for Darfur’s suffering people |
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cares about the humans too? Why not rise up as a movement and stop the slaughter of these people? Is that not why we have the United Nations?
Sadly, the UN is a paper tiger. It is only as effective as the nations that form it want it to be - ie not very. The history of UN deployments has been an unhappy one with toothless contingents, indecisive command and the stench of corruption surrounding it. A Native American acquaintance of mine, Steve Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy tribe from Virginia, said: "If [the people of Darfur] had oil and gas they'd be safe - [the West] would find a reason to help."
Well, let us take a flight of imagination and decide that we do care and we do want to help. What would it take to intervene against the Sudanese bully?
Sudan's military, as it stands, is vulnerable to an assault by a modern force. Based on the remnants of the Sudanese Defence Force left behind by the British and backed by the chaotic Janjaweed militias, with some Soviet bloc training and decaying equipment, it is a  |
