In 1994, as the Rwandan genocide got underway, Kofi Annan — then head of UN Peacekeeping Operations — searched desperately for a military that was willing to intervene. No one would. He ended up calling Eeben Barlow, the CEO of the South African private security company, Executive Outcomes, to ask if the company could stop the killing.
“Sure,” Barlow said, estimating that a team of 1,500 men could get control of Rwanda within four weeks and hand it over to the United Nations, for an undisclosed fee.
Comments
I like this idea we should try it in some of our major cities. If we can disarm the citizens we can move to the cops then we will be able to convince some of the gang bangers to surrender their weapons.
What will probably happen in some of foreign countries is that we will need boots on the ground to rescue the people who sign up for this suicide mission
Although these missions are not completely safe, they are careful and have not so far had an casualties. They are carefully trained, far from suicide missions.
Unarmed civilian peacekeepers like those of Nonviolent Peaceforce work quite differently than armed troops from private for-profit firms likke those mentioned in the article. Field teams of Nonviolent Peaceforce are very strictly non-partisan, work hard to consult regularly with all sides, and create space for local civil society organizations to develop lasting solutions. Nonviolent peaceforces teams are composed of globally recruited civilians, with no more than a quarter of the international members from any one region of the world. This has greatly contributed to the dramatic successes they've had in the deployments mentioned and in Guatemala and Mindanao. Although it is a very small organization, it represents a hopeful model for future conflict intervention.