Private firms eye Darfur

Private military companies protecting American diplomats, aid workers and local officials in Iraq and Afghanistan are making a pitch to take over U.N. peacekeeping missions in Darfur and other global hot spots where the United Nations is unable to stop the killing.

Companies such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, DynCorp and Halliburton have mushroomed in size and number since the 2003 Iraq invasion, serving an increasing need to protect people and projects from terrorist attacks.

With a limited number of U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq, private companies fill a void with up to 100,000 employees, far more than all non-U.S. coalition troops combined. They do everything from serving meals on U.S. bases to protecting diplomats and visiting generals who venture outside the protected Green Zone in downtown Baghdad.

Some companies are looking beyond Iraq and seeking a greater role in peacekeeping, and the largely ineffective deployment of a 7,000-member African Union (AU) force in the Darfur region of western Sudan provides an opportunity.

Blackwater says it could get its people and equipment in Darfur in three weeks, provided U.N. members could agree on a plan. In comparison, it takes an average of six months for a U.N. peacekeeping team to deploy.

Within limits

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept, said Robert Young Pelton, author of the just-released book “License to Kill,” which provides an inside look at a secretive world of private military contracting.

Few people even know about the industry, which is said to bid on $30 billion to $100 billion in annual contracts. One reason is that well-paid private contractors in Iraq and elsewhere typically sign agreements that include fines of up to $250,000 for speaking with reporters.

Shortly after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited Darfur in 2004, Blackwater put together a proposal to go in there and stop the two sides from killing each other, Mr. Pelton said.

“The problem is, if you look at the presentation, it includes not only men with guns. They’re offering helicopter gunships, a fighter bomber that has the capacity to drop cluster bombs and [satellite-guided weapons], armored vehicles. You say: ‘Wait a minute? That’s a lot of offensive force. What does that have to do with peacekeeping?’”

Almost everyone agrees that the U.N. peacekeeping system is broken, a view underscored by the humanitarian disaster in Darfur, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions driven into squalid refugee camps.

The private sector would not perform offensive operations, said Chris Taylor, Blackwater’s vice president for strategic initiatives. But it could provide badly needed backup for the AU force in an area of Sudan roughly the size of France.

“If the AU comes in and performs an intervention in one area, we can follow behind them and relieve them so they can continue elsewhere. We can provide the defensive security and provide a defensive perimeter for the humanitarian organizations to follow. The NGOs can start doing what they do best within a secure environment, and that’s what’s missing in Darfur,” Mr. Taylor said.

“We’re having discussions with all the principals, the policy-makers, but as you can imagine, the obstacles to doing this are far more political than operational,” he said.

Outside the law

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