Word: darfur
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...familiar with Darfur. For several years now, the Sudanese army and the Janjaweed militias have been killing, raping, and pillaging black Sudanese. The latest available data strongly suggests that 400,000 people are dead and that 3 million have been displaced; every month, 100,000 people are dying...
...there may be a timely and effective solution to halt the killing sprees in Darfur: a mercenary army. Mercenary armies are often composed of former or current soldiers lured away by the high pay of the private sector. As New York Times reporter Elizabeth Rubin puts it, they are “willing to do what the United Nations cannot: take sides, take casualties, deploy overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively.” In Sudan, they would come in, protect the civilians from the Janjaweed and the Sudanese army, and remain until the international community asked them to leave...
Moreover, compared to our current non-solutions for Darfur, a mercenary army is cheap. Executive Outcomes’ Sierra-Leonian adventure cost $1.8 million dollars a month, but prior to that, the international community was paying $60 million for fetid refugee camps in Guinea that were not a sustainable solution to begin with. Refugees from Darfur are flowing into Chad, piling into bursting refugee camps that cannot even ensure basic hygiene. Human security, too, is not guaranteed. Poorly-drawn African borders have ensured the Janjaweed a trans-national cohort of persecutors. Even in Chad, women are beaten and raped...
...Bush administration and Congress have declared that black Muslim Darfur residents are the victims of genocide. But critics of the administration say the U.S. has not done enough to protect villagers from government-backed Arab militias...
Last month, Harvard sold its shares of stock in the Beijing-based oil company PetroChina after months of pressure from activists who criticized the company’s ties to the Sudanese government. The move made Harvard the first major institutional shareholder to divest from PetroChina since the Darfur crisis erupted, according to activists...