UN official warns against using mercenaries to pacify trouble spots
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The departing head of UN peacekeeping on Tuesday warned against the temptation to rely on mercenaries to pacify world trouble spots such as Sudan's Darfur region.
"The force that you deploy in a post-conflict situation or a quasi post-conflict situation ... has a political role," said Jean-Marie Guehenno at a press conference.
"It's a sign of the commitment of the international community and the notion that you're going to build trust between parties who are fighting just with some mercenaries, I think we have seen time and again it doesn't work," he told reporters.
"When you have a systemic challenge like the war in Darfur, it requires more than a few mercenaries, even very well equipped and very well trained," he said.
Guehenno was responding to a question about an editorial in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal titled "Mercenaries for Darfur."
The editorial quoted Erik Prince, a former elite Navy Seal and the co-founder of Blackwater Worldwide -- one of the world's best-known private military company -- as saying that "with 250 or so professionals," his North Carolina-based company could transform "about a thousand of the African Union soldiers into an elite and highly mobile force."
He said his force would be "equipped with helicopters and the kind of small planes that missionaries use" in Africa, and "would be "cheaper than the hundreds of millions (of dollars) we are spending to set up" the larger joint United Nations-African Union force currently struggling to keep the peace in Darfur.
"Blackwater would not do the fighting. Its people would serve as advisers, mechanics and pilots. Aid workers and villagers would be equipped with satellite telephones that include Global Positioning Systems. When they call in, the troops would respond," Prince was quoted as saying.
He described the government-backed Janjaweed militias spreading terror in Darfur as "a truly unfettered bully."
"No one has stood up to them. If they were met by a mobile quick reaction force of African Union soldiers, the Janjaweed would quickly learn their habits were not sustainable," Prince added.
Guehenno, who is stepping down after an eight-year tenure, also commented on the controversial Responsibility to Protect concept -- the obligation accepted by all states at a 2005 world summit here to protect peoples threatened with genocide, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity.
"You have enormous political questions with the Responsibility to Protect ... I think one should not be too naive about it, that there is a risk of a backlash," he cautioned.
Guehenno warned against the "backlash of dictators who want to hide behind sovereignty to protect their own backyards and their own domination," as well as "a backlash of people who otherwise embrace the values of human rights and the rule of law."
Such people, he noted, "may sometimes be worried that this agenda could be used by the rich and powerful against the poor and the weak."
He said the issue should be handled carefully or run the risk of feeding "a very negative backlash that could then move us backwards from where we are."
Under Guehenno's stewardship, UN peacekeeping underwent an unprecedented growth and now fields almost 100,000 personnel in 20 missions around the world, with an annual budget of 7.5 billion dollars.
Guehenno also supervised a sweeping restructuring of the department, which has been split into two.
One department is now tasked with strategy, day-to-day direction and management, while the other consolidates the support functions of UN field personnel, procurement and financial management.
Guehenno is being replaced by another Frenchman, diplomat Alain Le Roy, who is currently ambassador in charge of negotiating French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposals for a Mediterranean bloc modelled on and linked to the European Union.
A former French ambassador to Madagascar, Le Roy previously served as regional administrator for western Kosovo.
