Darfur Offer Provides More Accountability than UN Peacekeepers

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince's offer to train an African force to save Darfur has a built-in accountability measure that far exceeds United Nations peacekeeping standards.


As he said in the July 29 Wall Street Journal, he envisions a team of US military personnel to monitor a Blackwater training and logistical support operation to help a duly constituted African military force to stop the Darfur atrocities.


This reminds us of an article that Mountainrunner blogger Matt Armstrong wrote recently in Serviam magazine about UN peacekeepers. In that thought-provoking piece, Armstrong reveals that United Nations peacekeeping troops are exempt from international humanitarian law.



"The U.N. cannot impose a common military code of justice or judicial process on its forces without provoking a drop in troop contributions from member states," he says.

"If accountability is the core problem critics have with private military and security contractors, then the demonstrated lack of Blue Helmet accountability, whose troops are sent to some of the most challenging environments on the planet, should raise equally powerful concerns. "

(Addendum: London's Daily Mail runs a new story of how Dutch UN peacekeepers stood aside while Serbian troops rounded up thousands of men, women and children under UN "protection" and slaughtered them.)

Erik Prince Offers to Train African Force to Save Darfur

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince tells the Wall Street Journal that he is willing to train and equip an African force to save Darfur.

And he doesn't want to make a nickel doing it. He's offering to do it at cost.

This amazing news is tucked way down in William McGurn's "Main Street" column that ran in the WSJ on July 29. McGurn writes:

Mr. Prince says that the 9,000 or so African Union soldiers in Darfur, as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force, are a good start. But he says that to be effective they need better training, communications and equipment. That is more or less the same message from a report released yesterday by the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of 50 African-based and Africa-focused NGOs. "One year ago the U.N. Security Council stood unanimous and promised Darfurians the strongest and largest protection force ever," says a coalition spokesman. "Today that force is just over a third deployed, lacks even the most basic equipment and is unable to protect itself let alone civilians."

Mr. Prince has a remedy. He believes that with 250 or so professionals, Blackwater can transform about a thousand of the African Union soldiers into an elite and highly mobile force. This force would also be equipped with helicopters and the kind of small planes that missionaries use in this part of the world. It would be cheaper than the hundreds of millions we are spending to set up a larger AU/U.N. force. And he says he'd do it at cost.

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.

"I'm so sick of hearing that nothing can be done," he says. "The Janjaweed is 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." And to ensure accountability, he says, the U.S. could send 25 military officers to observe how Blackwater is doing and serve as liaisons.

Up until Blackwater's offer, all the other "Save Darfur" activity is just useless talk. McGurn notes, "That's the point: Strongly worded resolutions, sanctions and boycotts are generally what you do in place of decisive action. I understand that the whole idea of Blackwater helicopters flying over Darfur probably horrifies many of the same people frustrated by Mr. Bashir's ability to game the system. But it's at least worth wondering what that same Blackwater helo might look like to a defenseless Darfur mother and her daughters lying in fear of a Janjaweed attack."

Any takers?

UN Peacekeeping Chief Rejects Blackwater Offer on Darfur

He didn't even offer the diplomatic decency of "due consideration." He simply warned against the temptation to use "mercenaries" to solve humanitarian problems.

He is Jean Marie Guehenno, the outgoing head of peacekeeping operations for the United Nations (pictured). The Frenchman held a news conference July 29 and threw cold water on Blackwater CEO Erik Prince's offer to train and support a duly constituted African force that would be used to solve the Islamist horrors against the people of Darfur.

In his eight years in charge of UN peacekeeping, Guehenno has accomplished nothing to stop the Darfur atrocities.

Imagine: The UN's top peacekeeping official takes Blackwater's offer so seriously that he must comment about it in a news conference. Erik Prince is holding a lot of moral power in his hands. He has the UN on the defensive.

Update: Guehenno says UN peacekeepers are 'stretched to limits' and in 'danger' (BBC)

Blondes for Blackwater

Blackwater heroes saved Brittanie and Aubrey Vander Mey and Jamie Cook (above) from mob terror in Kenya last week as the US government stood by fecklessly.

CEO Erik Prince ordered the rescue operation at the request of Brittanie and Aubrey's dad. The girls were doing Christian missionary work with AIDS orphans.

A Blackwater operative flew from Afghanistan to Kenya to run the operation.

Another of many unheralded Blackwater rescues. A couple, such as the evacuation of the Polish ambassador to Iraq after an assassination attempt, have received some coverage, but most have not.

The blog commentary is pretty funny, ranging from very informative to tasteless. Click here for reader remarks on Sharon Weinberger's Wired.com blog.

Blackwater praised for Africa rescue

Congressional weenies might want to beat up on Blackwater, but the company is winning praise from Real America for its daring operation to rescue three young Michigan women from near-certain horrors in strife-torn Kenya.

"Unable to locate a helicopter or airplane to pick them up," the father of two of the girls, Dean VanderMey, "called his mother, who reached Blackwater founder Erik Prince [pictured] through a mutual friend, U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids," Bill Sizemore reports in the Virginian-Pilot.

"Soon, VanderMey said, he got a phone call from Prince, who told him, 'We're going to do everything we can do to get your girls out.'

"A Blackwater employee flew from Afghanistan to Kenya to run the operation, VanderMey said. The company located a 10-passenger single-engine plane, which picked up the women at an airstrip near the orphanage in the village of Kimilili and flew them 185 miles to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where they got a commercial flight home.

"paid the charter fee for the plane, but Blackwater charged him nothing for its services.
'Erik wouldn't hear of it,' VanderMey said. 'He said, "This has nothing to do with money. This is about getting Americans out of harm's way."'

"'They got it done. I was pretty impressed.'"

Blackwater rescues Michigan orphanage workers from Kenya terror

How did three American charity workers escape spiraling violence in Africa when their government couldn't help them?

Blackwater Worldwide.

Michigan orphanage volunteers Brittanie and Aubrey Vander Mey and their friend Jamie Cook were in Kenya readying to care for HIV and AIDS orphans in Kimilili, a town 180 miles from Nairobi.

But post-election violence was spreading, with militants 45 miles away torching a church filled with women and children.

Yesterday the women were scheduled to return to their Michigan hometown where their local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, has the story.

"Dean Vander Mey, of Byron Township, Brittanie and Aubrey's father, said he credits their return to God's intervention and the private security firm," the paper reports.

"'My daughter (Brittanie) told me today, "Every town around us has been ripped apart,"' he said. 'Their little town was the only safe town. ... I have to attribute (their safety) to the Lord.'"

When his frightened daughters alerted him by phone of the spreading violence, he realized the women could not escape by car and renting a helicopter was impossible. He asked U.S. officials, congressmen and others for help.

"Vander Mey said he recalled relatives were friends with the family of Blackwater founder and Holland [Michigan] native Erik Prince and decided to give the company a call.

"'They had internal contacts and everything,' Vander Mey said. 'They had people who could help.'"

And help they did. Blackwater, according to Vander Mey, sent in a plane and rescued the three women and other international workers, bringing them safely to Nairobi.

"It's been a nightmare and a miracle," Vander Mey said.