The Darfur Conflict, Part Two: The Plan for Military Action in Darfur

Few people seem to realize what would be required for any peacekeeping operation in Darfur to be successful. Clearly the small peacekeeping missions of the African Union and the United Nations have never seen success in Africa. From Somalia, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Darfur, to Rwanda, small efforts yield even smaller results. If the genocide is to truly be stopped, and if the war is truly to be ended, then a military force will be needed on the scale of World War Two's Russian Front.

A large military force entering the region to stop all warring parties from fighting their enemies will result in all of these armed groups seeing the peacekeeping force as an invading army sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. This large number of hostile combatants will require a huge military force to overcome, while the campaign, especially if Western nations are involved, will probably result in foreign terrorist groups entering the country, further increasing the number of hostile fighters arrayed against it. To really understand what this entails, two factors must be understood: the size of the conflict zone and the different groups that will be enemies of the Darfur Peacekeeping Force, or DPKF.

As you can see, the conflict has spread to three separate nations. (Courtesy of the BBC)

Darfur is a region that borders, or is arguably a part of, four different countries, of which at least three have seen significant violence. Assuming Libya has kept and can continue to keep the peace on the small border it has with Darfur, the nations of Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic all contain part of a very large and continually expanding combat zone. Since any massive military operation by foreign powers within their borders would be seen by all three nations as acts of war, if the DPKF were to be created and deployed, they would be campaigning in the entire area of all three countries. This is because they would have to not only neutralize a plethora of militant and terrorist groups, but would also have to bring the governments and military forces of all three nations to heel. This assumes that no belligerent forces base themselves from within additional nations like Uganda or Ethiopia, which is a very real possibility. Under this assumption, the minimum size of the area the DPKF would be keeping the peace in would be roughly half the size of the entire United States.

To give an idea of the force needed to take control of such a large area, the Iraq War proves to be an easy example. Iraq is roughly the size of California. 160,000 American military personnel, roughly 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, 70,000 Sons of Iraq, and somewhere in the range of 10,000 troops from various other nations have been required, not to totally defeat the insurgency, but to reduce it to the point where progress can be made in the country. Taking into account the temporary nature of the American escalation and the growing strength of the Sons of Iraq movement, between 600,000 and 650,000 men under arms have been required just to allow the opportunity for progress. To boot, much of this success relies on the good will of currently dormant militias that have combined numbers in the tens of thousands.

Notice the difference in size between Iraq and the combined nations of Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic

The minimum area that must be controlled by the DPKF is over 10 times Iraq's size. Assuming that the combined military force of all three nations and all militant groups, plus foreign terrorist groups that will surely arrive to counter Western influence, will prove to be only as dangerous as the militant groups currently active in Iraq, and assuming that the current situation in Iraq is the desired first phase of the future for Darfur, 6-6.5 million troops will be required for the DPKF, along with a Naval force in the Red Sea that will consist of at lead two American Carrier Groups. A force of this size will by no means totally secure the region, but it is the required size for achieving relative control over most of the territory. Anything less than this will make it impossible to adequately protect all major population centers and resources, will leave a porous and unprotected border, and will allow belligerents the luxury of safe havens where there are no available troops to patrol.

A military force of this size is an impossible undertaking. It would require a total commitment by every major world power, the whole of NATO, and the African Union to have anywhere close to that number of soldiers just on paper. Without a doubt, America, and any other committed nation that does not currently have a military draft, will require one. The logistical demands for such a force would be so great that it would be beyond the capabilities of any alliance. Even if reality were to temporarily step aside and allow such a force to be assembled and supplied, the costs of keeping so large a force in the field would mean that all nations involved would face bankruptcy in a matter of months.

Since this minimum size for the guarantee of a minimum level of success is beyond the capabilities of the whole of humanity, and certainly beyond the willpower of the American public, any peacekeeping mission must accept that they cannot stop the violence or end the genocide. The best that can be hoped for is that a much smaller DPKF can create a safe haven for refugees. It would be like Srebrenica during the Balkans Conflict, but it would be much larger. Such a fortified safe haven would be totally dependent on a permanent military force. Should the contributing nations ever require their soldiers for the benefit of their own nations the mass of refugees would be totally vulnerable to attack from those who forced them to seek shelter in the first place. When this happened in the Balkans, 8,000 people were killed the moment peace keepers withdrew. On the scale that would probably exist in Darfur, tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands could die. Not only would the refugees be totally and permanently dependent on the DPKF for their survival, but they would be forced into a small area of land by strategic need for a totally secure perimeter. This prevents the population from establishing agriculture or industry, ensuring their perpetual dependency on foreign food aid, medical aid, and basic tools for living, as well as all other nonrenewable resources, such as fuel for cooking fires and potable water.

Since the fact remains that a military intervention will be seen as an act of war by whatever nation has been invaded, either a deal must be brokered, which is unlikely, or a military campaign will have to be waged to destroy that nations capacity to endanger safe zones. This could destabilize that government and may result in the total collapse of centralized government, since nations like Chad are barely holding on the a central government as it is. If central governments collapse, the result would likely be a mirror image of Somalia, where feudal warlords and Islamic clerics, turned politicians, fight for resources and territory, while the people starve and are caught in the cross-fire.

Ignoring this all too likely result of even a moderate sized intervention. this total and unending dependency on the DPKF for protection, and foreign aid for all other aspects of living make this solution as bad or worse than doing nothing at all. It forces refugees to rely on the outside world for every aspect of their existence and forces them into unproductive lives. By not getting involved, the world powers may be ignoring a genocide, but they do give the victims of this conflict the gift of self dependency. Where an intervention would be impossible on a large scale, and would create a parasitic society on a smaller scale, nonintervention would force those being brutalized to develop solutions for themselves. Instead of relying on a perpetual military presence from other world powers, they will be forced to learn to defend themselves.

Instead of living on a reservation where minimal to no food can be grown, and where negligible quantities of other goods can be produced, they will be free to defend however much land they have the capacity to hold, where food can be grown. As bad a feeling as it may give many people, a more lasting solution may be found by embracing this conflict. Populations under threat from militias or oppressive governments should be given military aid, and basic instructions on how to use the weapons they have. Just as they must be taught to fish instead of being fed by others forever, they must learn to protect themselves, not rely on the protection of foreign military forces. Once those facing genocide are able to defend their land and assets, and kill those who have sought their annihilation, the violence will lessen.