Darfur in the Details
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Those on this campus who demand that troops be sent to Darfur to end the genocide need to answer three basic questions: which troops, how do they get there, and once they’re there, what do they do?
To be effective, a Darfur intervention would require a substantial troop commitment numbering in the tens of thousands to provide security, medical care, and food. We, the United States, are already stretched pretty thin, and NATO has had difficulty maintaining adequate force levels in Afghanistan, a country of vastly greater strategic importance. The United Nations force in Lebanon is still several thousand troops short of the 15,000 authorized by the Security Council. From where, then, do we get troops for Darfur?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we can muster enough troops. A quick glance at the map tells us that deploying them will not be easy. Darfur is too far away from the Red Sea for troops to be inserted by helicopter and the cargo transport planes needed for this mission are too large for aircraft carriers; further, Sudan will not likely sit back and do nothing while we fly into their airspace. Getting to Darfur from the Red Sea requires an amphibious invasion of Sudan, and that means making war against another predominantly Muslim country.
True, there are ways of getting to Darfur that bypass most of Sudan, but they require cooperating with Sudan’s neighbors—and it’s a bad neighborhood. To the north, Egypt and Libya have nothing to gain from helping the West; in fact, the Arab League opposes a U.N. peacekeeping force. An invasion from any other direction requires that an overland supply line be established to either Chad or the Central African Republic, which sit on the western border of Darfur. This supply line, in turn, requires the participation of any number of countries (such as Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of Congo) that can connect it to either the Atlantic Ocean to the west or the Indian Ocean to the east. What would Amnesty International say about us bribing, flattering, and propping up the same unstable regimes it condemns as repugnant?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a peacekeeping force can be deployed. With such a long supply line, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the target of terrorist attacks. And there is the danger of what happened in Somalia in 1993 happening again in Darfur. The probability that soldiers will be killed while passing out food to starving people is extremely high. Are we prepared for the casualties? Will we allow peacekeepers to become peacemakers? Will we see the mission through to the end? If not, what happens when we leave and the genocide resumes?
Details, yes, but they are vitally important. When we talk about “sending in the troops,” we’re talking about real people going into harm’s way, and when we pressure policymakers to act, we owe it to the troops to think carefully about what we’re asking them to do.
