The fighting in Sierra Leone ended rather abruptly, considering three years of civil war had been resolved in little more than a month. In Freetown, the British Parachute Regiment had secured the international airport and was busy evacuating British nationals. Just offshore a powerful British naval task force, one of the largest assembled since the Falklands War, waited in support. While international media was riveted by British efforts to prop up the failing UN peacekeeping mission, British forces were not acting alone. On land, deep in the interior of the tiny West African nation, another army was busy mopping up the shattered remnants of Liberian President Charles Taylor’s proxy child militias. This army wore no patches revealing identity and belonging, and while it was fighting under the banner of Sierra Leone, it was beyond the reach of that government’s jurisdiction. This army was in fact Executive Outcomes of South Africa, one of the first private military companies (PMCs, better known as mercenaries) to offload responsibilities from militaries that were either too weak (such as Sierra Leone) or too expensive (such as the United States) to go it alone. It is likely that PMCs will see more business in civil wars and humanitarian operations. So the question is: if Executive Outcomes was so effective in ending the fighting in Sierra Leone, could another mercenary firm provide better security for Darfur?

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Activists must oppose the imposition of structural readjustment policies and neoliberalism in general, which have generally impoverishing effects on the targeted country’s population, and serve to further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a small elite sector of society (Fake and Funk, 2009: 125).

While Sudan divestment campaigns have enjoyed sympathy and success across the United States and Canada, two core institutions of First World economic power remain active in Khartoum: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Since their inception following the Second World War, the IMF and World Bank have promoted free market values around the world, offering substantial loans to developing nations and encouraging the formation of vibrant capitalist markets with minimum state intervention. However, when a recipient nation defaults on its loan, harsh social and economic policies are imposed. As we will see, those policies have been decisive instruments of environmental degradation, starvation and ineffectual governance in Sudan. For these reasons, Steven Fake and Kevin Funk suggest that advocates must seriously consider encouraging action against the IMF and World Bank.

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During the 2007-2008 Presidential election campaign, both Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden expressed support for the imposition of a (probably NATO) no-fly zone (NFZ) over Darfur, much like the one maintained by Anglo-American air forces over northern Iraq following the Gulf War. In 2006 Obama co-sponsored a bill broaching a Darfur NFZ, and reiterated his call in May of 2007. The previous month, in April of 2007, Biden expressed disgust at the Khartoum government and stated that he would use “American force now,” and specifically American airpower, to resolve the conflict in Darfur. More recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that a NFZ over Darfur was a real possibility. But would the insertion of external military power in the form of a NFZ deter the government of Sudan and stabilize Darfur, or would it further intensify the fighting and erode any prospect for a negotiated settlement?

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John R. Matchim

The conflict in Darfur has been fuelled by a decades long influx of foreign weaponry, ranging from small arms to helicopter gunships. China and the Russian Federation have been the most prominent suppliers of weaponry, but there are and were many other sources, some unknown. This entry will provide some basic background regarding Darfur’s weapons importers and highlight the international nature of the conflict, with both national governments and hidden gunrunners vying for a share of the slaughter’s profits. The plethora of actors and factors involved in the arming of the region highlight the futility of international intervention without real negotiations between the warring factions.

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