The United Nations could resolve all of Africa's conflicts for $750-million (about R5,5-billion) if it hired private security companies to do the job, an American specialist on Africa's security issues said in a lecture this week.
Doug Brooks, who is doing research at the South African Institute of International Affairs on private security firms in Africa, said this cost estimate was far lower than what the United Nations would have to spend to send conventional peacekeeping forces to African hotspots.
And private companies would do the job more efficiently, Brooks argued. He said it was time the United Nations privatised its peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian rescue operations in Africa, as no one else was willing or able to do the job properly.
United Nations peacekeeping operations were failing while efficient national armies were unwilling to risk the lives of their soldiers in African wars.
Brooks said he had surveyed several private security firms for their estimates of what it would take to end African conflicts. They had all said they believed they could resolve the conflicts, and their general estimate was that the contracts would cost the United Nations no more than $750-million in total.
To give an idea of the costs and effectiveness of private security versus conventional United Nations operations, Brooks offered the example of Sierra Leone.
He said the now disbanded South African security firm Executive Outcomes (EO) had been contracted by the Sierra Leonean government in 1995 to fight Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels who were terrorising the country and threatening to topple the government.
With between 150 and 300 troops and at a total cost of $36-million - or $1,2-million a month - EO had routed the RUF and driven them into Liberia, where they had came from, thus ending the war. EO had first stabilised the capital Freetown and then set out to recapture the diamond mining areas from which the RUF derived its income.
EO had a three-month plan to capture these areas but did so within three days, Brooks said. EO veterans of that campaign said that although they had some difficulty defeating Unita previously when they had been hired by the Angolan government, the RUF had been "child's play".
As a result of EO's victory, Sierra Leone had been able to hold elections. Then the government terminated EO's contract, and the regime fell within 90 days.
By contrast, the present United Nations peacekeeping mission, comprising thousands of troops, was costing $90-million a month, and had created a debacle - including conflicts among different national contingents, and peacekeeping troops held hostage by the RUF. "In short, they lost the peace."
Brooks said firms such as EO and Britain's Sandline were "not nice guys. You wouldn't want them to marry your sister." But they could do the job.
He noted that it would not take a big leap of faith for the United Nations to hire such companies for ending African conflicts as the organisation was already hiring them for ancillary tasks, including providing security for United Nations personnel in the field.