What would happen if we air-dropped thousands of cheap guns into Darfur?

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jlbraun

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Think about this - you have an area with ethnic cleansing going on, lots of deaths, and it takes the UN weeks to draw up rules for a committee to even start studying the problem.

What if instead we simply air-dropped millions of cheap weapons (something like the Liberator pistol, a simple .357 revolver, or bolt-action rifles) into a distressed area at the first sign of genocide? Just saturate the country with weapons, then move in with peacekeepers later? Mobilizing troops takes time. What's wrong with saturating a country with purely defensive weapons?

First, do you think it would stop genocide or slow it down? Second, what might the unintended consequnces be?
 
Now we know what to do with those cases of M44s that keep showing up, One case of rifles, with one case of cheap ammo, airdropped together.

Amazing how the same leftists who scream at us for being in Iraq, scream that we are NOT invading Darfur.
 
My friends were watching the movie "Hotel Rwanda" a few months ago and I made a similar commment. Everyone just looked at me like I was crazy.
 
On Darfur:

Gun control's best friend


By Dimitri Vassilaros
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, April 1, 2005

The slaughter, rape and torment of the citizens of Darfur would end if humanitarian aid included guns.

Darfur is a Texas-size region of Sudan. The Sudanese government and its militia proxies have killed roughly 70,000 civilians, raped and mutilated untold numbers of others and caused about 3 million refugees to live in camps.

Sudan could teach Serbia a thing or two about ethnic cleansing.

This carnage has been going on since 2003. The Sudan People's Liberation Army, a small band of revolutionaries from Darfur, were the only excuse the government needed to wage war on unarmed citizens in the region, who also happen to be fellow Muslims.

As I was reading story after story about the horrific treatment of the innocents by government-backed forces, I always wondered why there was no mention of the victims fighting back.

"Some do defend themselves," said Bill Garvelink, acting assistant administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance in the U.S. Agency for International Development. The United States has given about $600 million since 2003.

"But Sudan has helicopters and AK-47s. People in the camps have machetes," Garvelink said. International treaties covering humanitarian aid prohibit giving any side arms to defend oneself; otherwise no aid workers would be allowed to bring in supplies to a troubled region.

But Sudan is not allowing aid workers much access anyway so the refugees are caught in the middle, he said.

Amnesty International prefers to end the genocide by moral persuasion instead of self-defense.

"We at Amnesty International are not going to condone escalation of the flow of arms to the region," said Trish Katyoka, director of Africa Advocacy. "You are empowering (the victims) to create an element of retaliation.

"Whenever you create a sword-fight by letting the poor people fight back and give them the arms, it creates an added element of complexity. You do not know what the results could be."

But we do know what they are now.

Self-defense could exacerbate the situation, Katyoka said. "Fighting fire with fire is not a solution to the genocide. It is a dangerous proposition to arm the minorities to fight back."

Better they should be slaughtered.

Katyoka hopes the United Nations can do something -- someday -- to stop the killing. She also hopes Sudan's leaders are charged with crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court. But at this rate, will there be any eyewitnesses left to testify?

Even Dr. Ali B. Ali-Dinar, founder and director of the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania -- who was born and reared in Darfur -- does not believe in arming the victims.

"That could create a vicious cycle of violence," Ali-Dinar said. "The cycle now is mainly orchestrated by the government. Give guns to the traumatized and it will definitely get out of hand. There is no limit then, for them to stop."

He, too, hopes the international community comes to the rescue -- someday.

(Ali-Dinar will be speaking 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 5700 Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill. There is no charge for admission. It is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition.)

Darfur is one more reminder that gun control is genocide's best friend.

Dimitri Vassilaros can be reached at [email protected]
 
I say just send in the airforce, and do it like we did it in the days of Vietnam, commence a new Operation Rolling Thunder.

Giving guns to the oppressed may start a cycle of violence. That is true. But I'd say it's worth the risk.
 
Slight problem with this:

The rebels in Darfur were kicking the living crap out of the Sudanese military. They even wiped out a good chunk of the Sudanese air force while they were sitting on an airfield. So, Sudanese intelligence started arming the pro-government militias and sending them in.

Meanwhile, you have border skirmishes in the East with Eritrea, a state of war in the West between Chad (neighboring Darfur) and Sudan, and the Ugandan rebels basically running free in the souther part of Sudan (these are NOT very nice people...the PLA use child soldiers and kidnap young girls as "comfort women"...see the movie Invisible Children). The whole place is one big powderkeg ready to go at the drop of a match.

If you arm the tribes in Darfur, you'd have to give them anti-aircraft weapons, and at the very least AKs for infantry weapons to give them a fighting chance against the militias and Sudanese air force. Dropping in a few Mossins probably isn't going to do a whole hell of a lot. If you arm them to the level they would need to realistically protect themselves, you would probably step up the Chad-Sudan war, embolden the Ugandan PLA by giving them a complete safe haven in Sudan while the military is elsewhere(and knock out the Ugandan cease fire while you're at it), and very likely kick off full-scale war all over the country as the government troops and militias are overwhelmed by a three or four-front conflict, rather than just Darfur. That sounds like a good idea, until you realize that those people now being oppressed will likely begin doing the same thing to the arabs if given their chance. If it came to that, I strongly believe that the Sudanese military would make an all-out effort to wipe out the tribals in the detention camps, final solution style.

Personally, I'd like to see the tribals in Darfur have a fighting chance; at least a few bolt-action rifles, like has been suggested, but you have to remember that the government has close to a million hostages in the refugee camps.......and if the conflict escalates, they'd probably be slaughtered wholesale, rather than the decimation going on now (decimate = roman for killing off 10%).
 
The guns would not end up going to the people who need them. They would go to the hands of the most powerful. It wouldn't solve anything unfortunately.
 
fireflyfather has some good points. My idea would be some Deltas or whatever, to give training as well as arms. Something that would also happen here is that the specs could help to make sure that the right people get them, and there would be political training to help ensure that no vengeance killing happens.

Give a man a fish, and he'll be fed for a day. Teach him to fish...
 
Neal Stephenson's book Crytonomicron has a similiar concept; an Open Source gun, cheap, easy to manufacture in quantity, dumped onto potential victims of genocide.

That sounds like a good idea, until you realize that those people now being oppressed will likely begin doing the same thing to the arabs if given their chance. If it came to that, I strongly believe that the Sudanese military would make an all-out effort to wipe out the tribals in the detention camps, final solution style.
Which boils down to the same old gun control argument; better they get wiped out and not rock the boat, because if we actually give them a fighting chance then they might possibly, someday in the future, screw it up. Give 'em guns, and if they F it up, give their future, potential, victims guns. Personally, I think less blood would be shed if every group and faction were armed to the teeth once and for all, M.A.D. on a community level.
 
@junyo

"Which boils down to the same old gun control argument; better they get wiped out and not rock the boat, because if we actually give them a fighting chance then they might possibly, someday in the future, screw it up."

I advanced a similar argument back in the day - we as the Western world would rather see a million unarmed peasants die quickly by machete, as long as we don't see it on the evening news for too long. If there's a long conflict where both sides are equally armed with perhaps 50K deaths, we demand that Somebody Take The Guns Away From Those Savages.
 
This is why I think gunnrunners are unsung heroes. The only people actually helping the oppressed are the ones that risk their lives to bring arms to those who despirately need it.
 
There has been some discussion (theoretical, I'm afraid) concerning whether there is a universal human right to bear arms in self defense. In the abstract it meets with some grudging approval; in practical terms no nation state wants to contemplate the idea. Considering that a large percentage of UN countries are dictatorships of one kind or another the last thing they want is a flow of weapons to the peasantry. So the feeling is unanimous or largely so.

Odd how something that was "never again" supposed to happen has become a regularly occurring event. Sort of like the tree in the forest; if no one wants to hear it, maybe it's not for real.

So much for civilized behavior.
 
Somebody should send Saul Cornell over there. That idiot has all the answers about firearms and self defence.
 
Unfortunately peoples will to be free vary as witnessed in the conflict areas of Africa, The Middle East, Southeast Asia, Former Soviet Union, China the list goes on. It seems that when given freedom by someone else as in Iraq or Afganistan the concept is not understood and the people fall into the tribal mentality. In our own country you could see how quickly society fell apart after Katrina. When viewed in the present world wide context I really believe that our country and form of government is an aberration and trully a miracle and may we be blessed with the miracle of surviving as a country.
 
Revolvers ain't simple nor cheep.

If you were to airdrop anything, it would be either British style 'Sten' guns or the old reliable.. AK-47. Revolvers cost more than either a Sten gun or an AK to make. I'm sure we captured a huge stockpile of AKs in Iraq. Drop them.
 
The problem is, the "gun culture" in these oppressed areas is almost always destroyed long before things get to this point. So if you armed the people being slaughtered, their level of firearms *knowledge* will be low and worse, their entire culture is already warped away from the ideas of lawful self defense AND "the real duties of a citizen".

That last isn't an abstract concept. When neighbors band together in places like Florida post-hurricane and ward off bandits, it's happening because the "citizen's militia culture" isn't yet completely wiped out in most of the USofA. Parts, yeah...something like that would be impossible in too many inner city "bad spots" without the place suddenly looking like a pizza with the toppings ripped off. And that's because an "inner city welfare culture" has set in to such a degree, the population is largely incapable of taking up their full duties as Citizens.

I would submit that genocide takes more than disarmament - it takes a victim population that has similarly been stripped of the very idea of being free citizens. Which is exactly what you have in Darfur.

Now...it's possible that in some cases you have family/tribal structures that function as a much more primitive ancestor of the citizen militia. By that I mean, you have groups of people acting in concert, "free" except for family burdens, who act responsibly IN the group and *might* act responsibly towards others...or not, depending on the culture of the group and the quality of it's leadership. But you do at least have an organized group capable of acting rationally (usually).

Trust me, there are large chunks of our inner cities where you can't even get that together, the most organized it gets is the gangs and they range from "criminal" to "stone cold crazy".

---------------

Once any population is disarmed, as MOST of the world is, a cultural rot sets in that has all kinds of other consequences. I'm not convinced it's gun control that DIRECTLY causes genocide. Rather, gun control rots away at a culture's self reliance and THAT causes people who are under assault to "plead with the UN for salvation".

IF the gun control was recent enough and the mindset of self reliance is still there, they'll damned well GET guns if they need 'em.
 
Its arguable whether or not the arms would get to the people who sorely need them, but its already pretty certain that you can't just throw money at the problem.

I'd favor the founding of guerilla militias by US Special Forces, because that's definately a way that a lot of good can come about. We should most definately arm and train people who are victims of genocide. Arming them is only half the problem.

What Amnesty International doesn't seem to understand is that in a Genocide, much like in most murders, one party is unarmed. Wars and fights break out when both parties are armed.

I'll take a war over a genocide any day, just like I'll take a fight over a murder any day.
 
there are no unintended consequences death is the only thing that these will bring. A lot of people are dying right now anyway. Might as well let some of the helpless take a few nutjobs with them.
 
Ok, so I am all for it. I think it would be a viable option assuming you can get them to who you need to. Unfortunately its totally not practical. As soon as one 12yr old shoots himself in the face that will re-embolden the Brady bunch and all their types.
 
"Whenever you create a sword-fight by letting the poor people fight back and give them the arms, it creates an added element of complexity. You do not know what the results could be."

Yes, of course. But we know what the results would NOT be.

God forbid the poor people might be able to defend themselves when the government does not...

The whole place is one big powderkeg ready to go at the drop of a match.

Anybody got a match?
 
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I say a bunch of us go over there to do the training, and hook up with the arms dealers to get weapons. One, we can give them good training, and help them develop the gun culture they're lacking. Two, we can help them figure out a flavor of democracy that works for them. I'll also bet that there's enough rural folk out here we can iron out some of the farming practices that's causing so much trouble over there.

I have a box of matches in my closet, and a passport's not hard to get, I just don't have the skills to teach, or the contacts to make purchases.
 
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