In Sierra Leone, the National Provisional Ruling Council government, headed by military leader Captain Valentine Strasser, hired EO to fight the Revolutionary United Front rebels, who were financed by their hold on the Kono district's rich diamond deposits. EO forces summarily beat back RUF fighters to their Kono strongholds.

How many troops did Executive Outcomes put in country to beat back a rebellion? Wild estimates range from 100 to a few thousand, but the real number was probably in the low hundreds. Unfortunately, though the firm quickly routed the rebels, effectively stopped a wave of terrible atrocities ...

The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (afrc) continued to detain prisoners of conscience without charge or trial and was responsible for torture and extrajudicial executions. After their removal from power in February, the afrc and the armed opposition Revolutionary United Front (ruf) killed and mutilated thousands of unarmed civilians.

... and stabilized the political situation, international pressure (including direct pressure from the US) forced the company out of the war-torn country:

Despite broadly-held suspicions that the company was making a play to amass mineral wealth in sub-Saharan Africa, the company stated that its only interest was to provide stability and security for legitimate governments besieged by rebel forces. Nevertheless, the United Nations, taking the position that the use of private paramilitary forces interferes with the people's right of self-determination, pressured Sierra Leone to terminate its contract with Executive Outcomes. One condition of the 1997 peace agreement between President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and RUF leader Foday Sankoh included the early removal of EO forces and all foreign troops.

And what happened? A UN peacekeeping force which peaked at over 17,368 military personnel and cost $260 million over one 6 month stretch failed to subsequently quell the violence, and the brutal atrocities and rapid destabilization of the country into civil war resumed apace:

Many members of Sierra Leone’s civil society have called for a private solution. The South African private military company (PMC) Executive Outcomes virtually won the war back in 1997 but international pressure forced them to leave. Since then, more than ten thousand Sierra Leoneans have died as a direct result of the resumption of the brutal war.

Calls for a return of an Executive Outcomes-type company are strong, not just among Sierra Leoneans but also—off the record—among British and even UN personnel. From a military standpoint, ending the war in Sierra Leone is not a difficult proposition. PMCs have indicated that Sierra Leone could be secured in a matter of months with a few hundred professional soldiers—at a fraction of the cost of the current UN mission. Questions of transparency and accountability would have to be addressed first, but these issues seem trivial compared to the problems UNAMSIL is facing. The choice is between utilising a PMC to end the war, or watching the impotent UNAMSIL continue to dither while thousands more Sierra Leoneans die.

The direct comparisons between EO and the UN are fairly dramatic:

The United Nations does not like to discuss companies such as EO, shunning them as "mercenaries." But it would be wise to examine their activities in Africa more closely. Indeed, EO's operations in Sierra Leone stand in stark contrast to those of the United Nations. The status of the current mission, UNAMSIL, is being seriously questioned after the deaths of at least four U.N. peacekeepers and the capture of hundreds more. At an estimated cost of $260 million over six months, UNAMSIL is a very expensive mission gone wrong.

EO's actions in Sierra Leone could not be more different from the United Nations'. In the 21 months that it was in Sierra Leone, EO's costs were just $35 million. In that same time period, EO was able to drive back Revolutionary United Front (RUF) troops from around the capital, Freetown, retake key mines from the RUF and destroy the RUF's headquarters. This final act brought Foday Sankoh to the negotiating table; he signed a peace agreement in November 1996 that enabled elections to take place.

And what about the application of private forces in the current crisis in Sudan? Could an EO-style operation be effective at a force structure of less than 40,000 troops? You bet:

Ironically, EO was later contacted by the Secretary-General of the UN during the early days of the Rwandan genocide for a possible intervention by the company. EO's services were never used, despite its estimate that it could have saved 200,000 lives from massacre by deploying only 1,500 security personnel at a cost of US$100 million.

The private military option certainly has its drawbacks and potential avenues of serious abuse, but remains attractive with rational oversight:

There are disadvantages to using a private military company, of course. Its soldiers would not be accountable for their actions in the same way that soldiers in a national army would. Anyone with enough money could bring a private army in on his side. On top of all this, the stigma attached to private military companies means that their use is a public relations disaster waiting to happen.

Yet they could present a remedy to the recent refusals by France, Britain and the United States to send troops to bolster UNAMSIL's forces. These refusals stem in part from the experience in Somalia. No country wishes to embark on a peacekeeping mission and find its troop contribution being sent home in coffins. But the deaths of the soldiers of a private military company, to be blunt, would not cause the same political problem that the deaths of a country's nationals do.

Add to this the fact that military companies still in business (EO closed in 1998), such as the British-based Sandline International, have experience in Africa, and they become a more attractive option. The capabilities of military companies go beyond the provision of combat troops. Sandline is registered with the United Nations' Common Supply Database, and Military Professional Resources was used in the former Yugoslavia in 1994, furnishing 45 border monitors in a contract with the State Department.

The full value of private military companies to the international community will not be seen if the international community is not willing to acknowledge their possibilities. Furthermore, lack of such an acknowledgment will allow the liabilities of military companies to go unchecked, whereas engagement with them could result in better regulation.

Given real-world political and operational constraints on deploying national and international peacekeeping forces to chronic low-mid intensity conflicts in Africa (review: Somalia), as well as the recurrent incompetence of international forces in situations like Sierra Leone and Rwanda ...

Responsibility for the failure to halt the 1994 genocide in Rwanda lies with the UN system, members of the UN Security Council -- the US and UK in particular -- and other UN member states, according to the report of an independent inquiry made public at UN headquarters in New York on 16 December.

In a statement, Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- who had called for the inquiry -- expressed his "deep remorse" over the UN's failure to halt the massacre of 800,000 men, women and children. He said one of his major goals as Secretary-General is to make sure the UN never again fails to protect a civilian population from mass slaughter. "All of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it."

... exploring the possibility of utilizing yet appropriately regulating the actions of private military firms represents a highly rational option for the perpetually troubled continent.