[After that heavy post, how about a light one, for Friday the 13th?]

Two weeks ago I was sitting in our lovely expat residence in Goma, Lake Kivu lapping at the back garden.  It would be hard to be any closer and further at the same time from the grinding violence, fear and misery that affects much of the Eastern DRC.  And, at least for me, it would be hard not to think that what DRC really needed was not more humanitarians but more Yul Brynners. And Steve McQueens.  And Charles Bronsons, James Coburns, Robert Vaughns and Horst Buchholzs.  Yes, we need the Magnificent Seven (sorry, can’t remember the seventh).  If you prefer low culture – because the Magnificent Seven is decidedly high culture even if Bronson grunts most of his lines – then think of it this way: what Congo needs is the A Team.

We need some tough guys.  Sort of.  Actually, there is a major surfeit of tough guys, but they tend to be criminals, rapists and butchers, which has its drawbacks in terms of being a force for good, though certainly hasn’t stopped the international community from funding programmes to incorporate them into the army.

So we need some tough guys who are also good guys.  Instead, the Kivus have armed criminal gangs, various sorts of mai mai forces, ethnic “defense” gangs, armed criminals, security companies and the official armed criminal gang, the national army, more renowned for their profiteering, military ineptitude and sexual violence than for defending the population.  And then there is MONUSCO: 20,000 UN Peacekeepers from places like Uruguay, India and Tanzania.

There is already plenty of critique and analysis of UN peacekeeping. Has it helped keep warring parties apart in some places?  Undoubtedly. Has it provided breathing space for peace negotiations?  Undoubtedly? (Are peace negotiations in Congo a well-funded yet industrial-sized scam? That’s another story).  But as I watched an extremely expensive refrigerated truck lumber up the non-road between Mweso and Pinga – Patagonian beef for the Uruguayan troops? – one couldn’t help marvelling at the fantastic cost of it all.  Think of what it takes to build a complete military infrastructure of bases, communications, supply, etc., fly in 20,000 of soldiers from around the world, pay their salaries, and another few thousand advisors and sundry specialists…

Well, for the coming year it will cost almost $1.5 billion. Do the math. That’s enough money to pay $5,000 each to 100,000 of the worst criminals, rapists and thugs, provided they sit and play foosball all day, or eat steak that doesn’t have to be airlifted from Argentina.  Oh, and still have a billion left over to build schools and hospitals.

A more startling example of math: instead of spending $2 trillion for messy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US could have just givenv20 million pissed off militants each $10,000 to hang out at home watching reruns of The Rat Patrol.  And still had $1.8 trillion left over to end poverty in South Asia.

I do not think we as humanitarians comprehend the scale of military expenditure.  The numbers are interstellar. Ditto for the bailout of banks. And ditto even for Presidents like Clinton or Obama, who certainly understand the lives of the poor, and yet who would chip away at the funding for a $10 million schools programme while signing into action a $250 billion military foray into futility.

There is a lesson in there for the international community.  Something about scale. Something about what and how Save, MSF or Oxfam spend on operations versus the meaning of that money in a place like DRC.

BTW, the Magnificent Seven?  They cost $140.00. Total.  For six weeks.  And they killed all the bad guys.