This is coolbert: Impossible situations. This is the type of thing the world now faces in Chad with the refugees from Dar Fur in the Sudan. One million refugees fleeing what can only be classified as genocide are now trying to find refuge in Chad. A country not able to handle any of this. Many humanitarian organizations around the world are mobilizing to provide support. But they all agree that the world has about one month to get the help to the people that need the help. In one month the rainy season will start and what roads that do exist will become impassable. The refugees will be left to the elements to starve and died from exposure. This is what the persons that have made them refugees have hoped for in the first place.

You can suggest that a military operation with humanitarian goals can be launched here. This would seem to be the only way to help such a mass of people on such a large scale. As what happened ten years ago in Rwanda. Again, one million people, all refugees, descended on one small are of land where they believed refuge was possible. Well, anytime you get one million people descend on a small area, you are going to have big time problems. And whatever aid is forthcoming, has to be organized on a military basis. But the problems are seemingly insurmountable.

Even if the military is tasked with providing support, it is not an easy thing. Chad, for instance, is a land locked country, and the area where the refugees are is about 1000 miles from the nearest sea coast. So what ever support you decide to send in must be sent in by air. That means an airport. So first you have to get control of an airport and then secure it with combat troops to provide security. This is the first step. Once that is done, you must improve and expand the size of the airport to allow massive further airlifts to continue. This means engineers. Not only to expand and improve airfields, but build roads, buildings, storage, bridges, etc. An infrastructure must be more or less built. Chad is a very poor country, with very poor or non-existent infrastructure. This will all have to be done from scratch to facilitate the relief operation. In addition, you will have to have psychological operations units to condition the refugees as to what is happening and convince them what to do for their own good. Medical units will have to be brought in to care for the refugees, many who will be suffering from malnutrition, war wounds, dehydration, and a whole host of diseases. These people from Dar Fur are coming from an area where there has been no real system of medical care. This will all be new to them. Military Police will be needed to provide law and order in a chaotic situation, among desperate persons. Civil Affairs units will have establish and run a "government" in the camps. Anytime you have 1 million persons descend on a small area and create a "city" you will need a bureacracy to run the place. Water purification units will have to brought in to provide clean water for the refugees. A U.S. Army water purification unit [a company sized unit], can provide one gallon of water per day for 20,000 persons]. So you can see the difficulty of providing one gallon of water per day for 1 million persons. [I understand the city of San Francisco has some sort of system that can meet the needs of 1 million people per day, in case of earthquake]. But that is in San Francisco, not in Chad. Diplomats will have convince neighboring countries, [and Chad also], that the presence of such a large host of military from foreign lands does not pose a danger to them. And cooperation will have to be obtained from surrounding countries. And do not preclude the possibility of attack upon the refugees by those very same militias that made them refugees in the first place. Cross-border incidents may become common. Your combat units will have to deal with this. [with the resulting casualties that will cause a furor at home]. An entire city of 1 million people will have to be built in the desert that was just recently very sparsely populated. Well, you can see the impossibility of this all!!

coolbert.