The Virginia-Pilot reports that Blackwater USA, the private military company that advertises itself as a "a turnkey solution provider for 4th generation warfare" and a potential provider of a service termed "Janjaweed-be-gone" may be making headway in its quest to deploy to the Sudan. Last year, the $600 m a year company formed Greystone Limited in order to put a better marketing spin on its efforts to private the security of UN humanitarian missions -- given that this new company can draw on Blackwater for capabilities, it would be able battalion-sized unit and even its own home-brewed aircraft gunship in support of any contract it lands. So far, the effort by Greystone to land a contract to provide security to one of the world's worst humanitarian disaster zones, hasn't made any headway.
The first indicator is a potential contract with the regional government in southern Sudan:
Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, head of mission in Washington for southern Sudan’s regional government, said he expects Blackwater to begin training the south’s security forces within the next few weeks.However, this contract (if it exists) appears to be far from Dafur, which has become a display case for the moral bankruptcy of the state-run international system. Instead, it appears to involve the standard fare: oil. This is a tussle over lucrative blocks of oil between the autonomous southern Sudanese government (SPLA) and its independent oil company partner (White Nile) vs. the formal Sudanese government and France's Total.
For good recap of the rise of the modern mercenary industry, lots of globe-trotting tales of life at the "edge of the empire," and to get a feel for the personalities/ambitions of people like Erik Prince (the CEO of Blackwater) go read Robert Young Pelton's "Licensed to Kill."