Dear Alain Le Roi,

Secretary-General Ban, Le Figaro reports, is about to appoint you as the new head of peacekeeping, the United Nations’s largest and most cherished department. If so, congratulations. If not, please pass on this piece of unsolicited advice to whomever gets the job.

Success in your new post depends largely on Darfur. Putting a stop to the horrors there is the most ambitious task the U.N. member states have ever assigned to your department. For help, you’d be wise to contact two people who come from two extreme ends of America’s finest traditions. You probably remember Mia Farrow from the movies. Erik Prince’s excellent corporation, Blackwater USA, is often vilified in your circles, so you’ve probably heard of him, as well.

I spoke to both of them recently. She’s very dot-org. He’s all dot-com. She’s a bleeding heart, an effective and fierce fighter against injustice. He’s a successful businessman, whose business is peacemaking. I’m no matchmaker, but if opposites really do attract, this, for the suffering people of Darfur, would be a match made in heaven.

Mr. Prince has previously expressed interest in sending his dedicated professionals to Darfur. Mr. Le Roi, even if you don’t add a single soldier under your command to the 9,000 mostly African troops now deployed there, Blackwater can organize them into a force to be reckoned with.

You’ll also need highly trained people on the ground. Mr. Prince’s men are some of the best in the business. Your predecessor has traveled the world nonstop, begging donors for a few helicopters, which are necessary in the vast deserts of Darfur; Blackwater has helicopters. Blackwater, in short, can cut your costs and the loss of life.

That is, of course, if you can get the relevant parties to employ Mr. Prince. It’s a huge challenge, and members of your department are partially to blame.

Darfur “is a gnarly problem, and I don’t know why the U.N. is not more active on it,” Ms. Farrow said.

But she does know. She constantly chides China for blocking related U.N. Security Council resolutions. She meets endlessly with the relevant American officials, lobbying them to do more at Turtle Bay and beyond.

Asked about Mr. Ban’s diplomatic performance on Darfur, she said, “What performance?”

U.N. peacekeeping negotiators, along with their African Union partners, made a strategic mistake in their talks with President Bashir of Sudan, a senior Western diplomat said recently: Instead of demanding that negotiations cease once an agreement to deploy peacekeepers was signed, Turtle Bay gave Mr. Bashir veto power over each stage of the deployment.

And so Mr. Bashir recently announced that he would evict the employees of a Lockheed Martin subsidiary that received a U.N. contract to build the infrastructure necessary for new peacekeeping camps in Darfur. The no-bid contract may have been suspect, but that’s not for Mr. Bashir to decide.

People at Turtle Bay “need to go spine shopping,” Ms. Farrow said. “Did Hitler get to choose” which troops the Allies sent?

As you can see, Mr. Le Roi, your previous jobs as a French diplomat in Macedonia and Kosovo were a cakewalk compared to this. Western powers turn to the United Nations to keep the peace when they feel bad about wars in places where they have no compelling national interest. Third World countries send peacekeepers to the United Nations for extra cash. Naturally, they keep the best young recruits for their national army and send you the ones they think won’t amount to much. So you’ll have to fight constant allegations that your troops are guilty of child rape and other unspeakable horrors.

In other words, this “international community” you’re always hearing about rarely manages to solve problems together. You’ll need allies like Ms. Farrow to remind them that again and again they resort to promising “never again” — until they are shocked at yet another massacre. But then you’ll always be short of funds and there will always be too few good men under your command. You’ll need Mr. Prince to help you there.

Go to them, secretly or in public, just for advice or to sign contracts, together or separately. Nongovernment types like Ms. Farrow, and organizations like Mr. Prince’s — whose contracts are heavily regulated by the American government — have an interest in Darfur. They are your best bet there, and thus everywhere.

bavni@nysun.com