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Thirty-five years ago this week, Saigon fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops. Even this many years later, the images are indelible: Helicopters landing on the roof of the embassy; American sailors pushing helicopters off of the deck of a carrier as more hover alongside waiting to unload American citizens; and refugees fleeing the North Vietnamese Army's advance.

We all hope our departures from Afghanistan and Iraq will be more orderly. Historically, as the U.S. government ends a war our military leaves lots of stuff behind. Obviously we leave the buildings and infrastructure that we've built to support our warfighting effort. But we also tend to leave behind equipment – trucks, generators, mobile hospitals and such – that has reached the end of its official life cycle or doesn’t fit into our future organizational structures. The Iraqis will use some of this excess equipment, but some will simply be sold. Is there a way to use this gear in the service of peacekeeping?

While we're fighting two wars, international peacekeeping missions go on in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, south Sudan, Darfur, Chad and a dozen other places around the globe. Some of these missions are well equipped and some are not: the mission in Darfur has been short helicopters and trucks since its inception. The troop contributors bring what they can, but no one has ponied up a squadron of helicopters yet.

There is, of course, no standing international peacekeeping force. The most recent attempt at keeping a military force on standby, Europe's Standby High-Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG) shut down in 2009. The UN has no permanent forces to call on when something like the genocide in Rwanda happens.

But the African Union (AU) is building just such a force. Called the African Standby Force (ASF), once fully operational it will allow the AU to quickly deploy trained peacekeepers anywhere they're needed. So far, the AU has been able to stand up only one of five planned elements of the ASF. One of the difficulties in organizing the remaining units is a shortage of equipment. Many African militaries have only the barest minimums of equipment for their armies. Trucks, generators and mobile hospitals are expensive.

So as the U.S. is drawing down in Iraq this year - our combat role is scheduled to end this summer - maybe our Congress will authorize the Departments of State and Defense to transfer some of the equipment we might ordinarily leave in Iraq to partner nations in Africa for use by the African Standby Force.

Here at Refugees International we're looking into the needs of the ASF (and more broadly international peacekeeping in general), and what the U.S. might be able to transfer over the next few years to ease some of these shortages. For example, as our fleet of CH-46 helicopters reaches the end of its scheduled lifespan maybe we can refit some of these aircraft and transfer them to one of our partners rather than simply retiring them to the "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Over the next year we hope to identify even more ways the U.S. and our partners can work together to field better equipped peacekeepers who can better protect civilians who inevitably wind up in harms way.