Non-Subscriber Extract
Planning for war and peace in Africa
By Lauren Gelfand
30 September 2008
Peacekeeper training and military capacity building are two of the key US objectives with the establishment of AFRICOM. However, how these programmes align with the African Union's (AU's) own peacekeeping agenda and the establishment of an African Standby Force (ASF) for peacekeeping and emergency operations remains to be seen.
Envisaged as a force capable of deploying within two weeks to respond to crises such as genocide, the continent-wide ASF will be made up of five regional brigades of roughly 6,500 soldiers each: Northern, Western, Central, Eastern and Southern.
In a protocol laid out in 2003, the force aims to be able to handle peacekeeping missions with both military and civilian support, post-conflict disarmament, demobilisation of combatants and humanitarian assistance.
The force is also intended to have an intelligence arm and an early warning system to monitor security dynamics, so as to advise commanders on pre-emptive or responsive measures under the AU guidelines.
"The ASF is an instrument which the African Union intends to employ when diplomatic work has not produced the desired result; it is an instrument that needs to be used as a last resort, either minimising conflict or getting people to reach a ceasefire," said Bereng Mtimkulu, who recently left his position as the civilian director of the ASF programme for the AU.
While he judged it "premature" to fully assess where the regions were in the planning of their standby brigades, there have been some visible benchmarks attained that can demonstrate each region's commitments to achieving a 2010 timeline.
Image: US soldiers conduct sling-load training with a joint combat search and rescue team at Chabelley Airfield in Djibouti in August using US Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters (US Air Force)