Africa: Standing By to Standby - the African Peacekeeping Force With More
Problems Than Solutions
Written by Simon Allison
Tuesday, 21 August 2012 06:26
analysis
Johannesburg - The African Standby Force is a beautiful concept. The crack
troops were meant to be the silver bullet for Africa's security problems, a
rapid-response team able to get in and stop conflict before it began-or make
sure it never reached Rwanda-level proportions. Only problem? Nine years
later, it's still in standby mode.
The idea of a pan-African military force goes back a long way. Kwame
Nkrumah, the father of pan-Africanism himself, envisaged an African High
Command to prevent foreign intervention and help liberation movements wage
wars against colonial governments. This idea went the same way as his plan
for a single African currency.
More recently, Muammar Gaddafi proposed an African Army, offering to equip
and house the army in purpose-built barracks in his hometown of Sirte.
Gaddafi's generous offer was refused by the African Union, wary of Gaddafi
using it to protect himself against whatever Western power he would
inevitably antagonize. This was prescient-just imagine how different the
course of the Libyan Revolution would have been if thousands of well-trained
African troops were stationed in Libya, answering to their paymaster.
In place of the African Army, the African Union came up with something else:
the African Standby Force (ASF). The idea was that Africa needed to have
some kind of military force on standby to intervene before situations could
spiral out of control; to avoid situations like Rwanda in 1994, where
decisive and early military intervention might have saved millions of lives.
Think of the ASF as firefighters, ready and waiting to be dispatched to put
out whatever conflagration is threatening the continent and its people.
This wouldn't be a standing army, or even a permanent battalion under AU
control, as suggested by the committee tasked with addressing the issue.
In 2003, when the ASF was formalized, countries were still too scared of
letting the Commission in Addis Ababa command its own firepower.
Instead, personnel would be drawn as needed from one of five standby lists
drawn up by each of the AU's five regions. On each list would be 60
civilians, 720 police officers and 5,000 armed forces personnel (army, navy
and air force). Each region and its list would be on standby for six months
at a time, making it less likely that one region would have to deal with
multiple conflicts at once. A central planning office in Addis would
coordinate among the regions.
If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. At a seminar hosted by the
Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria Tuesday, panellists lamented the
complexity of the organisational structure and the lack of any clear
guidelines on how it was supposed to work, problems that have meant that the
ASF remains in the planning stages. Panellists included the head of the AU's
Peace Support Operations Division Sivuyile Bam, under whose ambit the ASF
falls, and Colonel (retired) Festus Aboagye, a veteran of peacekeeping
operations in Liberia and a senior research fellow with the ISS.
The problems are legion, but the two biggest revolve around decision-making
and funding.
There are no clear rules on who has the authority to deploy the ASF, in what
circumstances and who needs to give approval. In theory, overall command
should rest with the AU's Peace and Security Council, but they are-again, in
theory-required to seek clearance from the United Nations before authorising
military intervention. How much say do the regional bodies such as SADC have
when it comes to the deployment of their troops? Can SADC use its standby
force to deal with regional problems without AU direction? And the
individual countries supplying the troops-do they have any say in the
matter?
Let's say that these obstacles are cleared and the ASF is deployed. Who then
takes overall command of the mission: the continental planning base in
Addis, the regional base or the country supplying most of the troops?
"To this day, we have no idea how the ASF is going to be deployed," said one
panellist. (Under ISS rules, what is said in the seminar is public
information, but the identity of the speaker remains confidential.) Which
perhaps explains why the ASF has not been deployed to date, with one
exception: 13 officers were sent by the ASF to assist the African Union
Mission in Somalia. In the context of the more than 17,000 African troops
already there, that's not exactly a meaningful intervention.
Then there's the funding problem. "Funding is key, funding is everything,"
said Bam, speaking later to Daily Maverick. It determines capability,
movement, equipment and maintenance, payments to injured soldiers. If we can
sort that out, the rest can follow."
While countries and regions are keen to assume command of ASF operations,
they're less enthusiastic about funding them. In other AU operations,
countries are happy to commit troops but do so expecting the AU to provide
the rest, including personal body armour. Flights are also a problem. Amisom
in Mogadishu at one point found itself a full battalion under-strength after
one battalion departed and its replacements were left waiting on some
airfield while the diplomats argued over who would pay for the plane.
Amisom is costing somewhere in the region of $600-million to $800-million
per year, and that's a conservative estimate. The AU isn't paying much of
that, most of the money comes from Western donor countries. The AU simply
doesn't have the resources to mount such operations on its own, meaning the
ASF, even if it does clear its logistical and political hurdles, will be
reliant on foreign funding for any large-scale interventions or
peace-keeping work.
To solve all the ASF's problems will require a huge investment of political
will and an even bigger investment of cash. There are hopes that Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma, the incoming chair of the AU Commission, might provide the
enthusiasm necessary to get the force off the planning table and on the
ground where it's needed, but even she will have to ask herself if it's
really worth it. It's not as if Africa has been unable to intervene in the
absence of a functional ASF. Quite the contrary; since 1990, there have been
17 military interventions or peace-keeping missions led by the African Union
or regional blocs.
Bam argued that this ad-hoc approach to peace and security is problematic in
the long-term, because it can't be relied upon. With every new crisis, a new
strategy needs to be formulated, a new force raised and new policies
outlined. With a standby force such as the ASF, diplomats and policy-makers
know they have a tool they can rely on.
"States want a predictable tool," he said. "They don't want to wait for
someone else to give them the nod, or to provide the tool. They think this
is the future."
A coordinated, well-trained and prepared continental force does make more
sense than the ad-hoc, haphazard military efforts which have characterised
previous interventions, with mixed results. Certainly it would allow the
African Union to act with more speed and decisiveness while remaining within
the internationally-approved parameters that constitute operating doctrine
of the ASF. Whether the ASF, with its ambiguous chain of command and lack of
funding, can be that force remains to be seen.
To return to the fire-fighting analogy: the fire drills have been written
and the firemen are on standby. They just don't have any fire stations, or
fire trucks, or anyone telling them which fires to fight.
Best not play with matches.
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Received on Tue Aug 21 2012 - 09:48:05 EDT
