The African Military in the 21st Century · the past quarter-century, raising new chal-lenges about...

Whitehall Report 4-07

The African Military in the 21st Century

Report of the 2007 Tswalu Dialogue

Contributors

Chris Brown, Christopher Clapham, Richard Cobbold, Martin Edmonds,

Ved Malik, Greg Mills, Geofrey Mugumya, Martin Rupiya, Frank Rusagara,

Rory Stewart, Theresa Whelan

The Royal United Services Institute

The Tswalu Dialogue was established in 2002 as a premier African forum to discuss issues ofconcern to continental development and security. The 2007 Dialogue focused on the likely roles,

shape and structure of the African military of the twenty-first century. There are a number ofreasons why this topic is important. First, security and stability is an essential prerequisite todevelopment. Second, there remain security threats to a large number of African countries andmany African militaries face short- or medium-term threats. Third, the African Union (AU) hasundertaken to perform a range of security-related tasks on the continent, including diplomacy,peace support operations and humanitarian assistance. The African Standby Force (ASF) introduces,in this regard, another important aspect of co-operation in organizational and doctrinal matters.Fourth, the number of democracies in Africa has increased substantially over the past quarter-century, raising new challenges about the practice of civil-military relations. And fifth, there arerelated concerns about the ability of African militaries – like their counterparts elsewhere – to dealwith twenty-first century security issues: notably, terrorism, rebuilding failed states, and employingthe appropriate technological tools.

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The Royal United Services Institute Whitehall Report 4-07

The African Military in the 21st Century

Report of the 2007 Tswalu Dialogue

3 – 6 May

Hosted by Jonathan and Jennifer Oppenheimer

& organized by The Brenthurst Foundation

in conjunction with the

African Union (AU),

Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), London,

African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS), Washington,

S. Rajaratnam School for International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore,

Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies, University of Tel Aviv,

Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), South Africa

and Business Leadership SA

Supported by the Government of Denmark

www.rusi.org

First Published 2007© The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other-wise, without prior permission of the Royal United Services Institute.

Whitehall Report Series

ISSN 1750-9432

Series Editor: Dr Terence McNamee

Most Whitehall Reports are available as part of a membership package, or individually at £10.00 plusp&p (£1.00 in the UK/£2.00 overseas). Orders should be sent to the Membership Administrator, RUSIMembership Office, South Park Road, Macclesfield, SK11 6SH, United Kingdom and cheques madepayable to RUSI. Orders can also be made via the website or by quoting credit card details via emailto: [email protected]

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Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin & Sons Ltd. for the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET UK

RUSI is a Registered Charity (No. 210639)

Front cover image:

A Ugandan soldier in the foreground during the largest military exercise ever held between EastAfrican Community nations and the United States, August 2006. Photo courtesy of Roger S. Duncan.

iii

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views ofRUSI or any other institution to which the authors are associated.

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwarded to: Dr Terence McNamee,Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET, United Kingdom, or via email to [email protected]

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1. The Summary and Report 3

2. The African Context 19The African Military in the Twenty-First Century 21Martin Edmonds & Greg Mills

The African Military: Assessing Continental Responses to Security Needs 37Martin Rupiya

The Challenges of Peacekeeping in Africa 41Christopher Clapham

Peacekeeping Experiences in Africa: 49From Organization of African Unity to the African Union: An Analytical Historical PerspectiveGeofrey Mugumya

Peacebuilding in the Context of the Rwanda Defence Forces 57Frank Rusagara

Why AFRICOM? 61Theresa Whelan

3. International Lessons for Africa 71Modern Peacebuilding 73Rory Stewart

Learning from Afghanistan 79Chris Brown

More or Less as Given: Global Issues Impacting on Africa 84Richard Cobbold

The New Global Security Agenda: How Might We Deal with It? 90Ved Malik

APPENDIX 95

Contents

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1

1. The Summary and Report

2

3

1. The Summary and Report

The Tswalu Dialogue1 was established in2002 as a premier African forum to discussissues of concern to continental develop-ment and security.

The 2007 Dialogue focused on the like-ly roles, shape and structure of the Africanmilitary of the twenty-first century. Thereare a number of reasons why this topic isimportant.

First, security and stability is an essen-tial prerequisite to development. Second,there remain security threats to a large num-ber of African countries and many Africanmilitaries face short- or medium-termthreats. Third, the African Union (AU) hasundertaken to perform a range of security-related tasks on the continent, includingdiplomacy, peace support operations andhumanitarian assistance. The AfricanStandby Force (ASF) introduces, in thisregard, another important aspect of co-oper-ation in organizational and doctrinal matters.These responsibilities will undoubtedlyincrease in the future as Western militariesare unlikely to provide even a small percent-age of the peacekeepers that the continentwill need. Fourth, the number of democra-cies in Africa has increased substantially overthe past quarter-century, raising new chal-lenges about the practice of civil-militaryrelations. And fifth, there are related con-cerns about the ability of African militaries –like their counterparts elsewhere – to dealwith 21st century security issues: notably, ter-rorism, rebuilding failed states, and employ-ing the appropriate technological tools.

Day One: Thursday 3 May 2007Rory Stewart emphasized the impotence ofinternational interventions from the Balkansto East Timor and particularly in Iraq andAfghanistan. The key problems were not lackof planning, poor leadership, limited troopnumbers or financial resources. Instead, thefundamental structure and norms ofWestern bureaucracies and societies areunsuited to nation-building. Internationalactors almost never articulate a single objec-tive or provide a coherent theory of nation-building. In Afghanistan, over sixty countriespursue contradictory policies. Even a singlecountry such as the United States can dra-matically change its political and economicobjectives in Iraq, for example, from remov-ing Saddam, to a highly ambitious project ofcreating a liberal democracy, to trying toleave and declare a victory, within a fewmonths. The theories that underpin thesemissions are often unconvincing. They arecharacterized by the hasty and inappropriateapplication of ‘lessons learned’ from previ-ous conflicts (many of which are contradicto-ry) and highly simplistic assumptions aboutcomplex and opaque political processes.

This is exacerbated by the culture of theinternational soldiers, diplomats and devel-opment workers, who are generally uncom-fortable with the compromises and difficultyof local politics, serve on very short toursand have little understanding or sympathyfor local culture. Government bureaucracieshave intrinsic problems of ineffectiveness andinefficiency even in a domestic context. But

1 The Tswalu Dialogue is held according to ‘RUSI Rules’ – the papers are on the record but the discussion is not forattribution. This report was prepared by Drs Greg Mills and Terence McNamee.

Tswalu 2007 – The African Military in the 21st Century

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abroad, these problems are exacerbated bythe absence of media, inspectors or electionsto regulate their activities abroad.International institutions are not accountableto local beneficiaries. This encourages theirpursuit of highly idiosyncratic and whimsicalpolicies, which are often irrelevant or evenabhorrent to the local population. These areoften driven by short-term fads and fashionsin development theory. Particularly disturb-ing is the inappropriate application of a ‘busi-ness school’ model to state developmentthrough listing the key sectors for the cre-ation of state authority and governance, andmapping out a linear, systematic plan toachieve an end-state of institutional profi-ciency and prosperity. Such a ‘technocratic’approach is dangerously blind to the oftenopaque, rapidly evolving and ‘primordial’reality of the local situation. It attempts toapply an abstract bureaucratic solution to aproblem which is fundamentally about polit-ical leadership and political culture. Theresult is often surreally comical.

Not only do the bevy of internationalconsultants, NGOs, technocrats, aid workers,diplomats, soldiers and management consul-tants lack sympathetic and detailed knowl-edge of local conditions and operating sys-tems, but their presence as foreigners is a cat-alyst for local rejection and even insurrection.Modern Islam and the post-colonial experi-ence inevitably make countries less and lesstolerant of the intervention of foreigners andparticularly foreign troops in their internalaffairs. In Iraq, the US-led coalition hasbecome an ‘inadequate antibiotic’: strongenough to suppress some symptoms of civilwar but not strong enough to eliminate thedisease. Indeed, the very presence of thetroops has encouraged the civil war to evolveinto a civil war ‘super-bug’, increasingly elu-sive and intractable and out of reach of aninternational solution.

The international community mustacknowledge the primacy of power and politics in fragile, impoverished countries emerging from conflict. Weberian bureau-

cratic reform is much less important than thepolitical struggle to create a narrative ofnational identity. This process must funda-mentally be led by local political culture andlocal politicians. The international communi-ty has to resist the temptation to microman-age and interfere. It will have to accept con-siderable sacrifices and compromises. Manyof the objectives and values of the interna-tional community: democratization, security,human rights, development are not logicallyconnected and in some cases are in factmutually contradictory. Difficult choices willneed to be made between cherished values,priorities set and there will have to be consid-erable tolerance for the often disturbingmethods of local politicians. There is no surerecipe for nation-building and the processwill always be bewildering, unpredictable,anarchic and painfully slow. The internation-al community – and the military which is atthe coalface of such operations – must acceptlocal ways of doing things and to find themeans to build local capacity while strength-ening local legitimacy – a difficult and oftencontradictory task which, handled incorrect-ly, can undermine local efforts to strengthenidentity and ownership.

The international community must rec-ognize how little it knows and how little itcan do. Such limitations are not transientweaknesses: they reflect fundamental ele-ments of our bureaucratic and political cul-ture and ideologies, which cannot simply bechanged through a new policy initiative. Wemust learn to recognize the strength thatalready exists within local societies and theirresistance to foreign pressure. We mustacknowledge that we often lack the power,the consent or the legitimacy to intervene atall. When we do, we should be modest in ourambitions and cautious in our prescriptions.Yet optimism remains: we know less and cando less than we pretend but we know moreand can do more than we fear.

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Day Two: Friday 4 May 2007Current and Emerging African SecurityThreatsAdmiral Richard Cobbold ranged widely inhis presentation, outlining the contemporaryinternational landscape in the context of anincreasingly globalized world. The mainchallenges he identified were the rise ofasymmetric warfare and the development ofeffective strategies (including exit strategies)to combat asymmetric opponents; develop-ing a consensual framework for humanitari-an intervention; the impact of climatechange on international security; and thepotential for conflict arising from America’srelative decline in power to, in particular,China and a renascent Russia. The rapidgrowth of the former’s interests and involve-ment in Africa was identified as anotherpotential trigger for conflict, as China seeksto meet its vast energy through exploitationof the continent’s resources.

In his presentation on the current andemerging security threats and challenges fac-ing the African Union, Geofrey Mugumyaprovided an African perspective. He traced itshistorical trajectory from the core idea ofPan-Africanism and the creation of theOrganization of African Unity (OAU) in theearly 1960s; the 1970s’ and 1980s’ commit-ment to address mercenary activity on thecontinent and support liberation struggles;the fundamental shift in security challengesin the wake of the end of the Cold War; andthe enormous implications for African secu-rity arising from globalization. Mugumyaargued that this development has broughtforth a new definition of defence and securi-ty which is especially pertinent to Africa.Previously, it was understood in terms ofstate survival and protection from externalaggression, whereas now it is perceived interms of ecological and environmentaldegradation, endemic poverty, access to med-ical and food resources, and so forth. He con-cluded by outlining how African leaders haveresponded to these new security threats, withconventions and treaties, ranging from the

African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone to theNew Partnership for Africa’s Development(NEPAD) and the Africa Charter on theRights and Welfare of the Child.

DiscussionThree broad themes emerged from the dis-cussion which followed. Firstly, as the securi-ty agenda has expanded dramatically in thepost-Cold War world, and more specificallysince 9/11, several discussants asked bluntly:what are African armed forces for? It was gen-erally accepted that addressing human secu-rity issues – famine, HIV, displaced persons,and so on – is a prerequisite for African devel-opment, but there were contrasting views onthe proper level of military involvement inthese issues, and in particular concerns wereexpressed that the expansion of the securityagenda threatens democratization efforts. Itwas suggested that the more you engage themilitary in development tasks, the greaterthe risk to civilian governance. The impera-tive for the military to remain apolitical wasreinforced and so too was the necessity toexercise extreme caution before wideningthe military’s role.

The second key theme was the tensionbetween collective defence, as embodied inthe African Union and the proposed AfricanStandby Force, and the continuing prepon-derance of state-centric notions of defenceand security. The weight of expectations onthe African Union is enormous. But there isno clear consensus on how to build sufficientcapacity and resolve the question of hybridi-ty of AU forces. Moreover, there is perhapsan air of unreality surrounding African dis-cussions of collective defence when one con-siders how problematic and tenuous even themost apparently stable of alliances – such asNATO – are in practice. Indeed, it wasprovocatively suggested that Africa may infact be swimming against the tide in trying toforge such a comprehensive, continent-widedefence pact. Hard-nosed realism must beapplied to answering the question of


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whether there is sufficient political will tosustain an African military alliance.

A related issue is the apparent discon-nect, highlighted by a number of discussants,between what the West believes Africashould be doing and how Africa wants toapproach continental defence and securityissues. The near universal desire for Africansolutions to African problems has not trans-lated into agreement, between the West andAfrica, on the way forward. What’s more,doubt was cast on the relevance and appro-priateness of ‘Sandhurst or West Point mili-tary thinking and training’ to the Africancontext.

A third key theme which arose from thedebate centred on what lessons African statesare drawing from the Iraq and Afghanistanimbroglios. Specifically, does the demonstra-ble success of asymmetric warfare in thosecases have implications for the way Africanstates may choose to adapt or develop itsforce structures? Indeed, it was proffered byone of the discussants that this phenomenonhas perhaps served to enhance African capa-bilities in relative terms.

In the past few years, with the rise ofAl-Qa’ida and other extremist groups, wehave witnessed the weakening of the stateorder. Some of the solutions adopted toaddress this crisis have only weakened thestate order further. At the same time, inAfrica, we are witnessing an increasing mili-tarization of the continent – and this is adynamic that is perhaps unique to theAfrican continent. It was argued that thegreatest challenge to Africa from a security per-spective remains state-building – in otherwords, building effective governance and anaccountable state. This task is severely under-mined by endemic unemployment, whichprovides a near limitless supply of ‘arms forhire’. It was robustly asserted that the chal-lenge of state-building is still more importantto the continent than terrorism, externalintervention and even climate change, anissue which was recognized as a new, signifi-cant driver of conflict. In this regard, increas-

ing scarcity of resources due to climatechange, especially water resources, repre-sented a major and growing threat, whichmay serve as a catalyst to a new generation ofAfrican conflicts. Most alarmingly, it wasobserved by one discussant that ‘climatewars’ may be the trigger for destroying theAfrican consensus on the inviolability ofAfrican borders. In the absence of collectiveresponses to climate change, the spectre ofnational armed forces invading neighbouringstates and capturing territory to secure accessto water or energy supplies becomes very real.

Assessing the African MilitaryThe session was chaired by Barry Deskerand focused on the emerging threats to secu-rity on the continent, current military capac-ity across Africa and the military as one ofmany instruments of state that can beapplied to meet the variety of challenges.Major General Arnold Fields observed thatsecurity is imperative if societies and nationsare to realize their full measure of success inmeeting the needs and expectations of thepeople. And as the impact of globalizationcontinues – moving goods services, and cul-tures around the globe, enhanced by anincredible revolution in technology and com-munications – national security has rapidlybecome a global issue and no longer theexclusive concern of the sovereign state.National, regional, and continental concernswill prevail, but with considerable scrutinyand likely intervention by the internationalcommunity. This very complex set ofdynamics, together with the new ‘terror’ fac-tor, has produced a climate that is unstable,unpredictable, and best described as asym-metrical. Military organizations of Africa,the super-powers, and elsewhere are at across-road in defining the best way ahead –the extent to which conventional doctrineand hardware are applicable to the contem-porary battle space. The African militarymust adjust accordingly and will need thesupport of the international community. To

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this end, certain social structures should be inplace in order to help garner internationalwillingness and confidence to invest inAfrica’s reconstruction. Democratic gover-nance and a well-defined and transparentnational security strategy will most likely bethe minimum expectations of the donorcommunity.

Brigadier General Frank Rusagaraused the example of the role played by theRwandan armed forces in the rebuilding ofthe state in the aftermath of the genocide in1994. With the collapse of law and order, lawenforcement agencies and judicial institu-tions had ceased to function; state adminis-tration had disappeared taking with it hospi-tals, schools and social services; economicinfrastructure was non-existent; atrocitieswere continuing and a vulnerable and trau-matized population were easy targets forcrime and exploitation. The Disarmament,Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR)process, whereby the ex-combatants were re-integrated into the armed forces and generalsociety, provided the foundation for the re-establishment of security and stability – acornerstone for the rebuilding of the nation.The Rwanda model as a whole was effectedthrough the traditional concept of Ingando(solidarity camps), which helped formercombatants: overcome mutual fear and suspi-cion, and the temptation for revenge; talkabout the history of the conflict; heal thewounds of hatred; accept responsibility forany harm done to each other; demystify neg-ative perceptions of each other; build collec-tive ownership of the tragedy that resultedfrom the conflict; and, agree on what thefuture holds for them. Admiral Steve Steadpresented an argument for clear nationalinterests to guide the capacity and capabilityof the military. This could be extended tothe regional and continental levels, therebyproviding material and infrastructural sup-port to the Africa Standby Force and theregional brigades – given their increasingimportance as an instrument for the preser-vation of African peace and security. The

current practice of deploying the military asa first resort on every occasion of instability,and expecting it to contend with all eventual-ities, should be re-assessed with the emphasison an inter-departmental approach.

DiscussionIn the discussion that followed, it wasobserved that the military now stood at amajor crossroads about its future role.Globalization and new and complex humansecurity issues have created an altogethermore challenging – and confusing – securityenvironment for Africa. It was suggestedthat this new security environment made itall the more imperative for African nations todefine their roles within transparent nationalsecurity strategies, founded on constitution-ality and involving wide popular participa-tion in the process. By doing so, the primacyof civilian state-building over military actionwould be reinforced.

Another central theme to emerge fromthe discussion were the challenges presentedby limited resources and asymmetric war-fare. African militaries need to define theirroles to suit their budgets; it was unrealisticto expect the average African country with itsscant budget to be able to finance all thefunctions expected of militaries generally inthe current complex military environment,including classic defence against externalaggression, regional peacekeeping (smallerstates should not be expected to overstretchthemselves by getting involved in regionalpeacekeeping) and asymmetrical warfare.Given the newfound prominence of the lat-ter, there was rigorous debate on its implica-tions for Africa and the tactics, techniquesand doctrine that might be appropriate to theAfrican context.

A third key point addressed by the dis-cussants followed the presentation onRwanda, namely should state building alwaysprecede military action or vice versa – is itpossible to build state institutions in an inse-cure country? If not, does that mean that it is


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up to the military to act first? Rwanda’s mili-tary led the country in reconstructing whatwas a near failed state, with the collapse ofnearly all institutions, after the 1994 geno-cide, and has successfully integrated the sol-diers of the old Rwandese army and theRwanda Patriotic Front into an entirely newarmy, with all the challenges of reconcilia-tion which that entailed. This had set a prece-dent for a similar process among civilians.What lessons does Rwanda hold for the restof Africa?

One final note of caution touched onthe unfortunate tradition within African mil-itaries to conceive their role as protecting theregime rather than the state or the people,which has led them to becoming embroiledin inappropriate internal operations. Giventhis historical proclivity, there was a dangerthat training an African Standby Force mightbackfire – by enhancing the capacity of statesto use their militaries for the wrong ends, asUganda had used its US-trained forces toinvade the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The New Global Security Agenda: HowMight we Deal with it? General Ved Malik addressed the fundamen-tal change in the concepts, paradigms andcomplexities of national, regional and globalsecurity. He attributes these changes to threekey factors: first, the rapid advances made inscience and technology, particularly informa-tion technology; second, the demise of bilat-eral international relations and traditionalconcepts of state sovereignty, which has beensupplanted by globalization and new multi-lateral and regional frameworks; and third,the more liberal approach to security, whichhas moved beyond traditional defence relatedthreats to encompass societal, economic andenvironmental dimensions. General Malikhighlighted a number of new security threatsand challenges, which he argued were morediverse and multi-dimensional than anythingwhich has come before. These include notjust insurgencies and cross-border terrorism,

but also environmental degradation, eco-nomic under-development and corruption,and diseases such as AIDS. He concludedwith a number of observations on how wemight approach these new security chal-lenges. In doing so he emphasized the impor-tance of speed of response to evolving crises;the need for intelligence, surveillance andreconnaissance; and the role of informationoperations, which are increasingly vitalbecause of the growing transparency of thebattlefield to the public in our non-stop, glob-alized media age. He drew a final observa-tion on counter-terrorism from his ownexperience in India, and highlighted thenecessity to integrate a ‘hearts and minds’element into the overall counter-terrorismstrategy.

DiscussionIn the brief discussion which followedGeneral Malik’s address, the friction betweenshort- and long-term imperatives, andbetween hard and soft power, was empha-sized as a core consideration in the new, post-9/11 security environment. It was suggestedthat there are three phases, which work in asequential time-frame, that are more or lessapplicable to any counter-terrorism orcounter-insurgency operation. The first isthe necessary exercise of hard power, the sec-ond is the transition to limited soft-powerinstruments whilst maintaining a hard powercomponent to be deployed if required, andthe third is the full handover to civilian insti-tutions. The unique Indian security contextwas discussed in relation to Pakistan and SriLanka, and the instruments India has used toameliorate those two different conflicts werehighlighted.

Assessing Continental Reponses toSecurity Needs The third and final session on the first dayassessed African responses to continentalsecurity needs.

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Lieutenant General Daniel Opandedrew on his own extensive peacekeepingexperience in providing a comprehensiverecord of recent regional and sub-regionalmissions on the continent in delivering peaceand stability. Observations and lessons wereoutlined from the experiences of Liberia andSierra Leone – two deployments whichoccurred under exceptionally difficult cir-cumstances – and the extent to which thosemissions informed the AU mission to Darfur.He highlighted the myriad obstacles toachieving sustainable peace and security inSudan, one of which was the problem ofmandate – which in this case was whollyinadequate – the other insufficient equip-ment and resources. Another significant chal-lenge General Opande identified was devel-oping the ability to handle more than onepeacekeeping mission at the same time.

Dr Martin Rupiya began by putting outa challenge to the Dialogue: identify whatthe African military is? He argued that, atpresent, too many people have unrealisticexpectations of what African militaries canachieve; he stressed that they needed time todevelop capabilities, doctrine and mandate.And the problem of finite resources had aseverely limiting impact on their operationaleffectiveness. Dr Rupiya observed that one ofthe key drivers in motivating African states toreconsider how they structure their collectivedefence efforts was the US imbroglio inSomalia. The departure of US forces andexplicit rejection of the idea of future Africanmilitary operations in the wake of Somalia in1994 forced Africa to get its house in order.He noted, too, that although the transitionfrom the OAU to the AU has been successful,the whole question of sovereignty has –under AU structures – become problematic.Where the idea of territorial inviolability wassacrosanct under the OAU, it has weakenedunder the AU. Another problem identifiedwas the reluctance of African countries totake the lead role in a mission and to releasecompletely command and control to com-manders from other nations. In respect of

AU relations with the UN, gaps were identi-fied in terms of policy direction and harmo-nization, one recent example beingOperation Artemis in the Congo and the AU.

Mr Saki Macozoma presented a viewfrom the private sector, with particular refer-ence to South Africa. He traced SouthAfrican defence policy from democratizationin 1994 to the present day, arguing that therewas no meaningful threat assessment carriedout in the mid-1990s, which partly explainssome of the fundamental problems experi-enced by the South African National DefenceForce (SANDF) today. Mr Macozoma notedthat the historical experience of the militarymeddling in politics is still a lingering issue inthe minds of people and therefore SouthAfricans and Africans in general, are largelywary of resourcing armies and giving themtheir support. The negative perceptions ofthe military in civil society is a fundamentalchallenge. In the case of South Africa, thereis a widespread view that spending on themilitary is exorbitant, in light of the coun-try’s pressing socio-economic challenges –namely crime and AIDS – which most of itscitizenry believe should take precedence. Aquestion that arises is whether the SANDFwill be able to draw on the best brains avail-able in order to play the role it can potential-ly play in the state’s development in thefuture.

DiscussionA central question posed at the outset of thediscussion was what are the lessons learned –if any – in previous African missions and howare they being applied in Sudan? Pessimismwas expressed, insofar as some of the mis-takes of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and IvoryCoast missions are being repeated. Indeed,and following on from Rory Stewart’s open-ing address of the Dialogue, even the phrase‘lessons learned’ came under scrutiny, so fre-quently has it been used glibly and as anexcuse for not thinking adequately aboutwhether cross-case comparisons are valid or


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useful. It was suggested that ‘appropriatesolutions to African problems’ might be aconstructive replacement for that term.

The issue which produced the fiercestdebate centred on appropriate mandates forAfrican peacekeeping missions. It was notedthat the peacekeeping instrument does notsit well with the UN Charter – it worked wellduring the Cold War but not in the post-ColdWar era of complex emergencies, whichdemand a new international legal frame-work. To date, African peacekeeping man-dates have been the product of ad hoc discus-sion rather than comprehensive assessments.There was sharp disagreement on whetherto deploy missions in the absence of anagreement. The United Nations does not dothis, the logic being that without agreementthere is no clear frame of reference to guidethe mission. The African Union, on the otherhand, has an obligation to intervene in itsconstitution in whatever circumstances; thefirst imperative is to protect civilians. Assuch, missions like Darfur operate withoutan AU mandate, and thus the force turns tothe UN Chapter framework for guidance andin particular the rules of engagement. That isthe key, for without a mandate you cannothave set rules of engagement.

Another major issue to emerge in thediscussion was over ‘gaps’ – who meetsshortcomings in the essential needs: the AUor the UN and international community? Itwas asserted that some crises on the Africancontinent are international crises – Rwanda,for instance – that cannot be confined to thecontinent: there is an international responsi-bility in such cases. There are also gapsbetween what AU leaders say and how theyact – a lot more consistency and coherenceare required.

One of the main challenges identifiedwas the creation of effective conflict preven-tion mechanisms, which link with questionsabout what the AU’s role is in the setting ofnorms. What can the AU do by way of con-tributing to norm development – one sugges-tion was to begin professional monitoring of

the agreements they have made. A key pointto acknowledge is that the AU does not havethe resources nor will it ever have the fullmulti-dimensional peacekeeping capacity.African peacekeeping is entirely dependenton international funding, and thus we needto be realistic about what it can achieve. Itwas suggested that the AU is at the momentbiting off more than it can chew.

The discussion ended with a powerfulcall for soldiers – who had been largelyignored in the discussion – never to be taken forgranted. Peacekeepers must be trained andadequately equipped to exercise lethal forcewhen necessary. We must not lose sight ofthat reality: they are soldiers. Whatever elsethey are tasked to do, that element willalways remain part of their jobs.

The Military and State RebuildingMajor General Chris Brown described thenature of international operations inAfghanistan as an example of state rebuild-ing, albeit an extraordinarily complex one.He began by outlining the political context inAfghanistan which prevailed when ISAF IXcommenced in May 2006. This was a contextin which the basic structures of democracyhad been established, but in practice werelargely unrealized. The aim was to stabilizethe security situation to a point in whichthey, the intervening force, could hand overas much control to local authority as the sit-uation would permit. One of the principaldifficulties ISAF IX encountered were theexpectations of the local populace, who wereled to believe that ‘democracy’ would bringsignificant, tangible benefits – and this waslargely not the case. He raised doubts overwhether the acute emphasis of the interna-tional community on establishing democracywas wise or realistic, given the desperate con-dition of the state (after twenty-five years ofwar) and absence of a democratic tradition.

Brown highlighted the critical core ofhow ISAF IX was going to operate, and thatwas to concentrate efforts and activities on

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those that received the consent of Afghansand was consistent with the objectives of theGovernment of Afghanistan. Of significantrelevance to Africa, he noted that anyattempt to categorize or phase a peacekeep-ing operation can be immensely problematic,as the experience of ISAF IX revealed.

The military aim was to get the Afghangovernment to grip and co-ordinate the situ-ation – but the government was simply inca-pable of doing this. So under GeneralRichards’ direction, ISAF IX established whatwas in effect a national security council, thePolicy Action Group, which was split intofour sub-groups or pillars, answerable toPresident Karzai. They divided the countryinto what were termed Afghan DevelopmentZones. Water drilling and road building pro-jects would be rolled out in these areas withthe military in the lead, so the averageAfghan in the area would be seeing not onlya military security effort but also a develop-ment effort led by the military. Howeverimperfect, these efforts did have the effect offacilitating and underpinning, according toGeneral Brown, the intent of ISAF IX inextending and expanding GOA authority intothe regions. The rub was that the militarycould not do this without, simultaneously,being prepared to fight. And this was thecase, as the Taliban re-emerged to thwartwherever possible ISAF IX’s developmentefforts. The result was NATO’s first and onlybrigade-sized battle to defeat the Taliban in asouthern district of Afghanistan.

The message here was that boots on theground were important – if not essential – tostabilizing the situation. The short-term sup-port to stability operations involved a majorjoint-effort with numerous players, includingindigenous forces and, amongst others,USAID. Indeed, it was of fundamentalimportance to create a competent and capa-ble indigenous force. But one key questionISAF IX had to address is: what do you trainthe indigenous army to do? Peacekeeping,not war-fighting, is Brown’s suggestion. Heargues that, above all, establishing indige-

nous forces as the ‘face of security’ in the vil-lages should be the number one priority, andthat lesson is germane to the African context.

Brown highlighted the fact that there isno one template that can be rolled out andgrafted onto environments of insecurity sub-ject to international forces’ involvement. Hemade no claims for the appropriateness toAfrican states of the overall structure he andISAF IX developed for Afghanistan. ButBrown concluded by restating the criticalissue – which is of relevance to Africa – thatit must be decided who is leading and alsothe conditions whereby a determination canbe made to hand over control to local author-ities. In the context of a multinational opera-tion, he reminds us that every nation willcome with a clear set of guidelines on whatthey can do and what they can’t do, andinvariably this will present political and oper-ational challenges that will never be entirelyresolved. Instead, you will, as ever, have towork with the cards you are dealt.

DiscussionIn the discussion that followed, Brown waschallenged to explain the phasing of theAfghan peacekeeping operation and the fac-tors that determined when transitions to dif-ferent phases would take place.

It was suggested that seen from theAfghan perspective, what ISAF IX achievedwas not sustainable – and the very nature ofinternational action was transitory or tempo-rary. As a consequence, Afghans were likelyto view even successes with some circum-spection. Is NATO, and for that matter theinternational community, not facing up tosome hard truths about the population,whether it is the Afghans or any other peoplesubjected to foreign occupation: they willtake your money and may acquiesce tem-porarily, but will not shift allegiances funda-mentally and permanently. The imperative toradically adjust the international communi-ty’s commitment in terms of time-frame to a peacebuilding operation was stressed.


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Realistic time-frames may be in the range ofgenerations – twenty to thirty years. Is therethe political will to sustain such long-termcommitments? It was suggested that con-tributing nations’ political will and local pop-ulation support will depend greatly onwhether information operations are firmlyrooted in substance or not.

One of the discussants observed thatthere was an absolute imperative to not justconcentrate on fighting the Taliban but inmaking the Taliban irrelevant. It was re-emphasized that the military aspect was inAfghanistan, and undoubtedly will be so else-where in the future, the easy bit. There aretremendous difficulties in striking the bal-ance between an Afghan-owned process andthe initiatives that we, whether ISAF IX orthe international community, are introducingin the interests of the local population butare nonetheless our initiatives, not theirs.How can we be sure of their commitment,or buy in, to foreign-imposed initiatives? Arelated point was the balance between cen-tral ownership and rural/village ownership –this was a difficult and delicate task, involv-ing a sophisticated public relations andbranding strategy.

There was broad agreement amongstthe discussants that there was something fun-damental to the Afghanistan equation thatwas missing – and that was the politics. Whatthat means in practice is that attempting toengage the Taliban is essential, at some pointdown the road, otherwise an ultimate politi-cal settlement will remain elusive. You haveto be prepared to deal with and incorporatethe former insurgents as they start to realizethat their efforts are becoming irrelevant.Another central part of any final settlementwas Pakistan – can we fix Afghanistan with-out fixing Pakistan? In this sense we need tobegin to look at Afghanistan more as aregional issue.

It was observed by one of the discus-sants that in the context of asymmetric war-fare that technology may be as much a hin-drance as an asset. Theatre-level intelligence

capabilities were highlighted as critical, but atthe same time we must recognize that inAfghanistan – and potentially in future peace-building or stabilization operations in Africa– the enemy is increasingly able to get belowthe threshold where we can turn to ouradvantage our technological ascendancy.

Day Three: Saturday 5 May 2007The session on Day Three divided into twogroups: ‘The African Standby Force (ASF)and peacekeeping in Africa: What are thecore challenges?’; and ‘AFRICOM: What willit mean and do for Africa?’

Professor Christopher Clapham ledthe discussion on the historical experience ofpeacekeeping in Africa. Overall, he notedthat there had been a dramatic change in atti-tude by African states to continental securitymatters, acting today where they wouldscarcely have been thinking a few years ago.He posed a number of key questions whichstimulated a wide-ranging discussion on therole of the ASF:

• What can a military and peacekeepersachieve, since one should not think ofpeacekeepers being able to heal all ofAfrica’s wounds?

• What is the political environment intowhich peacekeepers will be inserted,since conflict situations are deeply con-tested and an intervening force willinevitably benefit or disadvantage pro-tagonists, most often the weak over thestrong?

• What kind of peacekeeping operationsmight Africa be letting itself in for: tra-ditional peacekeeping operations;‘holding the ring’ for a settlement totake effect; wider peacekeeping in morefluid circumstances à la Somalia, inwhich it is easy to be dragged intoextremely difficult circumstances; orpeace enforcement in which there is aneed to match commitment with themilitary agenda – such as with the

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British intervention in Sierra Leone,Ethiopia in Somalia, and the French inCote d’Ivoire?

Discussion Two key additional questions shaped the dis-cussion which followed: how will the ASF fitinto this environment; and where should webe going overall with peacekeeping in Africa?

It was noted that the ASF is a crisisintervention force, acting at short notice in apeace enforcement role. It is ultimately to bemade up of five brigades (one per region),with the troops paid for by the national con-tributors and the bulk of deployment costsbeing met by foreign donors. Six scenarioshave been envisaged for the ASF:

1. AU and regional organization militaryadvice for a political mission.

2. AU and regional organization militaryobserver mission co-deployed with theUN mission.

3. Stand alone AU and regional organiza-tion observer mission.

4. AU and regional organization peace-keeping force for Chapter VI UN andpreventive deployment missions.

5. AU peacekeeping for complex multidi-mensional peacekeeping missions –involving low-level spoilers as in manyof the ongoing conflicts.

6. AU intervention such as in the case ofgenocide or where the internationalcommunity does not act promptly.

Two sets of problems were identified withthis approach: each at the tactical and strate-gic levels. Tactically, the discussion focusedon capability issues relating to military inter-operability, rules of engagement, financialsupport, intelligence, surveillance and recon-naissance (ISR) capability, airlift, and trainingand equipment. It was felt that local, Africanfunding for missions was critical as it ensureda degree of local commitment as a ‘state-ment of the priority assigned’ by Africans –

and not simply the international community– to such missions. In reality, given theabsence of theatre-level deployment capabil-ities by most African countries even acting inconjunction with each other, reliance on for-eign assets would be inevitable. AFRICOMcould, along with other actors, play a role inthis regard.

The more difficult questions, however,existed at the political level in ‘linking peaceto politics’. The ASF could never be a substi-tute for diplomacy. Although, there was aneed to link military intervention (holdingthe ring) with political action. Peacekeepingas a form of conflict management, mediationand resolution were inseparable. It was feltthat there was no point to deploying an AUforce in the absence of a political strategy todeal with the impasse that had led to the mil-itary intervention in the first instance. TheASF should be a prompt for diplomacy. Everylikely current scenario for the deployment ofthe ASF according to categories five and six(above) would, too, probably occur withoutthe consent of key local actors, placing diplo-matic skill and political will at a premium. InDarfur, for example, Africa had essentiallybeen a ‘surrogate’ to the political demands ofthe US.

Ms Theresa Whelan provided a macro-overview of the newly-announced USAfrican military command – AFRICOM. Shemade the fundamental point that AFRICOMreflects an evolution in US strategic thinking;discussions on a functional and geographicunified command for Africa had been goingon for decades within the Pentagon. Theearly debates on AFRICOM were linked tothe Cold War rivalry in Africa and humani-tarian considerations, but were givenrenewed urgency in the wake of 9/11. Thatevent made clear that Africa was integral, notperipheral, to global security and US securityin particular in the post 9/11 world. Sheaddressed several of the myths and miscon-ceptions about AFRICOM, including theview that its primary purpose will be tosecure access to African oil, as well as ques-


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tions about establishing a single headquartersor a distributed presence, covering the seamsof the previous command structures, staffingthe Command and the process of consulta-tion with African states. Ms Whelan empha-sized that building security capacity and aid-ing (where appropriate) the state-buildingprocess was at the core of AFRICOM, and assuch the force which will constitute theCommand will be non-kinetic.

Discussion The robust debate which followed MsWhelan’s presentation revealed scepticismamongst the discussants on US intentions forAFRICOM, its prospects for success, and theextent to which AFRICOM constitutes a truepartnership with African states.

One of the principal points of tensionidentified by the discussants was howAFRICOM would aid – or hinder – peace-building and state-building in Africa. Do theinterests of African states collide or coherewith US interests? It was provocatively sug-gested that AFRICOM was far less aboutpeacebuilding and mutual security intereststhan about establishing forward bases forlaunching US attacks on its adversaries or, atbest, strictly aimed at ensuring that Africanstates do not become terrorist havens thatcould mount attacks against US interests inAfrica or elsewhere. This was strongly dis-puted, as was the suggestion that AFRICOMwould lead to a series of US garrisons dottedaround the continent; but it was widely rec-ognized that there is a perception gapbetween African governments and popula-tions and US’ stated intentions. One discus-sant observed that there was a contradictionbetween the intent to establish a four-starcommander in charge of AFRICOM and theplan to equip it with a non-kinetic capability.

It was emphasized repeatedly in the dis-cussion that strong African states with goodgovernance is America’s best defence, whichwill be a key factor in establishing the rangeof capabilities that will be made available to

AFRICOM. But a powerful argument wasmade that the largely dismal record of thestate-building enterprises US-led coalitionmilitary forces are involved in in Iraq andAfghanistan should cause military plannersto re-assess the AFRICOM concept.

One discussant made the cogent com-parison of Germany and Japan – both ofwhich were reconstructed by Western (andRussian) militaries at the end of the SecondWorld War. The central difference in thosecases was that both the industrialized nationsof Germany and Japan, their leaders andpopulations, wanted to a great extent tobecome like (above all) the US. Conversely, inIraq and Afghanistan it seems palpably thecase that their leaders and people do not wantto be like America – hence the woeful perfor-mance of the state-building enterprises inthose countries. The relevance for Africa is:what if the majority of African states andtheir populations do not want to live likeAmericans, they do not share American val-ues and morals? What are the prospects forAFRICOM’s success when it appears thatWashington is transplanting an inappropriatetemplate or model for the African context?Why do Western states continue to believethey can engineer societies from the outsidewhen the record of previous attempts to doso is so abysmal? In light of these concerns, itwas suggested that the whole underlyingassumptions of AFRICOM have to be muchmore forgiving of and sensitive to local con-ditions and traditions.

One discussant reminded the delegatesthat the US military, despite its intent to co-operate with other elements of the US gov-ernment more directly in promoting goodgovernance, justice, the rule of law, and soforth in Africa, will ‘stay in its lane’ – i.e., it isnot seeking to get in the business of doingwhat the State Department and USAID aredesigned for. AFRICOM seeks to become apiece of the good governance equation – butjust a piece, not the lead player. And it wasessential to bear in mind that all too often theUS finds itself in a Catch-22 situation – it is

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damned if it does and damned if it does not:if it entirely ignored the governance agenda,it would be criticised for overly concentratingon the military aspect. And African countriesmust not be so naïve as to assume that the USis going to behave any differently than anyother sovereign nation which pursues its ownfundamental interest.

Another key component of the discus-sion centred on the power and weight of theUS Department of Defense in relation toUSAID and the State Department. It wasnoted by some discussants that the percep-tion in Africa was that, increasingly, the faceof the US on the continent is a military one,whereas the influence and presence of theState Department and USAID is diminishing.This view amongst Africans was reinforcingnegative perceptions of US intentions andcausing alarm about the prospect of increas-ing militarization of US foreign policy inAfrica. The sheer size of a large US militarycomponent – the example of Djibouti washighlighted – was in itself a problem andadded to the perceptual gap over intentions.Yet the reality, it was asserted, was in factvery different. The US intent was, on the con-trary, to keep the military footprint as light aspossible, which is one of the first principlesof AFRICOM. Furthermore, State andUSAID have the more significant financialand legal resources and leverage in decidingpriorities and structuring the response tosecurity issues in Africa. Moreover, it wasnoted that for the first time within a US over-seas command, State Department andUSAID officials will be integrated into thecommand structure.

Another core theme which emergedfrom the discussion is the process of consul-tation and negotiation, specifically the extentto which AFRICOM will be a true partner-ship with Africa, as Washington claims, ormerely a consultative relationship, one whichthe US engages and consults on security onlywhen it deems it in their interests to do so.The past record suggests that true partner-ships with African states have proved impos-

sible to achieve, partly because the US pos-sesses such disproportionate power in rela-tion to Africa. The nature of US consultationwas widely seen as critical; indeed, theprocess of consultation and how the relation-ship develops over AFRICOM before it isstood up is perhaps as, or even more, impor-tant than the end-state. This process willcement perceptions in Africa over whetherAfrican requirements and concerns havebeen adequately integrated into the finalshape of AFRICOM. In this vein, a com-pelling suggestion was proffered that theconsultation process represents a uniqueopportunity to ‘re-brand’ America’s image inthe eyes of Africans. At present, there ismarked scepticism and suspicion across thecontinent; but if there is genuine and high-profile consultations that can be marketedand promoted to Africans as a mutually ben-eficial partnership, it could result in a signifi-cantly rehabilitated image of the US inAfrican eyes. What could allay some of thescepticism and bridge the perception gapbetween Africa and America in the interim ismore information about how the consulta-tion process is going – presently – and whatprecisely the combined efforts being under-taken are to bring peace and stability inAfrica.

Day Four: Sunday 6 May 2007Summary and ConclusionsAmbassador Patrick Mazimhaka reviewedthe key themes emerging from the Dialogue.He highlighted a number of significantpoints of agreement amongst the discus-sants, including the need to establish com-mon defence policy and structures andensure human security in its broadest sense.Ambassador Mazimhaka noted that althoughthe militarization of Africa was addressed inthe discussions, the issue of small arms wasnotably under-examined, and he expressedconcern that its destabilizing effect onAfrican security is not fully appreciated.Another point of concern he highlighted was


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the possible subversion of the ASF’s rolethrough undue influence by certain memberstates, whose agendas may clash with the col-lective will. A final key issue he addressedwas the funding of peacekeeping missions,and in particular how that relates to ques-tions of sovereignty and responsibility vis-à-vis the rest of the international community.

Ambassador Johnnie Carson provideda commentary on some of the broad trendsin the changing global security context andthe new security challenges: the rise of Chinaand India, and the implications inhering froma future multi-polar world; globalization andthe reduction of the barriers that dividenations; and transnational security threats,from asymmetric warfare and terrorism tocomplex emergencies and climate change.Like Patrick Mazimhaka, AmbassadorCarson addressed the numerous challengesAfrica faces in mounting significant, long-term peacekeeping missions, especially limit-ed resources. African states have madeimportant symbolic contributions butAfrica’s ability to act independently is severe-ly hampered by lack of equipment, logisticalsupport, and air-lift to make their missionsendurable and ultimately successful. Alsoproblematic was the absence of a clear man-date for missions and soldiers’ rules ofengagement, and strict guidelines for whenand under what conditions to intervene. Heended by calling for problems to beaddressed in a comprehensive and systematicfashion, lest the entire peacekeeping mecha-nism becomes tarnished in the eyes of theglobal community.

Dr Greg Mills identified the factorsthat shape militaries. These were categorisedby Mills in two respects: those factors whichremain the same this decade as they did in anearlier era; and those that are different thisdecade.

In the first category, military role andcapabilities are defined by what a nation isand wants to be. It is a tool to deal with thosethreats in the way of achieving its goals as asociety – roles which can be described as the

protection of the state and promotion of val-ues.

Setting up the right structure and buy-ing the right tools for the military’s primarytask depends on a clear assessment of futurethreats. Historically, prediction remains anart rather than a science, no different today asit was in the past. One only has to look at9/11 to see how difficult prediction is.Equally, defence planning has to take intoaccount the capabilities of likely foes andallies, though this, too, is a task fraught withsuspicion, misperception and inaccuracy.

Preparing for the tasks that arise out ofthis threat-definition process remains prob-lematic, too. There remain inexorably longlead times in the development of appropriatetechnologies (even though paradoxicallythese very technologies are supposed tomake things easier to build), meaning thateven if they do not want to, generals andadmirals end up fighting the last war withthe tools they have inherited for that task. Yetfuture defence and military needs can only, atbest, partly be gauged by current experiencesand extrapolations. Logistics remain all-important to military proficiency, todayarguably more so than in the past, given thelevel of technologies involved.

In terms of these factors, militarycapacity and posture remain to offer aClauswitzian aphorism, defined by politicsand nationalism. What, in contrast, haschanged?

First, the international environment ismore complex and multi-disciplinary, andfaster-paced. We are operating in a 24/7hyper-media world, which can change per-ceptions faster and among a larger audiencethan any operation on the ground. The pres-ence of more governmental and non-govern-mental actors (including private militaries)means that strategies for military and mili-tary-civilian co-operation are at a premiumespecially in the post-conflict peace-buildingphase of operations. The military cannotsolve security challenges alone: at best, it canhold the line and apply pressure allowing

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other economic, social, intelligence anddevelopmental assets are brought to bear.The military is less likely today to be a deci-sive force for victory than ever before.

Second, some security drivers are differ-ent, with the emergence of new pressures ofmigration, climate change and waterresource protection, energy and commoditysecurity heightened by the economic rise ofChina and India, youth bulge and burgeoningurban populations notably in Africa, HIV-Aids, and terrorism of a transnational charac-ter. While ‘international kleptomania’ is asold as states themselves, increased pressuresfor foodstuffs and the growing power of non-state actors adds a layer of complexity to thisthreat.

Third, whether the emergence of arange of new state actors, notably China andIndia in Africa, makes life more difficult oreasier for Africa is moot. The tradition ofChina’s engagement suggests a concern lesson Africa’s needs than Beijing’s, and the inter-section between these may not always be tothe best of interests of Africa’s citizens ratherthan its elites. It highlights, again, the grow-ing relevance of energy as a driver in consid-ering security in Africa.

Fourth, the role and definition of secu-rity has changed, from state-centric tohuman security – even if the reality of itsbuilding blocks have not altered given theneed for a strong, effective state to providesecurity, even human security. But the mili-tary have to deal with the consequences ofthe collapse or erosion of state capacity; theeffects of which are potentially catastrophicfor people, states and regions alike, as Iraqshows. And they also have to deal with theexpectations of people fed by a global mediabut which have to be satiated at home.

Fifth, related to the above, the militaryare generally expected to do more with less.They are expected not only to be ‘thoughtleaders’ in military doctrine but in the theoryand practice of state-building. In this they facea new very tricky challenge: engaging in thepolitical affairs demanded by peacebuilding, a

role better suited to proconsuls and commis-sars rather than colonels and corporals.

Sixth, while the military remains a keytool – and sometimes the lead agent – forconflict resolution, they also have to beastute political actors in this regard. Whatdoes effective mediation require? It relatesclosely to peacebuilding. It requires helpinglocal actors get where they want to go, notgiving them an external solution. It demandseven-handedness and perceptions thereof,knowledge of local conditions and actors(where the military’s intelligence functionsare important) and the application of time,effort, leadership and careful method.

Seventh, the very stuff that militariesdepend on – people – has altered, as theyhave continued to do over the centuries.Today’s generation is not only more technol-ogy-oriented, they inevitably might have dif-ferent values. Today’s ‘iPod generation’ – andwhatever follows them – may however beless suited to tough military life. How thischanges the role of the military within soci-ety is moot. It may well reinforce their classi-fication as a distinct elite (or underclass)rather than a citizen force. The age-old war-rior ethos of duty, honour and selfless sacri-fice still exists – in varying degrees – amongstsoldiers across the world. But widespreadanti-militarism is prevalent in many states,including in Africa.

Eighth, whereas technology is seen as agreat force multiplier, in today’s asymmetricwarfare environment we at least recognizeclear limits to the balance between qualityand quantity, technology and numbers. Norshould the role of bureaucratic process inmilitary planning be a substitute for theeffects of boots on the ground – the essentialdifference between the logic of accountantsand admirals. Capacity, moreover, is morethan just a sum of military assets. Contraryto the reasoning of bean counters, it incorpo-rates the value of industrial prowess andhuman and physical infrastructure fromskills to bases underpinning operationalcapability. And the overwhelming focus on


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the need for new hardware has obscured theimportance of having the right human soft-ware to get the job done – something theSANDF is all too aware of. Asymmetric war-fare may in fact be to the disadvantage ofAfrican militaries, potentially emboldeningand changing the balance between Africanpopulations/paramilitaries on the one hand,and militaries on the other.

Ninth, continental vision and regionalinitiatives play an increasing role in ensuringsecurity, especially in Africa and the MiddleEast. The greater (at least rhetorical) engage-ment of the international community withmatters of African development and securitycontrasts with the more active role byAfrican-led and staffed peace support initia-tives, mimicking the role of NATO in theBalkans, for instance. At the same time, weare today acutely aware of the limitations ofcollective defence (what Richard Cobboldreferred to as ‘less than the sum of theparts’).

Finally, the traditional role of theAfrican military has included domestic state-building, through the military’s ceremonialrole inculcating a sense of pride and prestigeas a national institution. Today, this has takenon a new dimension in terms of theirexpanding engagement as a key componentof the criminal-justice system. Whether theyshould be doing this is moot.

So what does this add up to specificallyfor Africa?

• The military will be expected to domore with less – but the military needsto be discreet about what it takes onand what can be expected of it.

• Small is beautiful: we must be realistic

about what the military can achieveespecially with regard to peacebuildingmissions.

• Media (or information) operations are acrucial force multiplier.

• There is a growing role for technologyespecially in gathering intelligence, buttechnology cannot replace the need forboots on the ground.

• To deal with anti-military sentiment,the management of perceptions includ-ing branding is crucial.

• Finally, it is important to distinguishbetween the tactical and strategic issuesfacing African militaries in multination-al operations: between questions ofinter-operability, tactics, training,equipment, communications and so on;and the wider questions of mandateand of gearing the interventionstowards political ends, as a tool ofdiplomatic action for example.

Discussion In the brief discussion which followed thefinal session of the Dialogue, it was observedthat AIDS was given scant attention over theprevious three days. When, it was asked, willthe catastrophic effect of AIDS on Africanhuman security be fully appreciated? Themuch newer threat of climate change wasalso highlighted, especially insofar as mostAfrican militaries are currently not preparedto deal with disasters emerging from it. Thediscussion ended on the specific issue offunding African militaries and peacekeepingmissions, a subject that percolated during allsessions of the 2007 Tswalu Dialogue.

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2. The African Context

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The African Military in the Twenty-First Century

Martin Edmonds & Greg Mills

SummaryIt has only been in the past decade or so thatthe international community has seriouslyturned its attention to Africa and Africa’sneeds. No longer in isolation, left to its owndevices, Africa is now more closely engagedwith the international environment and hasto learn how to adapt. This involves global-ization, the competition for energy sources,international migration and populationgrowth, protection of strategic resources,the impact of climate change, the penetra-tion of digital information technology, theexpanding role of the United Nations and the

International Criminal Court and with it,new international laws governing terrorismand crimes against humanity. Whilst Africa inthe past could ignore these developments, itno longer can. What does this mean for thefuture of Africa’s military?

Whatever Africa’s military becomeswithin this new and challenging internation-al environment, bearing in mind it affectseach of the fifty-three states in subtly differ-ent ways, a number of fixed variables have tobe taken into account: the sheer size of thecontinent; its geography and demography;the heterogeneity of its population, and itscolonial and post-colonial, heavily milita-rized, past. As far as the future of Africa’smilitary goes, the first step is to address thequestion of demilitarization and establish,within a democratic civilian regime, healthycivil-military relations, without which exter-nal investment and political interest would bereserved and guarded.

Assuming this is possible, and the indi-cators are that it is, with constructive outsidehelp, African states can revisit their defenceand security priorities and address those fac-tors that have to be taken into considerationas the plan for the future. Central in all ofthis is the acceptance of the principle of col-lective security as manifest in the new AfricanUnion (AU), the Protocol on Peace andSecurity (PSC), and the establishment of anAfrican Stand-by Force (ASF) made up of fiveregional brigades. The lead time for thesepeacekeeping brigades, supported by earlywarning systems and with outside financeand support, is 2010. Member states havealready assigned some of their forces to thesebrigades, engaged in contingency planning,participated in joint training programmes

Professor Martin Edmonds heads the UK-based Centre for Defence and InternationalSecurity Studies (CDISS). He is also(Founding) Editor-in-Chief of theinternational journal, Defense and SecurityAnalysis, a post he has held for the past 25years. In 2005 he was appointed academicadvisor on research to the UK DefenceAcademy.

Dr Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-basedBrenthurst Foundation, dedicated tostrengthening African economic performance.Prior to joining the Foundation, he taught atthe Universities of the Western Cape andCape Town, and was the National Director ofthe South African Institute of InternationalAffairs (SAIIA) from 1996-2005 and SAIIADirector of Studies from 1994-96. His mostrecent book is From Africa to Afghanistan:With Richards and NATO to Kabul (WitsUniversity Press, 2007), based on hisexperience as a special adviser to the NATOcommander of ISAF IX in Kabul in 2006.


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and, in the event of full commitment oneveryone’s part, can adjust their future mili-tary equipment requirements to collectivesecurity priorities.

Although outside financial and militaryprofessional assistance is both welcome andin some cases essential, the principle behindAfrica’s continental collective security initia-tive is that it is Africa’s solution to Africa’sproblems. Although funding will be a prob-lem, and all African militaries will have tomake compromises and adjustments, thelonger term future for African armed forcesinto the twenty-first century has a soundfoundation.

PreambleThe former US Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld may have been off the mark aboutIraq, but had a very novel observation aboutfuturology. He said: ‘As we know, there areknown knowns. There are things we knowwe know. We also know there are knownunknowns. … We know there are somethings we do not know. But there are alsounknown unknowns, the ones we don’tknow we don’t know.’

Such uncertainty makes devisingappropriate policies and institutions to tacklefuture challenges a difficult task. It elevatesrisk and risk assessment almost to the level ofa science. In this vein, the 2007 TswaluDialogue focuses on what the African militaryof the twenty-first century, at least into themid-term (2030), might look like and theroles it might perform. Beyond that timehorizon, the Rumsfeld ‘unknowns’ ceaseeven to be ‘unknowns’ and dissolve into therealms of obscurity, even non-existence. Thistopic is especially important in an Africancontext, given the link between security, sta-bility and development.

The Threshold for Twenty-first CenturyAfricaIn conflict terms, Africa has become a much

more stable place, with the number of majorconflicts today down to just four from a peakof over a dozen in the early 1990s. Thisreflects the progress in building democraciesmade during this time, though this hasthrown up the challenge, too, of civil-mili-tary relations. But many African states faceshort- or medium-term threats. How mightthese change over time? Will African mili-taries, like their counterparts elsewhere, beable to deal with twenty-first century securi-ty issues, notably the threat of terrorism andrebuilding failed states, and devise, institu-tionalize and employ appropriate technolog-ical tools? This is a task requiring a continen-tal focus, now that the AU has undertaken toperform a range of security-related tasks onthe continent, including diplomacy, peacesupport operations and humanitarian assis-tance.

African militaries will depend on thenature of their environment within whichthey are expected to operate and to whichthey might have to respond. What might theworld look like for Africa in the next twentyyears? What will be the key drivers shapingglobal order? What might Africa’s strategic,defence and security policy choices be in thisenvironment?

Understanding Relative CertaintiesScenario planners talk of ‘relative certainties’and ‘key uncertainties’ when trying to offerplausible futures. With some degree of rela-tive certainty, then, one might expect to livein a world in 2025 where the following fac-tors drive international relations.

The global economy is forecast to dou-ble by 2025, with per capita income at least 50per cent higher. With this in mind, the firstdriver is that globalization will remain a pos-itive force for integration and increasingprosperity, and its effects, of greater disparityin wealth between and within nations willalso be a force for fragmentation and margin-alization. This partly reflects the continuedgrowth in key developing states, notably


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China and India, but includes other bigemerging markets, such as Vietnam, Mexico,Bangladesh and Indonesia. How well coun-tries develop in this environment will reflectskills levels, especially technology and lan-guage, along with state capacity to run amodern economy.

A second, closely related, driver is thusthe nature of engagement with the globaleconomy. Globalization should not anylonger be seen as a ‘Western’ force, but oneled by a variety of emerging great powers.The extent and impact of a relative decline inthe US economy, especially in terms of itsbalance of trade, is important in this context.So also will its reaction to competition fromothers, including China and India. Moreimportant, however, is that the world is anincreasingly competitive place. Unless statespossess comparative advantages, such as cli-mate for food production, oil or minerals,they will have to measure themselves andtheir investor attractiveness not only againstcountries in their region but also much fur-ther afield.

A third factor is a likely high-cost ener-gy environment. This has a variety of differ-ent impacts. First, it will cause increasedglobal interest in hydro-carbon deposits andwill give oil exporters a financial windfall,allowing them a variety of internal and for-eign policy options. Such states include anumber in Africa (where the net benefit ofhigh oil prices is moot, since fewer than onefifth of African states export energy), andelsewhere, notably Russia, Kazakhstan andVenezuela. Second, high oil prices will makea small number of states very rich, but theywill also leave many more potentially consid-erably poorer.

Energy demand is set to grow by 50 percent globally in the next two decades, com-pared to 34 per cent between 1980-2000.

Much of this is likely to be driven byincreased Chinese and Indian consumption.The effects of such trends also depend to adegree on whether or not there is an ‘energyrevolution’, and on the extent to which theworld can diminish its dependence on fossilfuels by finding and developing alternativeand cleaner energy sources.

A fourth consideration concerns chang-ing patterns of demography and migration,both internally and globally. Internally, morepeople will move to cities and more mega-cities will erupt. These will bring with themmultiple stresses on infrastructures, services,crime and creating employment. This trendwill also offer greater opportunities bybecoming national nodes, linking them moreeasily with the global economy. Already, over80 per cent of the world’s populations livewithin 150 kilometers from the coast, mak-ing them simultaneously more concentrated,and more vulnerable to external interven-tion. Migration brings with it, of course,both opportunity and skills.

Migration is closely related to popula-tion growth, especially among those stateswhose economies cannot sustain increasingnumbers of people. The critical rate ofnational growth is 2.3 per cent per annum,which, if sustained over a period of twentyyears, will double a state’s population withintwenty years – internal wars, illegal immigra-tion, improved life expectancy, fertility rates,longer life-span, and epidemics (such asAIDS), notwithstanding. The consequencesof this are extensive for: the provision ofhousing; food sufficiency; education, medicaland health service provision; and employ-ment.1 It also means that the average age ofpopulations will be reduced further to wellbelow twenty years. For example, each statein North Africa (the Magreb) and the MiddleEast (with the exception of Israel) has record-

1 David E. Bloom, David Canning, and Jaypee Sevilla, The Demographic Dividend: A New Perspective on the EconomicConsequences of Population Change (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2003). They note that Sub-Saharan Africa isparticularly burdened by population growth, where fertility rates in particular (an average of 5.9 children perwoman) are persistently high.


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ed a 2.3 per cent growth rate or more overthe past twenty years. They show no sign offalling below that figure, despite the prob-lems that an ill-educated, poorly housed,under occupied and under-fed juvenile popu-lation bring. The wealthier states of Europe,China and North America, however, havedeclining and steeply ageing populations.While these trajectories may be complemen-tary over time, for the moment the devel-oped North has proven increasingly protec-tionist and xenophobic, their fears aboutimmigration also fuelled by concerns overIslamic radicalism.

Climate change is a fifth factor, one thatpotentially might exacerbate existing condi-tions of stress. Understanding its preciseempirical impact demands, however, gettingpast the fashionable alarmism permeatingthis issue. But while there are doubts aboutits exact environmental effect, it is more cer-tain that this movement will have a politicaleffect in forcing a greater role for the state inregulation.

Related to climate change and theeffects of global warming are their impact onagriculture and, most important of all, accessto potable water. Evidence to date points toareas of existing desert expanding, forcinginhabitants already on subsistence levels tomove. Weather patterns have become moreaberrant and more difficult to predict.Periods of drought and flooding, neverbefore recorded, are becoming common-place, causing serious disruption to majorareas of food production.

It has been predicted that access towater is likely to become a major source ofconflict between states and communities.River courses pass across political boundariesand are open to diversion for irrigation, todamming for energy generation, and forindustrial and commercial exploitation.Pollution of the higher reaches of riversadversely affects those countries furtherdownstream. With an ever-increasingdemand for water to sustain life as well,water could well become a major cause of

conflict and war in the near future. Thesetrends are particularly evident in parts ofcentral Europe, the Middle East and SouthAsia, and parts of Africa, adding to existingtensions.

Access to strategic resources in a global-ized world is essential to those states withexpanding economies and populations withrising expectations, notably those populousstates in Asia such as China, India andIndonesia. Water and oil are two suchresources, the one providing the essential forsustaining life, the other to generate theenergy that enables product manufacture,transportation, distribution, packaging andmanufacture. The materials that enable thewheels of industries to turn in terms of man-ufactured physical products, are also impor-tant. Metals, ores, carbon compounds(including precious stones), many of whichare scarce and difficult to extract, are notevenly distributed around the world.

Many of these strategically valuablematerials, including those radioactive sub-stances that make possible certain categoriesof weapons systems, are to be found in thedeveloping world. These are both a blessingand a bind. It is a blessing since they are asource of external income and wealth espe-cially to the developing countries; they are aliability as they are the targets of exploitationby both actors in the global economy and bypowerful domestic interests. The problemsof the former state of Katanga (copper ore)or, more recently, of Sierra Leone (dia-monds) help illustrate the point.

Seventh is country-specific variance intheir access to information technology. Onthe one hand, such technology will enablegrowth and empower populations. On theother, it makes weak governments vulnera-ble to transnational movements. In otherareas of science and technology, some ofwhich are closely linked to national securityrequirements, the gap between the leadingscientific nations and the rest is widening.Such areas of science and technology asbiotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics


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are moving ahead at an ever increasing rate,leaving much of the rest of the world, andmore particularly the poorer states of Africa,falling technologically further and furtherbehind.

An eighth factor, and one that promisessome hope for the future, but more likelyone that causes frustration, is the role of theinternational community or, in an institu-tional sense, the United Nations. The UN,through its Charter and the role of theSecurity Council, has the potential toenhance world security through its manyhumanitarian agencies as well as its capacity,if the political will is present, to intervene ininterstate, and internecine, conflicts. TheUN, however, is only as influential as themore powerful nations are prepared to pro-vide both resources and backing. In the caseof Rwanda, the UN, largely through the lackof commitment by the United States, provedsupine, standing by whilst genocide wascommitted in 1994. With greater awarenessthat international security impacts on nation-al security, there has, in recent years, been asea change in attitudes towards greater UNinvolvement and intervention in internation-al and domestic conflicts, particularly in areassuch as Africa and the Middle East.

Closely linked to the United Nationswhose endorsement of intervention in con-flicts around the world confers a sense oflegitimacy, is the enlarged role of interna-tional law. In addition to international con-ventions and Protocols governing HumanRights, International Humanitarian Law, andthe Laws of War, arguably the most revolu-tionary development has been the establish-ment of the International Criminal Court inJuly 2002 – the result of the Rome Statute of1998, even though seven states, such as theUS, China, Iraq and Israel are not parties toit. These non-party states, as members of theUnited Nations, may still be referred to theICC by the UN Security Council under

Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Those thatare parties to the Rome Statute are bound byits articles. Their nationals and armed forcesare therefore liable to prosecution for acts ofgenocide and other atrocities, as has alreadyhappened in the cases of Rwanda, SierraLeone and Yugoslavia. Prosecution may yethappen in the case of Sudan and the situationin Darfur.2

A final driver concerns the continuedlikelihood of transnational terrorism, wherethere is a lower likelihood of military conflictbetween states but rather involving statesand non-state actors. A number of factorscontribute to the expansion of this phenom-enon, not least for reasons identified above,where there have been expanding popula-tions of poor, unemployed, ill- or uneducat-ed, displaced and aimless youths. This multi-tude of youth has proved fertile recruitinggrounds for terrorist movements that professeither an ideology or a faith that provides asense of self worth, a purpose in life, a statusand above all, an identity.

But it is not only religion or politics thatare required to recruit and motivate terror-ists. Poverty is also a strong motivating force,especially when the disparities in income andstandards of living are presented to them dayafter day via television or through theInternet. More recently, the actions of theworld’s wealthier states, either by militaryforce or by the commercial exploitation ofthe resources of poorer, more vulnerable,states, have drawn people to join both inter-national and indigenous terrorist organiza-tions. Finally, the development and executionof strategies and tactics of some terroristgroups that have employed asymmetricalmeans to considerable effect have givenpotential terrorist recruits confidence andoptimism, the lure of martyrdom in the caseof Islamist terrorists notwithstanding.

2 Max Du Plessis and Christopher Gevers, ‘Dafur goes to the International Criminal Court (Perhaps)’. African SecurityReview (Vol. 14, No 2, 2005), pp.23-25.


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The Meaning for AfricaIf the above amounts to a world in whichsome states, regions and peoples are gettingricher and others increasingly are becomingmaginalized, Africa will be faced with bothopportunity and increased stress.Globalization offers the potential for eco-nomic and social growth and development;but it is also a threat from those whom itdoes not accommodate. This is particularlysalient for Africa’s youth, who already com-prise 50 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa’s 750million people. Their response and how theymight channel their frustrations will beimportant. Religion might well featureprominently in this development, eventhough this is not entirely a function only ofglobalization. It is also one of persistent lev-els of high birth rates promulgated by partic-ular beliefs, in particular Islam, that seehuman reproduction as both a duty and aboon.

Since countries get rich by making ordoing things and selling them, this also high-lights the need for African countries to pur-sue an appropriate development model.Those countries with a set of better polices,including good governance, universal educa-tion and open economies are the more likelywinners from globalization, but this will notnecessarily ensure development. This will, inparticular, require investment in both ‘soft’and ‘hard’ infrastructure: people and com-munications. Migration is likely to figurestrongly as an interface, as Africa as a wholewill have to work hard to attract, develop,grow, and retain relevant intellectual, practi-cal and innovative skills.

The rise of China, India and others isone fresh factor in this policy mix. Asia mightoffer an appropriate African developmentmodel. It could also break the Western aidmodel of external engagement with the con-tinent, relegating democracy and good gov-ernance as conditionalities in preference formanaged economic growth. But adoptingthis model will demand more than just anideological or cultural adjustment; rather it

needs a substantial leap in capacity. Andmore than a new aid regime, countries willbenefit, as China and others in Asia havedone and as Chile did before them in the1970s and 1980s, when they make themselvesattractive, stable, secure and fair places inwhich to do business.

Radical climate change, if it occurs,might affect Africa badly, increasing waterstress to affect as many as one-quarter of itspeople. It might also make some already cli-matically marginal states completely dys-functional and unsustainable without exter-nal assistance. Tighter regulations may alsoplay out negatively for those Africans access-ing global markets by air for their high valueexports, for example, given the carbon foot-print that this would involve. The sheer scaleof the African continent can be seen as bothan asset and yet a liability. It is an asset in thatit affords a degree of security from external,non-African, intervention or interference. Itis a liability in that long distances have to betraveled to meet the demands of widely dis-tributed populations.

But perhaps the most challenging of allscenarios for African states is the one wherethere are no dramatic changes, no radicalopportunities, but instead constant progresstowards a foreseeable outcome; one that hasnot been conspicuously kind to Africa overthe past half a century. It is one of increasingdifferentiation between African states, givenvariances in the way in which they haveengaged with globalization.

What is conspicuous, however, is thedegree to which the rest of the world has rel-atively recently turned its attention to Africaand Africa’s problems. It is not a question ofaltruism, but of ‘enlightened’ national selfinterest, as the attention the Chinese havegiven Africa in recent years demonstrates.This new focus is not merely a consequenceof the world’s wealthier states, the so-calledG8 countries, acknowledging Africa’spredicament and the need to act, and act gen-erously, within their eight UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals, but a realization that in


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a globalized world Africa’s economic pros-perity is in everyone’s interests and not mere-ly those of the African states.3 This meansnot merely promoting the economic devel-opment of the continent but more pertinent-ly being prepared to intervene when andwhere internecine conflicts threaten the con-tinent’s stability.

Indeed, as Rumsfeld might have put it,how well Africa does in this environment ispartly determined by what we do, what oth-ers might do, what we get others to do, andof course, what we can persuade others notto do. Given these uncertainties and the envi-ronmental factors that will most likely influ-ence what happens to Africa in the nexttwenty years, it is pertinent to ask whatmight Africa’s strategic policy choices be andin particular what factors will likely shape itsmilitary institutions, their roles and posture.

What Shapes the African Military?Geographical ScaleBefore giving consideration to Africa’s armedforces, a number of fixed variables have firstto be established before turning to those thatare of an independent nature. These fixedvariables are based on geographical and geo-political factors, those that essentially set theparameters of the African continent andwhich African armies have to accommodate.Put simply, the continent of Africa is hugeand varied. The second largest of the fivecontinents, it covers around 22 per cent ofthe world’s land area and, north and south ofthe Sahara, is home to approximately 800million people. The expansive landmass cov-ers the Sahara, the world’s largest desert andcontains the Nile, the world’s longest river.Most of Africa is desert, though the conti-

nent as a whole is basically divided into threeregions: a Northern Plateau; a Central andSouthern Plateau; and the EasternHighlands. Africa is home to fifty-threenation-states and a countless number of eth-nic, racial and tribal communities.

To put the scale of the continent intoperspective, one country alone, Sudan, occu-pying one million square miles, is equivalentin land area to 25 per cent of the whole ofthe continent of Europe, includingScandinavia. Darfur alone, currently thefocus of UN and AU attention, is the samesize as the whole of France for which ahybrid force of 26,000 peace-enforcing troopshas been dispatched. Aside from the rigoursof Africa’s climate and topography, distancesare immense, making communications andtransportation extremely difficult. From amilitary perspective, the deployment of mili-tary task forces, with their dependence onlogistical support, represents an expensive,lengthy and complex undertaking withoutsubstantial strategic air- and sea-lift, both ofwhich are well beyond the resources of most,if not all, of Africa’s fifty-three states.Further, pheric distance, the time that it takesto bring effective force to bear against anadversary, is extensive, giving insurgents orinvading forces both opportunity and time toannex and control ground.4 For this reason,armed forces concentrate on urban areas,especially capital cities and urban areas,where there are fewer handicaps and disad-vantages. This in part explains why a relative-ly small military force can successfully effecta military coup.5

Continental Geo-political HeterogeneityGeopolitically, there is a wide cultural, racial,

3 Gleneagles Summit Documents, 2005. Africa. London, FCO, 2005. Accessed at http://www.g8.gov.uk/servelet.4 Stanislav Andreski, Military Organization and Society (London: Routledge, 1968).5 Simon Baynhan, ‘Civil-Military Relations in Post-Independence Africa’, South African Defence Review (No. 3, 1992).Reproduced from a paper presented at a Conference on Civil-military Relations in Post-settlement South Africa, CSIRConference Centre, Pretoria, 23 April 1992, p.4. Accessed 29 July 2007 athttp://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/SADR3/Baynham.html


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ethnic, religious, linguistic, disparity amongAfrica’s fifty-three nations. Though one con-tinent, it is far from homogeneous and, atleast in economic terms, increasingly differ-entiated between those more successful andprosperous globalizers, the big states, fragileunits and the commodity-rich states, eachwith different development prospects. Thepolitical boundaries separating one Africanstate from another are a by-product of nine-teenth century European colonialism andnot, for the most part, a reflection of naturalboundaries between ethnic groups or evidentgeographical features. Nor did these separa-tions reflect the fact that many African ethnicgroups were nomadic, accustomed tradition-ally to moving across national borders.Again, this has direct implications for Africa’sarmed forces, since it falls to the armedforces and border guards to protect the sover-eign integrity of states, few of which reflecteither geographical and economic logic orsocial realities. Furthermore, the cosmopoli-tan nature of ethnic groupings that tran-scend political authority have proved to be asource of tension and conflict within andbetween African states. They are likely toremain so until a balanced degree of eco-nomic prosperity, spearheaded by the NewPartnership for Africa’s Development(NEPAD) and the encouragement of a thriv-ing private sector, is enjoyed by all.

Colonial and Post-IndependenceExperienceThe last fixed variable that affects Africa’smilitaries is that of their respective colonialand post-colonial experiences.6 In spite ofthese experiences or, indeed, because ofthem, the state in Africa has assumed a cen-tral importance, within which ‘armed forces

operate of necessity from within the stateitself ’.7 Belgium, Britain, France, Germany,Italy, Portugal and Spain have all left theirmark not merely in the political systems theyeither bequeathed on granting African statesindependence, but more especially the struc-tures, traditions and ethos of the armedforces they left behind. In the case of France,that influence has been maintained post-independence, and has had an effect of help-ing to keep the military away from domesticpolitics or political interference.8

Those African states that won theirindependence by force of arms have tendedto adopt the characteristics of those statesthat gave them assistance, or transposed theguerrilla structures and ethos that had servedthem well. It has been the source of someconcern, however, that whilst these civil-mil-itary traditions served the colonial powersreasonably well at home, they failed in manycases to prevent Africa’s military from inter-vening in politics and instigating a militarycoup d’etat.9 Military regimes or not, it isnotable that many of Africa’s military havesince retained relatively close contact withtheir former colonial masters, not just in thetraining of staff officers and NCOs, but intheir choices of the military weapons withwhich they are equipped.

African De-militarization: The BottomLineThe fundamental issue regarding Africa’smilitary in the twenty-first century is howwell the political process has been de-milita-rized in African states. The future of Africa’smilitary departs from the state of civil-mili-tary relations in 2007 and the continued influ-ence or otherwise of the post independenceyears when most of Africa was ruled by, or

6 Martin Edmonds, Armed Services and Society (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), pp.18.7 Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 8 Baynham, op cit, p.15. Baynham noted that Paris has retained standing French garrisons in almost everyFrancophone African state, including Djibouti, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Senegal.9 This was especially the focus of S.E. Finer’s book, The Man on Horseback (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962).


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dominated by, military forces. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s,

much of the African continent had becomemilitarized. Relatively few states succeededin avoiding a military coup and those that didhad to find some form of accommodationwith the military regime and their armedforces. As can be noted from the table above,between 1960-2004, there had been 105 vio-lent overthrows of African regimes, morethan half the total of regime changes duringthis period, though this has declined signifi-

cantly as a percentage since 1990 and evenfurther since 2000.

Aside from the implications of thesemilitary adventures for civil-military rela-tions, and their effect on democracy andaccountability, the militarization of societygenerated a culture of violence, had implica-tions for gender structures and equality, andstimulated the growth and proliferation ofarmed gangs, warlord formations, deathsquads, guerrilla armies and proxy forces ofall kinds.10 Before all these African states can

10 Eboe Hutchful,’ De-militarizing the Political Process in Africa’, African Security Review (Vol. 6, No 2, 1997).Accessed 30 July 2007 at http://www.issafrica.org/Pubs/ASR/6No2/Hutchful.html. p.3.

Reason for 1960-69 1970-79 1980-89 1990-99 2000-04 Total (Proportion)Leaving Office

Overthrown in 27 30 22 22 4 105 51.4%war, coup, or (72.9%) (68%) (59.4%) (36.4%) (16.6%)invasion

Assassination 1 1 1 2 1 6 2.9%(not part of coup)

Died of natural 2 3 4 3 0 12 5.8%causes or byaccident

Retired 1 2 5 9 8 25 12.2%voluntarily

Lost election or 0 0 1 12 3 16 7.8%left office

Other (interim 6 8 4 14 8 40 19.6%regime, or impeachment)

All regime 37 44 37 62 24 204transitions

Source: A. Goldsmith, ‘Donors, Dictators, and Democrats.’ Journal of Modern African Studies,39, 3, 2001. Adapted from R. Southall, and H. Melber, (Eds). Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics. Pretoria: Human Science Research Council, 2006, p.2.


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therefore progress into the twenty-first cen-tury and benefit of globalization, they wouldhave first to exercise the influence and effectsof militarization from within, de-militarize,and restore effective civil governance, stabili-ty and the rule of law.

It is not the task of this paper to assesshow African states can go about the processof demilitarizing. Among a number of mod-els that might be considered, however,Huntington’s concepts of ‘objective’ and‘subjective’ controls, or a combination ofboth, would arguably serve African stateswell.11 Nevertheless, any number of otherproblems would have to be addressed simul-taneously, including: ‘economic mismanage-ment; weak national integration; ethnic andclass conflict; abuse of human rights; etc.’ –that is to say, all those issues that gave causefor the military to intervene in the first place.As Eboe Hutchful ruefully observed, ‘demili-tarization can only be sustained when thesefundamental problems have been solved’.12

The challenge has been, and remains,formidable.13 If African states, and the conti-nent as a whole, are to interact with the restof the world and the process of globalization,and are able to respond to those environmen-tal influences listed above, they will first haveto restore and sustain civil supremacy over themilitary, within an appropriate constitutionaland institutional framework. They will haveto address the relationship between the mili-tary and the political process and lay down

the rules regarding the military’s participa-tion in that process. The sensitive issue of thearmed forces’ professional autonomy, salariesand conditions of service would also need tobe established. Finally, the role and mission ofthe armed forces would have to be clearlydefined, including their involvement or par-ticipation in regional and internationaldefence arrangements as well as issues ofinternal security.14

The demilitarization of African states,given their background and social and eco-nomic circumstances, and the creation of ademocratic regime in which the military aresub-ordinate to civilian control, has requireda strategy that carries the military along withdemocratic forces. As David Chuter hasobserved, ‘The restructuring of the securitysector of many African countries, particular-ly those that have emerged from an authori-tarian or violent past, demands a visionaryand integrated transformational strategycapable of ensuring the country’s securityinstitutions do not regress into previousbehavioural patterns’.15

A number of guidelines have assistedthis process over the past decade or so, withsome success. First, the rift between the mil-itary and the rest of society has had to bebridged through communication and interac-tion, especially between the military and thenational economy.16 With small armies andlimited budgets, regional defence and securi-ty arrangements have provided a means by

11 Samuel Huntington, Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (New York: RandomHouse, 1957).12 Hutchful, op cit.13 A. Assensoh and Yvette Alex-Assensoh, African Military History and Politics: Coups and Ideological Incursions 1900-Present (New York: Palgrave, 2001). The authors offer a projection of what bodes for Africa in the light of past mili-tary incursions into partisan domestic politics.14 Ibid.15 David Chuter, Defence Transformation, (Pretoria: ISS Monograph 49, August 2000). Although this study does notspecifically refer to African states (though the author alludes to them in his Preface) it does provide a guide to thebasic issues that any state and its military have to take into account when engaged in a defence transformationprocess. Essentially, the transformation process involves four transformation processes: Cultural, Human; Political;and Organizational. 16 Eboe Hutchful, op cit. G.C. Biddell, ‘A Principle Lesson of Civil-Military Relations’. Paper presented at a Conferenceon Civil Military Relations, The American University 4-6 May 1995.


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which states can rationalize both their owndefence structures and their levels of defenceexpenditure. With the AU’s principle of non-interference, regional defence pacts have pro-vided a way to optimize individual states’defence spending and for some of them tocommit forces to an ASF and also becomeinvolved in continental peacekeeping (as wellas democracy protecting) operations.

The demilitarization process withinAfrica has been assisted by external support,not so much in providing funding for the mil-itary per se (though the IMF and World Bankhave addressed issues of reforming defencebudgets) but in assisting in the resettlementand retraining of ex-military and ex-non-state combatant personnel. More important,however, is the financial assistance Africanstates have received from the internationalcommunity (with substantially morepromised) towards their economic and socialdevelopment, the effects of which havealready helped to reduce the underlying caus-es of conflict and tension that had bedevilledAfrican states in the past. The argument thatarmed forces are necessary to maintain lawand order within African states thereby losesits saliency if the population at large have asense of national political, social and eco-nomic progress, their standards of living areimproving, and there is evidence of soundaccountable governance.

The critical questions are how success-ful Africa’s demilitarization process has beenover the past decade; how enduring will theresults of that process be; and what are theresidual effects of Africa’s militarization thatcould endure? The success of the demilita-rization process to date can be gauged fromthe reduction in the number of African stateswhere the military rule.

Whither, then, Africa’s Military?From an ontological perspective, today’s

African militaries are built on three fixedvariables: geography; geo-politics; and colo-nial and post-independence (mostly milita-rized) experience. There are, however, a hostof independent variables that will also shapeAfrica’s armed forces and which will pointtheir direction into the first quarter of thetwenty-first century.

Defence and Security PolicyWhat are African armed forces for? At inde-pendence, one of the first African institu-tions of state to be established was the mili-tary. They were the symbol of sovereigntyand independence and, by inference, theguarantor of territorial integrity and nation-al security. They were also incorporatedwithin each state’s constitution, definingtheir functions and the legal limits of theirauthority. Most constitutions also identifiedwhat was considered to be an emergency andthe conditions under which the armed forceslegitimately might intervene.17

As the second half of the twentieth cen-tury unfolded, however, the armed forces ofAfrican states became more the problemrather than the solution to national security,as one state after another experienced mili-tary interference or a military coup.Constitutions were suspended or rewrittenand militaries soon became embroiled ininternal politics and governance. Poor gover-nance, corruption, a lack of economicgrowth and internal strife and abdication bythe military, for which the reasons are multi-farious, led over time to the restoration ofcivilian rule in most of these states, withroughly only four military dictatorshipsremaining today.

Established civil-military relations inAfrican states remain conditional; the evi-dence today suggests that African armedforces are better focused on defence againstexternal threats, including terrorism, peace-

17 Finer, op cit. Finer argued against Huntington that under these circumstances it was the armed forces’ professionalduty to intervene and take over government.


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keeping and nation-building than on internalpolitics. There would appear to be some evi-dence also that many African armies assumean internal security function in associationwith other security organizations, such aspolice, border guards and intelligence ser-vices. The threat of terrorism, both indige-nous and sponsored from outside, would alsoengage Africa’s armed forces, principally inthe protection of vital strategic assets.

Although there has been a return tomore traditional military functions, the fac-tors mentioned above regarding the scale ofAfrican states, the difficulties of the terrain,communications and logistics set strict limitson what can be achieved. Furthermore, lim-ited defence budgets, an over-emphasis onexpensive advanced military equipment ill-suited to counter both internal and externalthreats, and poor levels of training, pay andprofessionalism further diminish the credibil-ity of the African armed forces in their exter-nal defence end peacekeeping roles.

Set against these limitations has beenthe proliferation of small arms amongst non-state forces that represents an enduring threatto peace and stability both within Africanstates and across regions. The problem has beenrecognized within parts of Africa, as evi-denced by an ECOWAS summit in Abuja,Nigeria, in November 1998, where Mali pro-posed a three-year moratorium on the import,export and manufacture of light weapons inthe West-African sub-region.18 The issue hasalso been taken up in the UN as part of thefight against organized crime. For as long asinexpensive small arms are readily availablethroughout Africa, one priority for the mili-tary will continue to be internal security andthe containment of war lords, armed crimi-nal gangs, bandits, and political insurgents.

Collective Regional SecurityThe defence of sovereign territory, however,is a major undertaking for which the initia-tives taken by the AU to establish a perma-nent stand-by force offers some hope for thefuture. In 2000, the Brahimi Report on UNPeacekeeping operations19 presented a strongcritique of UN peacekeeping operations; to adegree it opened up the path for serious dis-cussions among the members of the AU toaddress the requirements and characteristicsof a stand-by force to act when and wherethreats to peace and stability in Africa sur-faced. In 2002, all fifty-three African statessigned up to a Protocol to establish a Peaceand Security Council (PSC) to be supportedby a Commission, a ’Panel of the Wise’, acontinental Early Warning System, a Stand-by Force, and a Special Fund. The PSC is acontinental collective security commitment,bolstered by the AU’s Non-Aggression andCommon Defence Pact, adopted in 2005: topromote co-operation between the memberstates in areas of non-aggression and com-mon defence; to promote peaceful co-exis-tence in Africa; and to prevent conflicts of aninter-state or intra-state nature.

As Paul Kagame, the President ofRwanda, has recently asserted, ‘it is impor-tant to note that in the New Africa the con-cept of peace and security has been renderedmore holistic by incorporating in them goodgovernance and development. The NewPartnership for Africa’s Development and itsAfrican Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) arethe principal chosen instruments for develop-ment and good governance.’20 This goessome way to meet the conditions notedabove regarding the future of Africa’s civil-military relations and continued progresswith its Disarmament, Demobilization and

18 Margaret E. O’Grady, ‘Small Arms and Africa’ London, Campaign Against the Arms Trade, September,1999.Accessed at http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/countries/Africa-0999.htp 19 Report of the Panel on UN Peacekeeping Operations (The Brahimi Report) New York, UN. 2000. See especiallythe chapter on rapid deployment standards and ‘on call expertise’. Accessedhttp://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations20 HE Paul Kagame, The First Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, RUSI, London, 18 September 2006.


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Reintegration (DDR) processes.

The African Union Stand-by ForceThe African Stand-by Force (ASF), one of theprincipal organs of the PSC, is currentlyevolving. Its role is to enable the PSC to per-form its responsibilities with respect to thedeployment of peace support missions andintervention in member states in cases ofgross violations of human rights. Already,the AU has independently carried out peacesupport missions in Burundi, Darfur, theComoros (during the elections), and inter-vened in Togo and Sao Tome Principe toreverse a military seizure of power.21

Questions have been raised about the effec-tiveness of these interventions, but theimportant point is that they have been under-taken and that the AU has laid down a mark-er of its future intentions.

The long-term essence of the ASF hasbeen captured by Timothy Murithi, whonoted that, ‘The AU intends to achieve muchmore in terms of integrating AfricanDefence Forces and reducing overall coststhat individual countries have to spend infinancing their own military forces. Thiswould, in effect, herald the creation of a Pan-African Armed Force …. The AU plans tohave its own Pan-African Stand-by RapidReaction Force composed of 15,000 troopsby 2015.’22.

How effective the stand-by force will beremains to be seen in the longer term, as willthe number of African states that have signedup to the Protocol and will contribute to theStand-by Force. Currently, five sub-regionalbrigades of up to 3-4,000 troops are envis-aged, formed from the states within eachregion. These are located separately in theNorth, East (EASBRIG), West (WASBRIG),

Centre and South, with a Headquarters andMilitary Staff in Addis Ababa.23 Reportedly,WASBRIG has 6,500 troops already assignedto it and EASBRIG has 3,000 troops, plus aplanning cell in Kenya. The Northern,Central and Southern brigades, however,have yet to make any significant practicalprogress, hindered by either a lack of politi-cal co-ordination or political instabilitieswithin some of the constituent states.

According to Jakkie Cilliers, the criticalproblem facing the ASF is funding, thoughfinancial help has been provided to date fromthe European Union, and USAID in the formof its Global Peace Operations Initiative(GPOI), a multilateral programme to trainand equip peacekeeping troops.24

Nevertheless, the funding of the ASF willcontinue to be a problem for the AU, thoughin the longer term the economic growth ofthe continent, itself a by-product ofimproved security and stability, may helpalleviate the situation.

Military Equipment and WeaponsTechnologyThe levels of equipment among the fifty-three signatories to the AU PSC vary widely.At the advanced military equipment end ofthe spectrum, states such as Egypt, SouthAfrica, and Algeria can field a full spectrumof land, sea and air third and fourth genera-tion weapons. At the other end, several statescannot afford even the most rudimentary ofmilitary equipment. This disparity need notprove a problem so long as Africa’s militarycollectively focuses its main effort on peaceand stability within the continent itself.There is no obvious incentive for Africanstates to entertain military adventuresabroad, except possibly in support of United

21 Ibid.22 Timothy Murithi, The African Union: Pan Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). p.83.23 AUSF, http://www.africa-nion.org/.htmroot/AU/Departments/PSC/Asf/documents.htm24 Steve Mgobo, ‘African Peacekeeping Force Development Continues Despite Funding Challenges’, World PoliticsReview, 21 December 2006.


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Nations and international peacekeepingoperations and the protection of offshoreassets and meeting obligations incumbent inUNCLOS Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ),which is a potentially sensitive issue. Eventhen, the contributions can be made onbehalf of the continent as a whole by thosemore advanced African states that have theprofessional military capacity to operatealongside the more advanced states in theworld.

On the fair assumption that Africa’sarmed forces have their time fully occupiedwithin the continent itself, future require-ments should, ideally, be to improve the pro-vision of logistics equipment and forcemobility, rather than succumbing to thetemptations of the latest high technologyweapon systems that in the past someAfrican states have failed to resist to theircost.25 Projections of what military systemseither states, or the ASF, will recommend for acquisition in the next decade, are hard to make. Applied logic in these matters does not always apply, though doubtless both individual African states and the AU will be the target of the world’s arms manu-facturers.

One future consideration that is worthyof note is the possibility of Africa becomingself sufficient in weapons manufacture.Already, many states have the productioncapability for small arms and ammunitionand South Africa and, to a degree, Egypthave a mature arms industry. Whether or notthere is scope for collaborative or jointarrangements with the world’s arms indus-tries is a moot point, especially since Africanstates through the AU are increasingly orient-ed towards a common defence and securitypolicy, rather than one based on individualstate security.

Military Training, Recruitment andRetentionAfrica’s history of wars of independence,insurgencies, guerrilla warfare, internecineconflict, and even genocide has meant thatthere are many among the population whoare experienced in fighting and armed con-flict. There are many today still attached toarmed gangs, warlords, religious groups,bandits and so on and who may well haveheld on to their personal weapons. In termsof foot soldiers, there is no shortage of man-power within the continent. The same can-not be said for naval or airforce personnel,partly because navies have never figuredprominently in a land-oriented continent,and air forces require a level of technologicaland scientific competence that is generallybeyond most African states, since the level ofeducation is inadequate for the task.

These constraints mean that the Africanmilitary of the next decade or so has to oper-ate within the capacity it can generate foritself. Already, the US is helping with trainingAfrican forces in peacekeeping and ASFmembers have begun to establish their owntraining centres for both officers and troops,such as the Kenya Peace Support TrainingCentre, Ghana’s Kofi Annan InternationalPeacekeeping Training Centre, the RwandaMilitary Academy, and Uganda’s SeniorCommand and Staff College. These are inaddition to each state’s own military acade-mies and schools. The more personnel whopass through these ASF-oriented trainingcentres, the greater the credibility of theAU’s PSC ambitions will become.

Future Civil-Military RelationsAs has been noted above, the future ofAfrica’s military depends heavily on

25 One example immediately comes to mind – the Nigerian acquisition (which was never paid for) of two squadronsof Jaguar ground attack aircraft from the United Kingdom in the 1970s. The aircraft proved beyond the capability ofthe NAF to operate and they stood unused deteriorating for years on the periphery of Lagos airport. Ghana’s acquisi-tion of an advanced frigate in the 1960s was another example, until President Nkrumah was deposed and the vesselnever delivered.


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improved civil-military relations within, andbetween, the member states. Most stateshave a long history of militarization, militaryinvolvement in politics, military coups andgolpe de estadoes, and military governance,coupled with periods of internecine warfare,genocide and civil strife. These experienceswill take not just a decade or so to eradicate,but a minimum of a generation or morefinally to be excised from people’s memories.Close, and sensitive, attention has to be paid,not by just a few, but by all the African statesif the ambition of an ‘African renaissance’, ora ‘New Africa’, is to be realized. Each Africanstate’s experience of the military is differentand the solution to its future civil-militaryrelations has to be understood andapproached sui generis. For the same reason,the solution will be different in each case.The success of DDR in this respect couldprove crucial.

Extra-Continental Foreign InvolvementThis is not about African armies beinginvolved overseas, but of foreign militaryinterest and involvement in Africa. With theworld’s attention turning towards Africasince the G8 Gleneagles 2005 Conference andthe financial undertakings promised (thoughnot always carried through) by the world’srichest nations, the performance and behav-iour of Africa’s military will come under evergreater scrutiny. Some of this will be mani-fest in foreign states, possibly those with pastcolonial links, taking a closer interest inAfrican militaries. This is not a bad thing,since it introduces a constraint on those mili-taries again harbouring ideas of interveningin politics. For example, the British MilitaryAdvisory and Training Team (BMATT) isengaged in helping the nascent Sierra Leonearmy, while the UK Foreign andCommonwealth Office (FCO) is giving sup-port to ECOWAS, and WASBRIG. None ofthis, however, addresses the proliferation ofprivate security companies that overseascompanies engage to provide protection for

their operations and investments within thecontinent.

ConclusionTo recapitulate, there are things we know,things we know we don’t know, and those wedo not know we don’t know. However, we doknow enough about the international envi-ronment and continental context withinwhich Africa’s military will have to operate inthe future to make some cautious predic-tions.

If Africa’s civil-military relations can bebrought under democratic control, theprospect for both African states and their mil-itaries will improve substantially. It will notmerely strengthen the rule of law and bringgreater stability, but will help attract overseasinvestment and foreign government support.The status of the militaries within Africanstates will be enhanced through theirinvolvement in the ASF, the more so if it canbe demonstrated that, collectively, Africanarmies can bring about peace and stabilitywithin and among its members.

Nothing succeeds like success; althoughearly operations by the AU forces have notbeen conspicuously successful. Some funda-mental weaknesses have been exposed, suchas AU peacekeeping operations in the Sudanbut the prospect of the UN/AU hybrid forceproving effective in Darfur may well boostconfidence for the future. The experiencegained through African armies operatingalongside overseas peacekeeping forces couldnot only provide valuable tactical and opera-tional experience, but also give usefulinsights into the sorts of military equipment,such as communications, intelligence gather-ing, mobility, logistic support, etc. best suitedto Africa’s future defence and security needs.The task the 20,000-strong UN/ASF forceplus 6,400 police faces is about as difficult asit could be. They are taking on ‘fighting cen-tred on ancient rivalries over water, grazingrights and dowries … [and] across a provincewhich has only a handful of roads. The fight-


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ing has become so localized that it wouldtake battalions of well-armed peacekeepersto quell’. It has been described as, ‘a morassof enmities in a hostile landscape’,26 involv-ing ‘a patchwork of rebel groups and feudingtribes that has spilt over into Chad and theCentral African Republic.’27

The UN/ASF operation in Darfuraside, none of this restructuring of Africa’scivil-military relations is possible without thecontinent’s economic growth and the ame-lioration or eradication of the causes of con-flict that so bedevilled the past. The situation,however, resembles a Catch-22 situation: economic growth depends on peace and sta-bility within the continent to attract the nec-

essary overseas investment; but peace andstability is only possible if the military aresubject to civil democratic control. If civiliangovernance proves weak, distanced, inept orcorrupt, the military might again be persuad-ed to intervene, and history will repeat itself.

For Africa, and the future of its military,the AU, with its PSC and ASF, offers the bestand most promising prospect. It must behoped that not only the Africans themselves,but also the international community, agree.

The authors would like to thank Rear-Admiral(rtd) Steve Stead and Chris Maloney for theirassistance in the preparation of this paper.

26 Jonathan Clayton, ‘New force faces morass of enmities in a hostile landscape’, The Times, 1 August 2007, p.29.27 James Bone, ‘UN Approves 26,000 peacekeepers for Dafur after years of slaughter’. The Times, 1 August 2007, p.29.

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The African Military: Assessing Continental Responses to

Security Needs

Martin Rupiya

Three years after the Cold War ended in1991, Africa was invited to participate in theinternational security system with a restrictedmilitary role that was confined to conflict sit-uations on the African continent. Westernpowers withdrew from deploying troops inAfrica following the harrowing events of lateAugust to October 1993 in Mogadishu,Somalia, when eighteen US Rangers werekilled and their cadavers dragged through thestreets. The images, captured live on camera,were beamed into living rooms around theworld and evoked the writing of severalbooks and a film, Black Hawk Down. Its effecton US external (security) policy towardsAfrica was severe. Within six months,Congress formally passed legislation result-

ing in the formal disengagement of troopdeployments in Africa.

From March 1994, Washington delegat-ed that responsibility to Africa’s political lead-ers and its representative organization, thethen Organization of African Unity (OAU).Africa quickly provided the theoreticalunderpinnings to her newfound responsibili-ty through the Common African Defenceand Security Policy (CADSP), a documentthat was released to coincide with the trans-formation of the OAU to the African Union(AU) in early 2000. Contained in that seminaldocument were claims and inferences that aregion of fifty-three member-countries hadsucceeded in achieving the harmonization ofboth foreign and security policies as well asthe establishment of an African StandbyForce (ASF) with a capacity to undertakeChapter Six-type United NationsPeacekeeping tasks by 2005 and by 2015 com-plex emergencies and enforcements.1

Examining the reality of Africa’s militarycapacity and environment, however, showsthat an elite pact between the West and theAU is inadequate in addressing the militarychallenges facing the African continent. Whattypes of military are available on the conti-nent and what is the effectiveness of each?Which groups, actors or states constitute thebad or good guys? What complementary rolehas the West defined for itself regarding par-ticipation in conflict resolution in Africa? Andfinally, is there a contingency plan if theassumptions underpinning the ‘theoreticalhandover of power’ to Africa are wrong?

This paper briefly discusses the com-

1 See: http://www.africa-union.org/root/AU/Documents.htm pp. 1-30.

Dr Rupiya (Lt.Col Rtd) is a SeniorResearcher, Institute for Security Studies, SA.He joined the Institute in March 2003 assenior researcher in the Defence SectorProgramme at the ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)office. Previously, from July 2002 was avisiting Senior Research Fellow with theCenter for Africa’s International Relationswithin the Department of InternationalRelations at the University of theWitwatersrand, Johannesburg, where heoffered Courses on African Security at theMasters level as well as supervising PhDstudents. Prior to this, he served as Directorof the Center for Defence Studies (from 1993)and Senior Lecturer in War & StrategicStudies in the Department of History at theUniversity of Zimbabwe from 1990.


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bined challenges posed by these questions,focussing specifically on what the decision todelegate military responsibility to Africa hasmeant in practice. First, it gives a back-ground of the nature of war and conflict thathas characterized the African continent sincethe early 1990’s, then it examines the type ofmilitary, which has emerged as part of thethird wave of democratization2 gripping overtwo-thirds of the countries on the Africancontinent and asks whether the new securityorganization is equipped enough to confrontexisting threats. It also critically investigatesthe notion of the CADSP before analyzingwhether the external military initiatives onthe continent have strengthened or weak-ened the evolving ASF concept. The paperconcludes by arguing that the decision to‘invite’ Africa to police her own conflict sce-narios threw her in at the deep end and thatthe set-up lacks the political cohesion, willand military capacity to make good on thepublic statements made so far. The main rea-sons for this include:

1. The lack of a (regional) collaborativemilitary tradition on a continent thatonly removed the final outreaches ofoppressive colonialism as late as 1994.In this regard, despite comments to thecontrary pressing for a United States ofAfrica, the region remains politicallydivided and still has some considerableway in establishing effective regionalsecurity structures, key components ofthe ASF.

2. An examination of ‘the military’ in eachof the emerging states after decades ofone-party state politics and ‘strong-man’ syndrome have led to partisanstructures that lack a ‘national’ charac-ter and therefore no local national legit-imacy and support. Stated differently,many states actually have factions and

former rebel groups still transformingto national militaries under arms, creat-ing challenges of representation andgeneral acceptance.

3. The CASDP is a document whose per-spectives are clearly too ambitious anddo not reflect realities on the ground.

4. The entry points and presence of theWest on the military question after the1990s in the form of the US AfricanCrisis Response Initiative (ACRI), FrenchReinforcement of African MilitaryCapacities (RECAMP) and BritishMilitary Advisory Training Teams(BMATT) and EU military involvementand later, the ‘military’ competitionbetween China and the US in Africahave all specifically supported theCASDP and ASF. Further, even wherethe initiatives are from the same alliance,such as the West, they are largely unco-ordinated with each other, sometimesmaking them act in competition.

1990s: Western Departure from Africaand Conflict TypologyThe period leading up to the end of the ColdWar and the ‘military’ withdrawal of the Westfrom Africa opened the lid on many simmer-ing ethnic, regional and territorial conflicts onthe continent. In that security vacuum leftbehind, Africa experienced its first genocide,exacted over 100 days during April to June1994 in Rwanda, whereby an estimated800,000–1,000,000 people died because theinternational community was not willing tointervene and Africa was unable to marshalenough forces. The result was inter-state wars,internal protracted struggles and genocide ona scale hitherto unseen. These conflicts ragedin Algeria; the Mano River Union in WestAfrica, involving Liberia, Guinea, Somalia,Sierra Leone and later Ivory Coast; Northern

2 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, (University of OklahomaPress, 1991). This was at the root of replacing the majority of post-decolonization one-party states and ushering inthe multi-party politics and democracies during the 1990s.

Martin Rupiya

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Uganda; Angola; Mozambique; Burundi;Rwanda; Zaire-later renamed the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (DR Congo); CentralAfrican Republic; Sudan; Ethiopia and Eritreaamong others. The impact produced an esti-mated 25 million internally displaced peoples(IDP), and over 9 million refugees.3

A feature closely tied in with these con-flicts was the requirement for African statesto transform under various conditionalities,including the creation of a multi-party politi-cal democracy. Consequently, the twin ill-winds of renewed and more ferocious con-flict and demands for internal political andsocio-economic reform left many statesfloundering.

The result was that Africa experiencedcollapsed states and very weak central gov-ernments in areas, such as Somalia, Rwanda,Burundi, CAR, Mozambique, Chad, Liberia,Lesotho, DR Congo, Sudan, and SierraLeone, allowing rebel movements to capturepower. In many instances, intervention in theconflicts produced interim arrangementsthat provided a basis for peaceful electionsand the building of institutions, includingnational armies. More specifically, some ofthe governments were belligerents whilesome rebel groups played as spoilers. Thisleft the majority of emerging states with lit-tle or no capacity to address the conflict thatis now characterizing African conflicts.

Therefore, as the continent was dele-gated military responsibility, its constituentparts were in fact themselves undergoingfundamental and institutional change. Toemphasize the example, Africa’s three largeststates: Algeria, Sudan and DR Congo areeither part of or in the process of ceasefires,interim arrangements or emerging frommajor internal conflicts. Each has theirarmies undergoing change, suffer strainednational integration and can be considered illprepared for the overbearing demands ofregional (AU) CASDP and ASF tasks.

The CADSP4

The context in which the CADSP emergedand what the document purported to repre-sent has also been found to be problematicover time. First, there is still no region global-ly that has achieved the comprehensive har-monization of foreign, security and defencepolicy unless within a federated state. Noteven the impressive EU has attained such ahigh level of policy co-ordination. Second,the policy is based on the establishment andeffective performance of Regional Economicand Security Structures (RECs). The latterhave always been in the founding documentsof the OAU but were not operationalizeduntil the theoretical opening of space in thelate 1990s. Hence, of the existing five pillars –the RECs – these have been challenged by asixth, the East African Community (EAC) anda seventh, the Cairo-based East and SouthernAfrican Economic and CommercialCommunity (COMESA). This has not onlyrendered the clear deadlines with timelines ofcoming into action as set out by the AUredundant but has now created ambiguitieswith multiple memberships in organizationsby several countries. Third, some of the RECshave taken the AU call to establish the ASFlegs seriously whilst others have not. Forinstance, while attempts are being made inWest, Eastern and Southern Africa, there isstill much to be done in Central Africa andvirtually nothing is happening in the North,which has resulted in confusion and the resig-nation of some countries in the Horn regionfrom existing RECs. Finally, there is still a con-ceptual ambiguity over whether or not theAU should have encouraged the creation ofRECs over the alternative of a loose but cen-trally controlled Standby Brigade stationed inAddis Ababa at AU Headquarters with acapacity and reach to be deployed within sev-enty-two hours to any part of the continent.

Finally, the ASF has so far only received6 per cent of the US$60 million annual sub-

3 Basic Facts: Refugees by Numbers 2006 edition, pp.1, 2 & 4, at http://www.unhcr.org.4 http://www.africa-union.org/root/AU/Documents.htm pp. 1-30.


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scriptions paid by AU member countries. Therest of the required resources have to comefrom either willing countries and partnerseither on the continent or beyond, effectivelyneutralizing any ability for the AU to establishitself as an independent military entity in theinternational system. The Global Fund, afacility that has been responsible for fundingAU commitments in Darfur of late, has beenan active contributor. Meanwhile, budgetaryestimates and implications of AUPeacekeeping Missions in Burundi, Darfurand Somalia stand at several hundred milliondollars, far outstripping what Member Statesare able to provide. Much more significantly,the continent is unable both to equip forcesand produce the military hardware requiredfor harsh theatres, such as Darfur. The alter-native has been to turn to outsiders for assis-tance, a decision that only confirms the conti-nent’s lack of preparation in undertaking anindependent military function.

The External DimensionIn the period immediately following theWest’s announcement to pull out militarilyfrom the continent and the genocides inBurundi, Rwanda and later DR Congo, theUS government launched in 1996 an initiativeto support African military capacity, ACRI.This was designed to train up to brigade levelunits that could be used against furtherpogroms. This came after British militarycapacity-building efforts were initiated inZimbabwe in the 1980s and later extended toNamibia, Mozambique and South Africa.The French also offered pre-positionedequipment and logistical materiel ‘dumps’ informer French colonies as well as trainingsupport for select units. Finally, the EUdeployed a mission in the DR Congo, and theScandinavian countries assisted towards find-ing a solution to the Ethiopian-Eritrean war.

At least two preliminary points can bemade on these Western external militaryinvolvements. First, the initiatives were nottargeted for harmonization, and are hence at

variance, with the AU, CASDP or ASF agen-da. Secondly, at least from the viewpoint ofAfricans, ACRI does not speak to RECAMPor BMATT or even EU military efforts inAfrica. And much more to the point, theexternal interventions have not pooledresources to be made available to the AUbased on an assessment of demands and gapsfrom the ground.

Finally, in more recent times, the battleof China versus the US in Africa has arisen.The competition for influence, resources (oil)and of course for pre-positioning against ter-ror post-9/11 has further marginalized anyindependent African military action. Thishas, yet again, reduced them to act as minorproxies in the wider agenda of both super-powers, while undermining the broaderAfrican security agenda.

The reality of the external initiatives isthat they have acted more to divide AfricanMember States than unite them, forcing anyindigenous military operation ultimatelyineffective.

ConclusionThere is as yet no military capacity on theAfrican continent that can be centrallydeployed under the auspices of the AU inresponse to conflict scenarios that threatenboth continental and global peace and securi-ty. This brief contribution highlights some ofthe circumstances that explain why there islittle or no military capacity on the Africancontinent.

While the AU has created an impressionof political willingness, capacity and effective-ness within two years of the initial agreements,its partners are undermining the very core ofits foundations. Furthermore, the nature ofthe African state, the implications of the ThirdWave and subsequent conflicts demand theWest and other international players to returnto the African peacekeeping agenda and notleave this in the hands of an emerging institu-tion that is itself hostage to the whims of fifty-three leaders and diverse regions.

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The Challenges of Peacekeeping in Africa

Christopher Clapham

IntroductionPeacekeeping in Africa is both more impor-tant, and more hazardous, than anywhereelse in the world. It is a task to which theUnited Nations, the African Union, regionalorganizations within Africa, and individualstates both from the continent and outside it,have devoted an enormous amount of effort,with results that have varied from highly suc-cessful to completely disastrous. This briefpaper seeks to set out some of the challengesthat must be identified and met if peacekeep-ing in the continent is to achieve its maxi-mum possibilities, while at the same timeavoiding mistakes that can only damage theobjectives which peacekeeping is intended toserve.

The Challenge of Military ForcePeacekeeping involves the limited and selec-tive application of military force, in the ser-vice of the wider political goal of achievingpeace. The place to start is with the recogni-tion that military force is itself a very distinc-tive instrument of policy, which is in some

respects extremely effective, and in othersvirtually useless. This paper certainly doesnot subscribe to the mantra that ‘militaryforce settles nothing’: it does though, on thecontrary, believe it can settle a great deal,notably by removing from the equationopposing military forces that are deemed tobe a threat to peace, and by imposing, atleast temporarily, a common structure ofcontrol over areas at risk. The maintenanceof what is essentially a policing force mayequally, under suitable circumstances, serveto deter or prevent the re-emergence ofpeace-threatening groups within territoriesin which open conflict has been brought toan end.

On the other hand, one does not haveto look far to identify objectives that militaryforce cannot achieve. It is not suited to bring-ing about the deep-seated changes in atti-tudes and structures that are usually neededto control or reverse the conditions thatbrought about conflict in the first place, andthere are likewise circumstances in which theinjudicious use of force, or even the merepresence and identity of the peacekeepingforces themselves, may promote a reactionagainst the would-be peacekeepers, and leadto them becoming part of the very problemsthat they had been intended to control.

This is not, it should be emphasized, amatter of the amount of force that the peace-keepers are able to deploy. Even some of thelargest and best-equipped military forces inthe world have found themselves strugglingto cope with situations in which the applica-tion of force does not provide an appropriateresponse to the problems that they face. It is,rather, a matter of working out whetherthese problems are ones that can be handled

Christopher Clapham is editor of TheJournal of Modern African Studies, and isbased at the Centre of African Studies atCambridge University. Until his retirement,he was Professor of Politics & InternationalRelations at Lancaster University; he wasalso President of the African StudiesAssociation of the United Kingdom, 1992-94.His main interests lie in the politics andinternational relations of Africa, with a par-ticular concern for the Horn of Africa. Hehas also worked on Liberia and Sierra Leone.


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through the selective application of force,and then if so, working out the most effectiveway to apply it. Indeed, peacekeepers withrelatively small amounts of force at their dis-posal may be less likely than their more mili-tarily powerful counterparts to fall into thetrap of assuming that military force will initself guarantee success, and may as a resultgive more careful consideration to the rela-tionship between the objective that theyseek, and the means available to achieve it.

The Challenge of AfricaIt is no coincidence that the demands onpeacekeepers should be at their greatest inAfrica, since this is the continent in which thedifficulties of maintaining stable politicalorder are most acute. Africa is an extremelydifficult continent to govern, simply becauseof its huge distances, generally dispersedpopulations, weak infrastructure, andextremely uneven distribution of resources.1

All of Africa’s rulers, whether pre-colonial,colonial or post-colonial, have faced essen-tially the same problems in exerting effectivecontrol over this large and poor landmass andits often mobile peoples, and it is safe toassume that they will continue to do so. Theextremely problematic nature of many ofthe states artificially created by colonialism,and bequeathed to the continent’s new rulersat independence, has only exacerbated thedifficulties, which are necessarily at theirmost acute in those parts of Africa wherepeacekeepers are most likely to be needed.This is not to say that all of Africa’s problemsare the result of inherent structural weak-nesses that lie beyond the hope of remedy.On the contrary, there are frequent cases inwhich these problems have been caused, orat the very least greatly exacerbated, by spe-cific failings – such as corrupt, incompetentor dictatorial rule – that can in turn be recti-fied by improvements especially in the quali-

ty of governance that lie within plausiblereach. In such situations, peacekeepers maybe able to play a very valuable role in secur-ing the conditions under which better formsof government can be put in place. It does,however, imply that great care needs to betaken, before deploying peacekeepers, toassess whether the situation is one in whichthey can actually make much difference.

This is not the point at which to go intothe diverse kinds of conflict that have led (ormight lead) to the deployment of peacekeep-ers in Africa. The critical point is that peace-keepers cannot be expected, and should notbe used, to compensate for deep-seated diffi-culties in the governance of Africa, or indeedof particularly problematic parts of it.Peacekeeping involves the tactical insertionof limited force into a specific situation, andrequires very careful appraisal of that situa-tion in order to work out whether it is onethat their presence can help to manage, andif so in what way. Many of the greatest fail-ures in the deployment of peacekeepersresult from their being asked to take on tasksthat lie well beyond their capacity. Later inthis paper, some of the different kinds of sit-uations in which peacekeepers have beendeployed will be disentangled, and the possi-bilities and problems which each of these areliable to give rise to.

The Challenge of PoliticsSince peacekeeping involves the use of forcein support of political objectives, it is essen-tial for it to be accompanied by a clear under-standing of the politics of the situation inwhich it is used. This applies especially to theappreciation of the internal politics of theconflict that has given rise to a call for peace-keeping. It is not enough to assume that sincepeace offers massive benefits to by far thegreater number of the people in the area inwhich the conflict has taken place, the peace-

1 See Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton University Press,2000).

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keeping mission will be assured the level oflocal support that is essential to its success.Even though peace does normally bring enor-mous benefits (compared with the appallingcosts of war) to the great majority of people,it is naive to assume that this will assure themission the conditions in which it can oper-ate successfully.

For a start, there is the obvious problemof ‘spoilers’: particular actors in the conflictwho stand to gain from its perpetuation –very often because they have grown wealthyand powerful through the crude exploitationof lootable resources – and who will thenseek to frustrate the peacekeepers at everyturn. Where they have been able to use theposition that they have established in thecourse of the conflict to build up a core offollowers who see their own survival asdepending on that of their boss, there may beno alternative to the need for the peacekeep-ing force to take them on and destroy them:fortunately, the forces at the disposal of ‘war-lords’ or straightforward criminals are usual-ly too poorly disciplined and trained to pre-sent much of a threat to a reasonably well-organized professional military, while the tiesthat bind these forces to their chief are sodependent on his ability both to inspire fear,and to provide immediate benefits, that theyare likely to fall apart once the boss himself isremoved.

This is, however, by no means the onlyor even the major challenge. In cases – andthere are many – where the conflict resultsfrom ‘grievance’ and not merely ‘greed’ (totake the familiar dichotomy suggested byPaul Collier),2 it is essential for the peace set-tlement which the peacekeeping force isintended to sustain to take full account ofthese grievances and provide credible ways tomeet them. A peacekeeping force that has asits effective mission the maintenance inpower of a government that has itself lostlegitimacy is unlikely to achieve very much,

and will readily be identified as a source ofconflict rather than a way of resolving it.

Beyond this, moreover, it has to be rec-ognized that all peacekeeping missions neces-sarily have a political context which will inturn serve the interests of some local partici-pants more than, or even directly at theexpense of, those of others. Whatever thesystem of government is that the missionsupports, or helps to bring about, this will bea government that is run by certain people(and in turn, usually, certain groups withinthe population as a whole), rather than – orat least to a greater extent than – by others. Itis, as a result, absolutely critical for thosewho are charged with deciding whether todespatch a peacekeeping force to a particularconflict situation, or with determining themandate or terms of reference that it will beexpected to implement once it gets there, totake a very clear-headed view of what theoverall impact of its arrival will be on thelocal political situation.

One question that is always worth ask-ing is: Which are the groups within the con-flict situation that the peacekeepers seek tocontrol that would welcome their arrival(and even actively seek it), and which are thegroups that look on the projected deploy-ment of a peacekeeping force with suspicion,or indeed actively threaten it? This in turnprovides a rough-and-ready indicator of thebalance of local political forces that thepeacekeepers will confront, and in turn thescale of the challenge that they are likely toface. It is almost axiomatic that the local par-ticipants who most eagerly await the peace-keepers’ arrival will be those who are losingmost heavily from the current dispensation,whereas those who see themselves as beingin the ascendant will be likely to regard thepeacekeepers as depriving them of the fruitsof victory. Arriving peacekeepers will there-fore find themselves – regardless of theirprotestations of neutrality – cast in the role

2 Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford: Centre for the Study of AfricanEconomies, Working Paper 2002/01, 2002.


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of protectors of the weaker side. This is cer-tainly no reason for them not to intervene:the group currently in the ascendant maywell be brutal, even genocidal criminals,whose hold over the population is main-tained by force, and whose removal or neu-tralization is essential to local and regionalsecurity. It does, however, provide would-bepeacekeepers with a means of assessing thesituation that they face, and help them toensure that they can deploy a force sufficientto achieve their goals. On occasion, it mayforce a reluctant recognition that any peace-keeping force is liable to get dragged into oneside or the other of local conflicts that it cando little to contain.

One familiar way of seeking to defusethe problem of political partiality is to insiston internationally supervised elections, as anessential part of the overall settlement whichthe peacekeepers are deployed to guarantee.This has the great advantage that it ensuresthat the government that emerges from thesettlement will be one that enjoys the great-est level of legitimacy and popular support,which will then greatly ease the politicalstanding of the peacekeeping force whosemission is, implicitly at least, to sustain thatgovernment. Such elections often do indeedhave an extremely important role in estab-lishing effective and legitimate governments,which are the key to subsequent reconstruc-tion. They nonetheless need to be subject toa very careful appraisal, both of the basicstructure of the political differences that havegiven rise to the conflict in the first place, andto the specific ‘sequencing’ of elections withother elements in the peace process. In thefirst respect, where the conflict reflects majorsocial fault lines dividing the population, theeffect of the election may merely be toentrench these differences, and make lastingreconciliation all the more difficult toachieve: all that will happen in that the peace-keepers will be cast in the role of supportingthe electorally dominant group, and willtherefore be seen as enemies by the minority.In the second respect, it is now clearly estab-

lished that when elections are allowed to takeplace before the stabilization of the securitysituation, and where the major contenders inthe election are the heads of armed factions,the effect of the election will simply be toentrench their power over an electorate thatis forced to vote for the warlord who is in aposition to do them most damage if they failto support him. This will in turn leave thepeacekeepers in an extremely invidious posi-tion.

There are potential political problems,too, from the side of the peacekeepers them-selves. In some cases, the very compositionof the peacekeeping force may be unaccept-able to some local participants, or signal thatit is likely to favour one side rather than theother. Neighbouring states, which are mostdirectly affected by conflicts that threatenregional instability, are also most likely to beregarded as pursuing interests of their ownunder the guise of peacekeeping. Formercolonisers, or other states with longstandinghistorical connections with the conflict area,or evident economic interests in it, are like-wise in an invidious position. If the costs ofpeacekeeping mount, in terms of money ormore sensitively of human lives, the states ororganizations responsible for sending thepeacekeepers may well withdraw their sup-port.

The Challenge of AnalysisAll of this points to the need for criticalthinking, as the key to successful peacekeep-ing operations. Every situation differs, andeach needs to be approached through a thor-ough and well-informed appraisal of the spe-cific problems and opportunities that itoffers. There is no fixed set of rules that canbe applied to each case, and that will thenautomatically generate the correct answers.It is, however, useful to distinguish betweendifferent types of peacekeeping operation,which provide at least an initial set of crite-ria for applying to each case, for which thecategories suggested by a recent book,

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Understanding Peacekeeping,3 are most help-ful. This indicates five forms of peacekeep-ing, each of which may be illustrated by cur-rent or recent examples in Africa, and eachof which presents rather different chal-lenges.

1) Traditional PeacekeepingTraditional peacekeeping involves the inser-tion of a neutral force into a frontier zonebetween combatants, usually following awar and subsequent ceasefire. The role ofthe peacekeeping force is to guarantee toeach side that the other will respect theterms of the ceasefire, by acting as a ‘trip-wire’ between the two sides, pending theconclusion of a permanent settlement. Insuch cases, the peacekeepers are deployedwith the consent of both parties, they areexpected to remain strictly neutral betweenthem, and they are required to exert onlyminimal, if any force. The most obvious(indeed only) example of such an operationin Africa at the present time is the UNMEEforce on the frontier between Eritrea andEthiopia.

Operations of this kind are at least rela-tively straightforward, but (for that very rea-son) are rare in Africa. They are almost nec-essarily deployed in the context of mediationbetween rival neighbouring states, theyinvolve the policing of geographically limit-ed areas (normally the frontier between thecombatants), and they imply the presence oneach side of disciplined national armies sub-ject to government control. The great major-ity of African peacekeeping situations are bycontrast vastly more fluid. The major threatthat they face is that the balance of politicaladvantage that the operation confers on thecombatants may change over time, leadingone side or the other to contest the role ofthe peacekeepers, possibly resulting in thewithdrawal of the peacekeeping force and areturn to war.

2) Managing TransitionThe function of peacekeepers in these situa-tions is to ‘hold the ring’, following the nego-tiation of a political settlement to a conflictwithin a particular state, in order to ensurethat the parties to the settlement abide by itsterms, during the often very sensitive periodduring which the terms of that settlementare being implemented. The role of thepeacekeepers is much more extensive than inthe case of ‘traditional peacekeeping’. Theyare normally required to extend a presencethroughout the national territory, and tosupervise potentially difficult operationssuch as the encampment and disarmament ofthe rival armed forces (which will necessarilyinvolve at least one and possibly more insur-gent forces, which may or may not be reason-ably well disciplined), and the holding ofelections which normally form a key compo-nent in settlements of this kind. The twomost straightforward examples of such oper-ations in Africa are the (largely British)Commonwealth Monitoring Force inZimbabwe in 1979/80, and the UNTAG mis-sion in Namibia in 1989/90. In each case, thiswas a transition from white minority toAfrican majority rule, though in each casealso there were serious dangers to the suc-cessful implementation of the settlement,and UNTAG especially had to cope with acontroversial security crisis. Apparently anal-ogous but potentially very different settle-ments have been reached to civil warsbetween African participants, in which thesolidity of the settlement and the role of thepeacekeeping force have been very muchmore uncertain. The extreme example offailure in such circumstances remains theUNAMIR I mission in Rwanda in early 1994,which had been deployed on the assumptionthat the Arusha Accord represented a gen-uine settlement, and entirely failed to copewhen the falsity of this assumption wasrevealed. Angola in 1991/92 provides anoth-er tragic case.

3 Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams & Stuart Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).


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They key requirement for the deploy-ment of peacekeepers in managed transi-tions is then an extremely hard-headed analy-sis of the robustness of the settlement thathas been reached, the level of commitmentto it of the parties concerned, the potentialchallenges to the settlement that mayemerge under different scenarios, and thesources from which these may come. It isthen necessary for the international organi-zation or consortium of states sponsoringthe peacekeeping operation to ensure thatthey have the forces on the ground requiredto respond effectively to any challenge to thesettlement. To deploy a mere token force insituations where a real force may be neededis to risk an appalling breakdown that negatesthe entire settlement, leads to a resumptionof conflict on a scale much more bitter thanbefore, and undermines the credibility ofpeacekeeping operations much more widely.

3) Wider Peacekeeping‘Wider peacekeeping’ is a term employed byBellamy et al. to cover a wide and fluid rangeof situations, in which indeed they includeUNAMIR I, even though this was initiallyconceived as a case of straightforward transi-tion management. This form of engagementcharacteristically occurs in the context ofongoing violence, either in the absence ofany ceasefire at all, or where such a ceasefireis fragile and poorly implemented. It almostalways involves situations of civil war, ratherthan inter-state conflict, even though in somecases (such as DRC) external forces may alsobe engaged in support of domestic factions.In such cases, the roles of peacekeepers aremultiple, complex, and extremely uncertain.They may involve the disarmament or sepa-ration of combatants, the protection of civil-ian populations and refugees, providing asecurity umbrella for the deployment ofhumanitarian relief (and the protection ofexternal non-governmental organizationsengaged in its delivery), and at times the pro-vision of security for elections, the holding of

which is contested by some of the conflictingparties. In the case of missions that are for-mally mandated by international organiza-tions, the terms of the mandate are liable tochange rapidly in response to unforeseen cir-cumstances, and there is liable to be a prob-lem of ensuring that the mission on theground has the capacity to cope with thedemands made on it. The initial US interven-tion in Somalia in 1992, and the subsequentUNOSOM operation, provide examples.

Missions of this kind raise in the stark-est form the challenges of military force, andthe dangers of attempting to use peacekeep-ing in a futile attempt to deal with the deep-seated problems of African governance, thathave been raised earlier in this paper. It is notargued outright that such missions shouldnever be attempted. There may be occasionswhen the insertion of a peacekeeping forceinto a situation of ongoing conflict may pro-vide a catalyst around which a settlement canbe formed. It is, however, urged that opera-tions of this kind should be pursued onlyafter the most careful analysis of their possi-bilities and perils, and in the full understand-ing of the risks of failure, with fallback posi-tions in the event of worst-case scenarios.They require in particular military forces thatare sufficiently disciplined, flexible and well-equipped to be able to cope with circum-stances well beyond those that were original-ly envisaged. This is not the kind of situationinto which to send poorly-trained peacekeep-ers on a ‘hope for the best’ basis.

4) Peace Enforcement‘Peace enforcement’ operations involve thedeliberate deployment of external forces in acombatant role, designed to impose peace bythe defeat of rival forces that are regarded asthreatening it, often under the terms ofChapter VII of the United Nations Charter,which authorizes the use of force under spe-cific circumstances. It may very plausibly beasked whether such operations can properlybe designated ‘peacekeeping’ at all, since

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they amount to ‘war fighting’, albeit of a lim-ited kind, directed towards a goal which usu-ally commands a high level of internationalsupport. Bellamy et al. include in this catego-ry the UN force in Congo (ONUC, 1960-64),and the UNOSOM I and II and UNITAFoperations in Somalia, which would beregarded as cases of ‘wider peacekeeping’. Amuch clearer African example is the Britishintervention in Sierra Leone, which effective-ly destroyed Foday Sankoh’s RevolutionaryUnited Front (RUF-SL) forces, as well as anumber of other outfits like the West SideBoys. As a straightforward fighting force,composed of highly-trained units under asingle national command, this proved vastlymore effective in this particular role than themuch larger UN peacekeeping mission inSierra Leone at that time, which encom-passed contingents drawn from differentnational armies, with a much wider mandateand more restrictive terms of reference. TheSADC-authorized and South African-ledintervention in Lesotho provides anotherexample.

Operations of this kind can be plannedand executed in conventional military terms,avoiding many of the problems that affect‘peacekeeping forces’ in the normal sense ofthe word. They may however raise acuteproblems of sovereignty and intervention,and can rarely be dissociated from the hege-monic role of the state – normally either aneighbour or a former colonial power –which takes the lead. They usually involveexplicit or implicit military support for a spe-cific government or political faction againstits domestic foes, and easily arouse suspi-cions that the intervening force is merelyseeking to protect the interests of the send-ing state, or of its local allies, within deeplycontested situations. The deployment of theFrench force under ‘Operation Turquoise’ inRwanda in 1994 fell foul of all these prob-lems. In short, what such operations gain interms of military simplicity, they are likely tolose in terms of diplomatic ambivalence, andthey can properly be regarded as a form of

‘peacekeeping’ only when they are subject toa specific and limited goal, and to the clearestinternational authority. Once the objective ofdefeating the ‘peace-threatening’ oppositionhas been achieved, moreover, they are sub-ject to the familiar problems of ‘wider peace-keeping’ or ‘peace support’ operations.

5) Peace Support OperationsThe final category, peace support operations,involves the deployment of an international-ly authorized force, as part of a much broad-er process of state reconstruction in the after-math of civil war. The military are there inorder to ensure that an initially fragile peaceprocess does not collapse, at the hands per-haps of disgruntled faction leaders or demo-bilized former fighters, while the economy isrebuilt, a shattered domestic administrationis put back in place, and a new national mili-tary force is trained to replace that fragment-ed (and possibly discredited) in the course ofthe preceding war. The establishment of anelected national government within a demo-cratic political order is normally an essentialprerequisite to ensure the legitimacy of thecontinued external engagement. The UNand British presence in Sierra Leone effec-tively turned into a peace support operationafter the defeat of the RUF and other fac-tions, while the continued large-scale UNpresence in Liberia provides a further exam-ple.

Peace support operations are in princi-ple relatively unproblematic, and are fre-quently essential if some framework of orderis to be restored to a shattered state. Thepotential hazards that they face are likewisefairly clear. First, of course, is the need forthem to retain sufficient force to deal with areal threat, should one arise: it is all too easyfor a force in what appears to be a peacefulsituation to become complacent, and notleast for the states and international institu-tions responsible for maintaining it to assumethat it is safe to draw down the force avail-able, especially for financial reasons. Serious


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problems may arise quickly and unexpected-ly, and a rapid reaction capacity is essential.Second, difficulties may well arise in the rela-tionship between the peacekeeping force andthe government that it is there to protect.While at the outset, the government will cer-tainly need the force, over time it is likely towant to flex its own muscles, and find itselfplaced under an onerous degree of depen-dence on the peace support operation, in itscivilian as much as its military manifesta-tions; the peacekeepers, for their part, haveto maintain support for the political orderestablished by the peace process, withoutbeing drawn into operating on behalf of theparticular regime in power. The incumbentgovernment, like any government, is likely toattract opposition over time, and the peace-keeping force cannot allow itself to bedragged into situations where it serves as theregime’s private army, and is used against itslegitimate domestic opponents. Finally,peace support operations are by their natureopen-ended, and the point at which they cansafely be run down or terminated is problem-atic. It is a feature of all peacekeeping opera-

tions, even ‘traditional’ ones like UNMEE,that they continue for an often much longerperiod than was originally envisaged, and inthe process place continuing strain of thefinances and military forces of the states andinternational organizations that send them.

ConclusionIt will be clear from this paper that the chal-lenges facing peacekeeping missions, espe-cially in Africa, are virtually endless. This isemphatically not to say that they should beabandoned. On the contrary, they offer anessential mechanism for helping to bringpeace to parts of the continent that desper-ately need it. This paper concentrates on the‘challenges’, and hence implicitly the prob-lems, of such missions, because that is whatit was commissioned to do. Its conclusion isthat peacekeeping is most likely to make apositive contribution to the security of Africaif it is entered into with a very clear under-standing of the different tasks that it may beexpected to perform, and of the difficultiesthat it is liable to face in doing so.

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Peacekeeping Experiences in Africa from Organization of

African Unity to the African Union: An Analytical Historical

Perspective

Geofrey Mugumya

IntroductionSince the birth of the Organization ofAfrican Unity (OAU), and more particularlywith the collapse of the bi-polar world orderat the end of the 1990s, the issue of peace,security and stability in Africa has remained amajor pre-occupation. Over the course oftime, the security situation on the continenthas been marked by the collapse of stateinstitutions as exemplified by developmentsin countries like Liberia, Somalia, SierraLeone and the Democratic Republic ofCongo (DRC); an increase in communal con-flicts, emerging mainly from rising tension ininter-group rivalry and the collapse of oldpatterns of relationships, as well as the socialfabric upon which any community thrives;conflicts over ownership, management andcontrol of natural resources, despite theAfrican continent being endowed with enoughnatural resources to cater for the needs of all itspeoples; proliferation and the stockpiling ofsmall arms and light weapons; the rise in theactivities of terrorists, mercenaries, warlords,irregular militia and other transnationalorganized criminal groups; and new forms ofsecurity threats, including money launder-ing, human trafficking, drugs, cyber-crimes,etc.

The culmination of collective efforts byOAU Member States to provide for a robustpeacekeeping capacity in Africa can bedemonstrated by examining these four com-ponents: the history of the challenges topeace and security in Africa and early

responses (1963 – early 1980s); the nature andcontent of transformation strategies in thearea of peace and security during the transi-tion from the OAU to the AU (1990s); thesteps taken by the AU to realize a new peaceand security architecture; and the evolvingframework of peacekeeping operations andits challenges.

Peacekeeping, for which the foundationwas laid under the now defunct OAU, is gain-ing a new currency with the AU. Althoughthe scale of its activities may be limited in thesense that African people, especially womenand children, face devastating consequencesof conflict when whole economies and phys-ical and social infrastructures are oftendestroyed, deepening the development gap,peacekeeping is nonetheless important and ithas come a long way.

The Charter of the United Nations con-fers on the Security Council the ultimateresponsibility for the maintenance of inter-national peace and security. Whilst this is theestablished political practice, as based onexisting international law and conventions,the world has witnessed a new evolution inthe domain of peacekeeping. This is particu-larly virulent in those areas and regionswhere action by the Security Council hasbeen perceived to be too slow to respond tolocal situations endangering peace and secu-rity. That evolution, underpinned by effortsby regional organizations to engage in limit-ed peacekeeping operations as stop gap mea-sures, is comparatively more manifest inAfrica. The AU was born in September 1999into a situation of devastating conflicts andrecurrent crises in various parts of Africa inaddition to inheriting the unfinished tasksrelated to conflict management from its pre-

Geofrey Mugumya is the Director of Peaceand Security Department, Africa UnionCommission, Addis Ababa


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decessor. In the extreme case of Somalia, theOAU left it to the AU to take up the gigantictask of helping the Somalis revitalize the edi-fice of the State.

Historical Overview of OAU EffortsFrom the OAU’s inception, conflict resolu-tion and the preservation of peace, securityand stability have remained the major pre-occupations for African leaders. The Charterof the OAU provided for the Commission ofMediation, Conciliation and Arbitration(CMCA). The Commission had jurisdictiononly over inter-state conflicts and remainedindifferent to internal strives. Although theCommission made efforts to operate, it didso within a rather negative environment.Many OAU Member States were unwilling toresort to the procedure of arbitration andother measures as provided for under theCMCA. In addition, the members boundeach other to the principle of non-interfer-ence in the internal affairs of each Member.Therefore the Commission was blocked at itsvery infancy.

Given the ineffectiveness of the CMCA,African leaders resorted to other methods ofconflict resolution, but on a more or less adhoc basis. This recourse saw the phenomenaof Elder Statesmen, African Heads of State,Ad Hoc Committees and Eminent Personsfrequently being called upon to resolve inter-state disputes. The results were not satisfac-tory as the continent continued to be afflict-ed by conflicts. In fact, the last phase of theOAU witnessed the advent of numerousinternal conflicts on the continent, includingSomalia, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, SierraLeone and the DRC. Further, it left in limbothe then long-running internal conflicts inAngola, Mozambique and Sudan. It was inthat context that significant efforts weredeployed to equip the OAU with a morerobust organ to deal with conflicts.

The Cairo Declaration on a Mechanismfor Conflict Prevention, Managementand ResolutionOAU efforts to address the scourge of con-flicts on the continent took a turning point inJune 1993, when the 29th Ordinary Session ofthe Assembly of Heads of State andGovernment, held in Cairo, Egypt, adopted adeclaration establishing, within the OAU, aMechanism for Conflict Prevention,Management and Resolution. The decisionto establish the Mechanism was reachedamidst a growing awareness that there wasno way Africa could improve its socio-eco-nomic performance in the years followingthe end of the Cold War given how fraughtwith wars, conflict and political instability itwas. In this respect, it is worth recalling thatthree years earlier, in July 1990, the 26th

Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Headsof State and Government, that took place inAddis Ababa, adopted the ‘Declaration onthe Political and Socio-Economic Situation inAfrica and the Fundamental Changes TakingPlace in the World’. In that declaration, theHeads of State and Government noted that:

No single internal factor has contributed more tothe present socio-economic problems in theContinent than the scourge of conflicts withinand between our countries. They have broughtabout death and human suffering, engenderedhate and divided nations and families. Conflictshave forced millions of our people into a driftinglife as refugees and internally displaced persons,deprived of their means of livelihood, humandignity and hope. Conflicts have gobbled-upscarce resources, and undermined the ability ofour countries to address the many compellingneeds of our people.

In establishing the Mechanism, the Heads ofState and Government clearly wanted tobring a new institutional dynamism to theprocess of dealing with conflicts on theAfrican Continent by enabling speedy actionto prevent and, if necessary, manage and ulti-mately resolve conflicts when they occur.According to the Cairo Declaration, theMechanism had, as its primary objective, theanticipation and prevention of conflicts. In

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circumstances where conflicts had alreadyescalated, it was to be its responsibility toundertake peacemaking and peacebuildingfunctions in order to facilitate the resolutionof these conflicts. In this respect, civilian andmilitary observer/monitoring missions oflimited scope and duration were deployed.The Assembly was of the view that theemphasis of the OAU Mechanism on antici-patory and preventive measures as well asconcerted action on peacemaking and peace-building would obviate complex andresource-demanding peacekeeping opera-tions, which African countries could find dif-ficult to finance and sustain.

In the event conflicts degenerated tothe extent of requiring collective internation-al and complex intervention and policing, theassistance or, where appropriate, the servicesof the United Nations would be sought. Inthis case, African countries would examineways and modalities through which theycould make a practical contribution to such aUnited Nations undertaking and participateeffectively to peacekeeping operations inAfrica. The Assembly thus requested theSecretary-General of the OAU to undertake areview of the structures, procedures andworking methods of the Mechanism, includ-ing the possibility of changing the name to‘Central Organ’.

Like its predecessors, the Mechanismdid not prove all that effective in the preserva-tion of peace and security in the continent.Although the Mechanism made someachievements, it was faced with very seriousconstraints, which limited its capacity to per-form its mandate. It faced many challenges indealing with conflict situations in Burundi,Comoros, Rwanda, Liberia and others. Theseconstraints infringed on the Mechanism’smode of operation, the membership of theCentral Organ, its methods of work and deci-sion-making process, and the lack of a clearframework governing the relations regionalgroupings. The factors that undermined theeffective functioning of the Mechanism wereboth endemic in its nature as well as external.

The lack of political commitment toeffectively implement decisions on conflictissues, inadequate funding and logistical sup-port as well as the absence of informationnetworks among others rendered theMechanism handicapped. Given these funda-mental weaknesses, the role of the OAUremained peripheral in a number of majorconflicts, including, in particular, those inSouthern Sudan and Somalia. In addition,the inability of the Mechanism to effectivelyrespond to crisis, especially in situations ofcoups d’état and other political fallout, furthercontributed to its demise.

The New Peace and SecurityArchitecture of the African Union:Building the Capacity of the AU toUndertake Complex PeacekeepingMissionsOnce the weaknesses of the Mechanismwere acknowledged, the doors were openedfor far-reaching reflections and reforms toenhance security within and between theMember States. It became clear that therewas need for a more robust and proactivemechanism, particularly in view of the newpolitical dispensation ushered in by the estab-lishment of the African Union. The newefforts concentrated on various issues such asthe need to put in place a new architecturefor peace and security for the continent andwith it the dimension of peacekeeping.These concerns culminated in the adoptionof the Protocol Relating to the Establishmentof the Peace and Security Council (PSC) ofthe African Union.

The PSC, as provided in the Protocol, isto be supported by the African Standby Force(to deal with peace-support operations), thePanel of the Wise, the Continental EarlyWarning System (CEWS), and the PeaceFund (to garner the necessary resources forthe promotion of peace and security). Inaddition to the PSC Protocol, the peace andsecurity architecture includes the AfricanUnion Non-Aggression and Common


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Defence Pact adopted by the 4th OrdinarySession of the Assembly of the Union, heldin Abuja, Nigeria in January 2005; theCommon African Defence and SecurityPolicy (CADSP), adopted by the 2nd

Extraordinary Session of the Union, held inSirte, Libya in February 2005; as well as othersecurity instruments of the Union, such asthe Treaty establishing the African NuclearWeapons Free-zone (the Pelindaba Treaty),and the Convention for the Prevention andCombating of Terrorism. While previousefforts concentrated on conflict resolution,the new architecture provides for a holisticapproach for the promotion of peace andsecurity in Africa.

The adoption of the PSC Protocol andits subsequent entering into force inDecember 2003 was a culmination of theconcerted efforts since the early 1990s toequip the continent with a more robust appa-ratus for preserving and enhancing peace andsecurity. The central objectives of the PSCare to anticipate and prevent conflicts; pro-mote and implement peacebuilding; developa common defence policy for the Union; co-ordinate and harmonize continental effortsin the prevention and combating of terror-ism; and promote and encourage democraticpractices, (good governance and the rule oflaw, protect human rights and fundamentalfreedoms, etc.)

Making Peacekeeping Work in AfricaThe fiasco of the first peacekeeping ventureundertaken by the OAU in Chad in 1979-1982, coupled with the heinous tragedies inRwanda and Burundi in the 1990s, provided anew momentum for the need to build thecontinent’s capacity in the area of peacekeep-ing. The operation in Chad furnished thefirst occasion ever for the OAU to mount apeacekeeping operation. It differed from allother instances of OAU military involvementin conflict management in that it was morecomplex than the ceasefire observation mis-sions that the Organization had been deploy-

ing previously. With the exception of the leadcountry Nigeria, there was a lack of co-oper-ation from many African countries. Amongthe other countries which were supposed toprovide units to the neutral African force,including Congo, Benin, and Guinea, onlythe Congolese contingent composed of 550troops showed up in Chad on 18 January1980.

The lessons learned from the Chadoperation included the fact that the effective-ness of peacekeeping was commensuratewith the capacity and political will of thetroop-contributing countries and the central-ity of co-operation by the neighbouringcountries. The lack of a clear mandate, andconcept, particularly with regard to logistics,operation and troop-generation, furtherdemonstrated the inexperience of the OAU,and showed that peacekeeping was not a pic-nic but rather a complex and expensive oper-ation, which many African countries couldnot afford. The Chadian experience laterinformed decisions on how best to deal withpeacekeeping, especially at the level of theAfrican Chiefs of Defence staff (ACDS).

The first ACDS meeting, which tookplace in Addis Ababa 3-6 June 1996, empha-sized that the primary responsibility of theOAU should lie with the anticipation and pre-vention of conflicts in accordance with therelevant provisions of the 1993 CairoDeclaration. It also recognized that the pri-mary responsibility for the maintenance ofinternational peace and security, particularlyin the area of peacekeeping rests with theUnited Nations Security Council. At thesame time, the meeting recognized that cer-tain exceptional circumstances can arisewhich may lead to the deployment of limitedpeacekeeping or observation missions by theOAU. Subsequently, as reflected below, the2nd ACDS meeting took place in Harare from20-22 October 1997 to further the work initi-ated by the first meeting. And long after, thethird meeting of the ACDS, and includingthe participation of governmental expertsfrom AU member States, took place in Addis

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Ababa from 15-16 May 2003. Notably, thethird meeting came in the wake of the deci-sion taken by the Assembly of the Union atits Maputo Summit held in July 2003 relatingto the operationalization of the Peace andSecurity Council of the African Union.

In order to enable the OAU to betterundertake peace support missions, theMeeting saw the need for strengthening themilitary Unit of the General Secretariat. Italso recommended that the OAU continue toco-ordinate closely with Sub-RegionalOrganizations in its peace support opera-tions, taking advantage of existing arrange-ments within the sub-regions. The Meetingaccepted the principle of standby arrange-ments and earmarked contingents on a vol-untary basis, which could serve either underthe aegis of the United Nations or the OAUor under sub-regional arrangements. In thisregard, the Meeting recognized the need forproper preparation and the standardizationof training.

Inspired by the role played by theMonitoring Mission of the EconomicCommunity of West African States (ECOW-AS-ECOMOG) in Liberia in 1990 and inSierra Leone in the late 1990s, there grew astrong desire for the continent to take onmatters of peace and security.

The 2nd ACDS Meeting in Harare, from24-25 October 1997, convened to considerthe recommendations, observations and pro-posals of the Group of Military Experts.Discussed among others were the concept ofpeace support operations (PSO); the applica-ble procedures and adequacy of structuresfor PSO; the need for standard and adoptedtraining in the field of PSO; the commandand control of OAU PSO at various levels;the command and control of joint OAU/UNand OAU/Regional Organization operations;the planning and structure of PSO communi-cations; the capacity building of Africa andthe OAU General secretariat in the field ofPSO; and the logistic support and financingof OAU PSO.

The discussions allowed the ACDS to

make substantive recommendations coveringthe modalities of the concepts, training andliaison; command, control and communica-tions; and budget and logistics of OAU’s 500-man standby observer force as contained inthe Report of the Secretary General submit-ted to the 7th Ordinary Session of theCentral Organ held from 20-21 November1997. On the concept, the Meeting recom-mended, among other things, that all PSOs inAfrica should be conducted in a manner con-sistent with both the UN and the OAUCharters and the Cairo Declaration; and thatthe concept should be firmly linked to theoperationalization of its Early WarningSystem (EWS), including a network linkingeach of the Early Warning cells of the vari-ous sub-regional organizations in Africa.

In regard to procedures for the conductof PSOs, the Meeting recommended, amongother things, that the OAU should use exist-ing UN references and adapt them to uniquecontinental and organizational factors, andmust also develop its own StandardOperating Procedures (SOPs), for use byMember States in training and preparationfor peace operations. In addition, it recom-mended that OAU Member States, individu-ally or as part of sub-regional organizations,should supply the Conflict ManagementDivision with the same data on strengths,tables of equipment, etc. In addition, it rec-ommended that the OAU should identifyabout 500 trained military and civilianobservers (100 from each sub-region) as anappropriate starting point for standby capaci-ty. The Meeting recommended that trainingshould be conducted in accordance with UNdoctrine and standards. The ACDS recom-mended that Centres of expertise for PSOstraining should be established. The OAU wasalso to conduct simulation exercises at theorganizational level and joint exercises at thesub-regional level under its auspices. TheMeeting also recommended a command,control and communications framework forOAU PSOs taking into consideration theOAU Charter and the Cairo Declaration. The


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proposed framework excluded peaceenforcement operations.

Within the General Secretariat, theMilitary Staff of the Field Operations Unitalso held extensive deliberations with theAfrican Defence Attachés and the UNDepartment of Peacekeeping Operations(DPKO). These efforts resulted in a docu-ment entitled, ‘Draft Plan for Implementingthe Recommendations of the SecondMeeting of Chiefs of Defence Staff ’, whichwas prepared pursuant to the Decision of the68th Ordinary Session of the Council ofMinisters held in Ouagadougou, BurkinaFaso from 4-7 June 1998. At the 68th OrdinarySession of Council held in Ouagadougoufrom 1-6 June 1998, the Secretary Generalsubmitted a report on the Enhancement ofthe Effectiveness of the Central Organ thatcaptured the essence of the discussions at theCentral Organ level.

These provisions were based on theassumption that the UN Security Councilwill fully assume its responsibilities for themaintenance of peace and security on theContinent. It should be stressed that after ashort period of reluctance from the SecurityCouncil to undertake peacekeeping opera-tions on the Continent, especially after theSomalia debacle in October 1993, the situa-tion has witnessed positive developments.The UN is now undertaking its largest peace-keeping operations in Africa (Sierra Leone).It is also undertaking peacekeeping opera-tions in Ethiopia-Eritrea, the DRC andWestern Sahara. However, even in the best ofcircumstances where the UN fully assumesits responsibilities on the Continent, the AUhas no option but to develop its civilian andmilitary missions of observation and moni-toring of limited scope and duration.Therefore there is the need to revisit theOAU’s earlier decision for the establishmentof the 500-man standby observer force. Therationale for this proposition was that thereare low intensity conflicts in which the UNwill not be involved as they can be dealt withby the Regional Organization, such as the

Comoros; and even in the case of conflictswhere the UN has decided to deploy a peace-keeping mission, the procurement and logis-tical requirements are such that there is along delay before the mission becomes oper-ational. Pending that actual deployment ofthe UN mission, there can be the need for aprovisional deployment, in order to ensurethat the peace process is not derailed. A clas-sic example of this situation was the deploy-ment of the OAU Neutral Investigators in theDRC in 1999-2000 prior to the deployment ofMONUC; in some conflict situations inwhich the OAU had played a lead politicalrole, and in which the UN has subsequentlyassumed the responsibility for the deploy-ment of a peacekeeping mission, there canstill be the need for the AU to maintain apeacekeeping role in the peace process by co-deploying an AU mission, such as in theEthiopia-Eritrea peace process. The AUshould take into account the new develop-ments arising from the recommendations ofthe Brahimi Panel, which was convened in2000 to ‘assess the shortcomings of the exist-ing system and make frank, specific and real-istic recommendations for change’. While,on the one hand the recommendations gen-erally offer opportunities for closer UN-AUco-operation, they also fundamentally affectthe ability of the AU and its Member Statesto fully and effectively participate in the UNStandby Arrangements System (UNSAS),and peacekeeping in general.

The Concept of African Standby Forceand the Future of Peacekeeping in AfricaThe Constitutive Act, particularly, its Article4(h) which provides for the right of theUnion to intervene in a Member State pur-suant to a decision of the Assembly in respectto grave circumstances, namely war crimes,genocide and crimes against humanity, clearsthe way for rapid deployment of PSOs inAfrica by removing the historic roadblock tocollective security on the continent— that is,the principle of non-interference in the inter-

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nal matters of a Member State. One of thefundamental principles of the AU today isthat interference is not non-indifference. ThePSC Protocol was built on this new paradigmof collective security in Africa, whichinspired the conceptualization of the ASF inits Article 13.

The raison d’être for the establishment ofthe African Standby Force (ASF) was toendow the PSC with a sound mechanism forrapid deployment of peace support missions.As its name suggests, the ASF is based on theconcept of a Standby or ‘ready to go’ arrange-ment. The Protocol provides that such Forceor arrangement be composed of standby mul-tidisciplinary contingents, with civilian andmilitary components based in Member States.The ASF is mandated to take action in the fol-lowing areas: observation and monitoringmissions; other types of peace support opera-tions; intervention in a Member State withrespect to grave circumstances or at therequest of a Member State in order to restorepeace and stability in consonance with Article4(h) of the Constitutive Act; preventivedeployment (to prevent crises before theyescalate); peacebuilding, including post-con-flict reconstruction, disarmament, and demo-bilization; humanitarian assistance and anyother functions mandated to it by the PSC.

The ASF is based on the concept ofregional brigades. Each of the five regions inAfrica is to establish a brigade, which can bedeployed at any time. The legitimate man-dating authority for the deployment of abrigade is the Peace and Security Council ofthe AU, in conformity with Chapter VIII ofthe UN Charter. This means the commandHeadquarters shall be at the Headquarters ofthe African Union.

Envisaged ASF Deployment Missions’ScenariosSix main scenarios have been envisaged forthe deployment of the ASF:

Scenario 1: AU and Regional Organization

Military advice to a political mission;Scenario 2: AU and Regional OrganizationMilitary Observer mission co-deployed withthe UN mission;Scenario 3: Stand-alone AU and RegionalOrganization observer mission;Scenario 4: AU and Regional Organizationpeacekeeping force for Chapter VI of the UNCharter and preventive deployment mis-sions;Scenario 5: AU peacekeeping for complexmultidimensional peacekeeping mission—low level spoilers (as in many of the ongoingconflicts);Scenario 6: AU intervention, e.g., in the caseof genocide, or where the international com-munity does not act promptly.

It should be noted that each scenario shall bedetermined by the situation on the ground.The decision on which brigade to deployshall also be guided by analysis of the crisisand the best scenario.

ConclusionWhile the peace and security agenda set outin the overall AU framework, including theNEPAD programme reflects the collectiveaspiration of Africans, the AU leadership iskeenly aware that these objectives cannot berealized in the short term. A number ofpotential challenges must be addressed in theshort to medium term.

First, it is envisaged that the ASF willrespond to diverse operational environmentsvarying from situations requiring preventivedeployment to enforcement operations.Therefore, an African Stand-by Force willrequire careful strategic planning and incre-mental build-up from national to sub-region-al levels.

Second, the development of a commondoctrine will be particularly challenging.Much will depend on the nature of the oper-ational environment and development of acommon concept of operations, at least atsub-regional levels. This is compounded by


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the fact that the operational environment inwhich the ASF will operate is not stagnant.As more civil wars are resolved, the nature ofthe threat emerging from the national levelwill change, possibly resulting in a return toa murkier operational environment dominat-ed by low-intensity conflicts generated byintra and inter-communal conflicts.

As part of the effort to overcome someof these challenges, it may be more reward-ing to create a division of labour, in variousaspects of PSOs, particularly among MemberStates with a tradition of contributing topeace missions. This might provide a firstlevel of preparation toward the creation of aStand-by Force. Experiences acquired fromparticipation in African peace operationshave shown (even if informally) that certaincountries have particular skills and a higherlevel of preparedness in specific aspects ofPSOs. For example, it is assumed that theNigerian and Guinean armed forces are moreeffective as a crack force for peace enforce-ment while the Ghanaian army is believed tobe more experienced in traditional peace-keeping.

Specialization and training should coveractivities along a spectrum – from peace-keeping to reconstruction, including preven-tive deployment, peacekeeping, enforcementoperations, disarming of armed groups,training of military and police personnel andassistance toward overall institutional reformand provision of logistical support throughthese phases. Training should also be target-ed at Member States that not only have thecapacity to contribute troops to peace opera-tions, but that have a track record of con-tributing to peace operations and can makethem available when the need arises.

Not least, and perhaps a central pillar ofthe whole African philosophy of preservingpeace and security in the continent, is theneed to enhance per capita freedom, democ-ratic space, enjoyment of human rights andprotection, and access to the opportunitiesfor self-development through out the conti-nent. These aspects should be promoted

around each individual, with the progressbeing measured at each individual level. Theconflicts ravaging the continent and its peo-ple and their economies are directly linked todeep-seated deprivations that the popula-tions live on a daily basis. Now, with no spacelarge enough for the affected populations toaddress those deprivations in a peaceful man-ner in most cases, protracted violent conflictsbecome inevitable. The net result is theresort to more expensive methods of manag-ing and resolving those conflicts, wherebyenormous quantities of human, financial,logistical and technical resources, otherwiseto be devoted to socio-economic develop-ment, are absorbed into operations to restorepeace and security.

ReferencesThe Charter of the OAU provided for the Commissionof Mediation, Conciliation and Arbitration (CMCA).The ‘Declaration on the Political and Socio-EconomicSituation in Africa and the Fundamental ChangesTaking Place in the World’. The 26th Ordinary Sessionof the Assembly of Heads of States and Government,Addis Ababa, July 1990.The Cairo Declaration on a Mechanism for ConflictPrevention, Management and Resolution: 29th OrdinarySession of the Assembly of Heads of State andGovernment, Cairo, Egypt, June 1993.The Protocol Relating to the Establishment of thePeace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union,December 2003.The African Union Non-Aggression and CommonDefence Pact, 4th Ordinary Session of the Assembly ofthe Union, Abuja, Nigeria, January 2005.The Common African Defence and Security Policy(CADSP), adopted by the 2nd Extraordinary Session ofthe Union, held in Sirte Libya, February 2004.The first meeting of the ACDS, Addis Ababa, 3-6 June1996, 2nd ACDS Harare, 20-22 October 1997, 3rd meetingof the ACDS, and including the participation of govern-mental experts from AU member, Addis Ababa, 15-16May 2003.‘Draft Plan of Implementing the Recommendations ofthe Second Meeting of Chiefs of Defence Staff ’,Ouagadougou 1-7 June 1998.The AU Constitutive Act Article 4 (h) Maputo 2002.The UN Charter.

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Peacebuilding in the Context of the Rwanda Defence Forces

Frank Rusagara

IntroductionThe peacebuilding process in the context ofthe Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) must beappreciated in light of developments in post-genocide Rwanda. However, the RDF inte-gration that preceded the peacebuilding wasan already established practice by theRwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) during itsstruggle for Rwandan inclusivity and as a warstrategy to weaken the enemy morale.

After the 1994 genocide, when theGovernment of National Unity took over,Rwanda was in utter anarchy. About one mil-lion Rwandans were killed and the rest of thepopulation was displaced. Over two millionpeople had sought refuge in neighbouringcountries, and many more were internallydisplaced. There were countless numbers oforphans, widows, thousands of handicappedpeople and generally a very vulnerable andtraumatized population.

Law and order had completely brokendown. Large scale atrocities were still goingon in parts of the country. All national lawenforcement agencies and judicial institu-tions had ceased to exist and the system ofadministration of justice had come to a com-plete standstill. Social and economic infra-structure was in a state of collapse. All eco-nomic indicators showed a desperate situa-tion, with the inflation standing at close to1000 per cent, and most economic activityhaving ground to a complete halt. Neitherschools nor hospitals were functioning. Thecivil service had been decimated or its mem-bership had fled into exile.

A cloud of insecurity loomed overRwanda, as the former soldiers and the mili-tia re-organized themselves, intent on contin-uing their genocidal campaign with the sup-port of the then Zaire, now DemocraticRepublic of Congo (DRC).

Military Integration as a ConflictManagement StrategyOne method of reaching lasting peace is toensure participation by all competing fac-tions in a new government, hence the estab-lishment of the Government of NationalUnity. Another aspect of ensuring lastingpeace is the full integration of the ex-militaryinto the new national army. In Rwanda, themilitary led the way and provided the exam-ple of the effectiveness of peacebuilding thatcould be replicated elsewhere.

Basically, there are three models ofpeacebuilding. The first is the consent-basedmodel, which is based on comprehensivenegotiated settlement of conflict betweentwo parties conducted under third party

Brigadier General Frank Rusagara iscurrently the Commandant of the RwandaMilitary Academy, Nyakinama. GeneralRusagara was involved in the struggle for theliberation of Rwanda and, after 1994, heldseveral portfolios in policy formulation andimplementation as a senior officer of theGovernment of Rwanda in the Ministry ofDefense. He has been the G1 (General StaffOfficer) in Charge of Personnel andAdministration, Director of Finance,Secretary General of Ministry of Defense,and President of the Rwanda MilitaryCourt. Rusagara holds a Master of ArtsDegree in International Studies from theInstitute of Diplomacy and InternationalStudies (IDIS), University of Nairobi.


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supervision. The government forces mayabsorb guerrilla forces or may merge the twowarring factions to form a single nationalforce. It is important to note that the peace-building is usually conducted after cessationof hostilities though the security situationmay remain fragile.

The second model is complete demobi-lization where the government decides todownsize its military through the normalchannels of peacebuilding but does notinclude former enemy combatants in itsforces. Examples include Ethiopia’s completedemobilization of the former governmentforces in 1991 under the DERG after thedefeat of Mengistu Haille Mariam.

The third is the coercive model ofpeacebuilding, which involves forced disar-mament of insurgents and is usually carriedout by external intervention under a UnitedNations mandate. An example of this is thefailed forced disarmament of Somali warringfactions in 1993.

The Rwandan Model of PeacebuildingRwanda’s model of peacebuilding is based onconsent, where ex-combatants were fullyintegrated in the spirit of the 1993 ArushaPeace Agreement between the RPF and theGovernment of Rwanda. Protocol III of theAgreement provided for integration of theRPA into the Forces Armées Rwandaises(FAR).

Unlike in the classic Consent Model,RDF integration was a continuous process,that is, before, during and after cessation ofhostilities. The Rwanda model was effectedthrough the traditional concept of Ingando(solidarity camps). The Ingando inKinyarwanda means a military encampmentor assembly area (RV) where the troops tradi-tionally received their final briefing whilereadying for a military expedition abroad.The briefing included, among others, re-organization of the troops and allotment ofmissions and tasks.

In such gatherings, the individuals were

reminded to subject their interests to thenational ideal and give Rwanda their all. Thismeant that whatever differences one mayhave, the national interests always prevailedsince the nation of Rwanda is bigger than anyone individual and ensured prosperity for all.That was the idea behind the institution ofIngando.

The objectives of the Ingando is to helpthe participants, who today also includemembers of the greater society – i.e., stu-dents, grassroots leaders, opinion leaders,teachers, released prisoners, etc – overcomemutual fear and suspicion, and temptation torevenge; talk about the history of the con-flict; heal the wounds of hatred; acceptresponsibility for any harm done to eachother; demystify negative perceptions ofeach other; collective ownership of thetragedy that resulted from the conflict; and,agree on what the future portends for them.

Ingando employs the concept of prob-lem solving workshops (PSW), as a participa-tory conflict management strategy. PSWs aredesigned as the best method through which aprotracted conflict such as Rwanda’s mayfind sustainable resolution. PSWs encouragethe parties to analyze their conflict, its caus-es, the parties’ attitudes towards each other,and their post-conflict relationship.

Steps Taken in IngandoThe first step is to help the ex-combatantsand the RDF to unburden themselves emo-tionally. This can be achieved by allowingthem to talk about the conflict and its histo-ry. What the parties feel about the conflictand about each other is an important barrierthat must first be removed. When the partiesare not able to first talk about the conflict andtheir feelings about it, they will never be ableto talk about mutual solutions and thefuture. The command’s challenge is toensure an atmosphere in which the partiesget to know each other and respect eachother’s dignity as persons at all times.

The second step is joint military rede-

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ployment of the former adversaries. Thisdeployment provides further opportunity forthe participants to continue learning aboutthe conflict and further facilitate bondingbetween the troops through demystificationof any differences and misperceptions theymay harbour about each other. An exampleof joint deployment may be provided by thewar in DRC in 1998-2002, after about 39,200were integrated in the RPA. After their tourof duty in the DRC, or while on leave, thebreak enabled the ex-combatants to return totheir communities. While on leave, theyinfluenced their communities with theirexample of being fully integrated.

In the third step, the RDF continuouslyfacilitates exploratory dialogue through theoffice of the Civil-Military Co-ordinationOffice ( J5) at the RDF Headquarters. Here,the J5 is more analytical and the participantsare encouraged to analyze their conflict as amutual problem. This process includes ana-lyzing why the conflict began; why eachreacted to it the way they did; and, coming toterms with their mutual losses and responsi-bilities. The J5 ensures that no blame isapportioned. This stage can be emotional butis crucial and must be passed through,because in the end this ensures a win/winsolution.

The fourth stage is when the integratedex-combatants meet and re-evaluate thewhole process. In their testimonies, they mayadmit to having been convinced that there isa way out mutually, to having developeddoubts about the process, or also to havingreceived contradictory reactions from theirconstituencies about the process.

During the November 2006International Peacebuilding Course at theRMA Nyakinama where he was a guestspeaker, Maj. Gen. Paul Rwarakabije (Ex-Commander FDLR), who is now integratedin the RDF and is a commissioner in theRDRC, provided an example of successfulintegration. His testimony was fostered onthe conviction that there was a way out ofthe conflict.

Participation in Ingando recognizes thedignity and humanity of the participants asequal Rwandans. Irrespective of their roles inthe Rwandan conflict, the Ingando forms thestarting point to conflict resolution. Ingandoswere initially meant for integrating ex-com-batants into the national army and societyduring and after the Rwandan liberation war.This entailed mixing the ex-FAR and the RPAofficers and men and gave them an opportu-nity to talk about the Rwandan conflict.

The integration of the ex-FAR and mili-tias continues to date. Between 1995 and1997, a total of 10,500 ex-FAR officers andmen were integrated in the RPA. Andbetween 1998 and 2002 a total of 39,200 ex-FAR and militia were integrated in the RPA.

Immediate security dividends fromRwandan peacebuilding in 1997 was thetransformation of the counter-insurgencystrategy into a political and social effort thatwould in a short time break the ex-FAR andmilitia insurgents operating in and out of thecountry. The soldiers were integrated andbecame stakeholders as responsible citizensand breadwinners for their families.

The peacebuilding pay-offs include,among others, promoting stability and initialreconciliation between conflicting parties. Inthe case of the RDF, the ex-combatantsmoved from being tools of violence intobeing economic assets, i.e., war resourceswere channeled into socio-economic devel-opment. The integrated ex-combatants allowfor human capital development in their skillsand talents, thus providing suitable condi-tions for societal reconciliation by becomingvaluable stakeholders. Peacebuilding alsobecomes a facilitator for military profession-alism, which enhances effectiveness andhealthy civil-military relations and societalreconciliation.

ConclusionFor peacebuilding to succeed there must bepolitical will from the leadership. The peace-building process must also work on the psy-


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chology of the actors – the very essence ofthe Ingando as PSWs – and must be locallydriven and owned, and not imposed. Theinternational partners can only complementlocal initiatives.

In justice and reconciliation, the societymust be prepared to accept the ex-combat-ants also as ‘victims’ of the conflict and notspoilers, but partners in post-conflict recon-struction. Therefore, there are no losers, andit is a win-win outcome.

In Rwanda, the RDF peacebuilding ini-tiative provided the example of an integratedinstitution and served as a role model to therest of the society (that is, if former antago-nists can integrate, why can’t civil society?).To quote a colleague, ‘Demobilization andre-integration are about people’. Since the

military is about ensuring security and peace,we are indeed core development partners.We, in the military, must understand this car-dinal role in our societies.

The late Edward Azar, an American-Palestinian scholar in conflict management,once observed, ‘Peace is development andtrying to resolve conflict without addressingin general the question of underdevelop-ment, in a general sense, is futile.’Development itself is therefore a conflictmanagement strategy.

Further, as Archbishop Desmond Tutusaid: ‘You can only be human in a humansociety. If you live with hate and revenge, youdehumanize not only yourself but your com-munity. You must forgive to make your com-munity whole.’

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Why AFRICOM?

Theresa Whelan

‘This new command will strengthen our security co-operation with Africa and help tocreate new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa. AfricaCommand will enhance our efforts to helpbring peace and security to the people ofAfrica and promote our common goals ofdevelopment, health, education, democracy,and economic growth in Africa.’

President George Bush, 7 February 2007

[Creating AFRICOM] ‘will enable us to havea more effective and integrated approach thanthe current arrangement of dividing Africabetween [different regional commands]’

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in testi-mony before the Senate Armed ServicesCommittee on 6 February 2007

IntroductionFormer Deputy Assistant Secretary ofDefense (DASD) for African Affairs, JamesWoods, used to begin his annual presentationto U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs)

with a question: ‘Why is Africa important tothe United States?’ The answers would rangefrom the practical (natural resources) to ide-alistic (people yearning to be free of dicta-tors) to the altruistic (prevent disease andsave lives from humanitarian disasters).According to Woods, while those were soundreasons, he wanted to draw the FAOs’ think-ing to the strategic level, so the answer was:‘Because it’s there.’

That’s a simplification, but Africa’splace in the world cannot be overlooked. Asthe second-largest continent in the world –11,700,000 square miles (22 per cent of theworld’s total land area) with an estimatedpopulation of 690 million people (roughly 14per cent of the world’s population) – it’s geo-graphically and demographically important.It’s economically important as well: by 2005,economic growth was averaging 5 per centand there were tens of thousands of U.S. jobstied to the African market; Africa possessesan estimated 8 per cent of the world’s petro-leum; and it is a major source of critical min-erals, precious metals, and food commodi-ties. It is also politically important: of the tenelected members of the UN NationalSecurity Council, three are elected from theGeneral Assembly by African nations.

Africa’s strategic importance has beenreflected historically in ways that have some-times been less than a blessing for the conti-nent. It sits astride millennia-old trade routes;the possession of its resources and even itspeople have been fought over by manynations both ancient and modern, a ‘fight’which continues to this day, albeit in lessstark terms as that which occurred duringthe so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ of the 19thcentury. The legacies of that colonialism con-

Theresa Whelan is Deputy AssistantSecretary of Defense for Africa, UnitedStates Department of Defense. Her office isresponsible for Department of Defense poli-cy for all of Sub-Saharan Africa. MsWhelan brings to her position fifteen yearsof experience in the defence intelligence anddefence policy communities, includingtwelve years focusing on African issues.Prior to assuming the DASD position, Ms.Whelan served as Director of the Office ofAfrican Affairs for two years.


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tinue to haunt the international community.There is perhaps a magazine or newspaperarticle written somewhere in the world everyweek that draws a parallel between whathappened during the ‘scramble’ and thealleged manoeuvring between modern pow-ers for access to African natural resources, bethey oil, minerals, timber, or fish.

Africa remains a rich, vibrant anddiverse place with an ever-increasing strate-gic significance in today’s global securityenvironment. President Bush’s recent deci-sion to establish AFRICOM is a direct recog-nition of Africa’s importance as well as a sin-cere hope that America and the many nationsthat make up Africa will continue tostrengthen and expand partnerships to thebenefit of all.

A command focused solely on Africawill have no impact on the sovereignty ofAfrican nations. In fact, AFRICOM’s successwill be contingent upon its ability to fosterimportant friendships and effective partner-ships with the many nations in Africa.

U.S. military engagement on theAfrican continent is not new. For many yearsAfrican nations have worked with U.S. gov-ernment agencies coordinating humanitarianassistance, medical care, and disaster relief.We also have undertaken joint military exer-cises and training programs to assist partnernations in the professional development oftheir military forces.

Africa’s growing importance is theimperative behind the creation of a com-mand focused solely on Africa. It is a com-mand that will be like no other in U.S. histo-ry. The intent is to create a command that isas unique and diverse as Africa itself. Doingso will require better integration of U.S. gov-ernment capacity building efforts across thespectrum of U.S. agencies. One of theDeputy ‘Commanders’ will be a senior-levelState Department official. Other senior-levelcivilian representatives from numerous U.S.agencies will collaborate to help Africannations tackle the security challenges relatedto humanitarian assistance, disaster relief,

disease, poverty, deforestation, building part-nership capacities, civic action, etc.

The Unified Command PlanTo understand the concept behind a unifiedcommand, one must understand the UnifiedCommand Plan (UCP), and how theDepartment of Defense does businessaround the world. It is defined as:

The document, approved by the President, whichsets forth basic guidance to all unified combatantcommanders; establishes their missions, responsi-bilities, and force structure; delineates the gener-al geographical area of responsibility for geo-graphic combatant commanders; and specifiesfunctional responsibilities for functional combat-ant commanders.

The Unified Command Plan (UCP) is regu-larly reviewed and updated and this includes,when appropriate, modifications to areas ofresponsibility or command alignments orassignments. As of January 2007, there werenine Unified Commands, stated in law andthe latest UCP. Five were regional responsi-bilities, and four have functional responsibili-ties. With the advent of AFRICOM, therewill be six geographic COCOMs.

The Development of the UCPFollowing the Second World War, the UnitedStates adopted a new system of defence orga-nization under a single Secretary of Defense.The system established the U.S. Air Force,the Joint Chiefs of Staff and new commandscomposed of more than one military service.These new ‘unified commands’ were intend-ed to ensure that forces from the Army, Navy,Air Force and Marine Corps would all worktogether.

The geographic areas come under‘Unified Commanders,’ who exercise com-mand authority over assigned forces. TheCommanders are directly responsible to theNational Command Authority (the Presidentand the Secretary of Defense) for the perfor-mance of these missions and the prepared-

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ness of the command.The present division of Africa among

three commands (European Command -EUCOM, Central Command - CENTCOMand Pacific Command - PACOM) was drivenby historical, cultural, and geopolitical fac-tors. Responsibility for North Africa(Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya) wasassigned in 1952 to the European Command,given those nations’ European cultural link-ages and their perceived relevance to theincreasingly important Middle East. As theCold War grew in complexity and the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union maneuvered forinfluence among the newly independentAfrican states, the UCP was revised in 1960 toinclude Sub-Saharan Africa under the AOR ofAtlantic Command (LANTCOM). Shortlyafter, in 1962, a new command, StrikeCommand (STRICOM), was formed andassigned oversight of Sub-Saharan Africa, theMiddle East, and South Asia which continueduntil 1971 when STRICOM becameReadiness Command (REDCOM) with arevised AOR that did not include Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, between 1971 and1983, Sub-Saharan Africa was no specificCommand’s responsibility. It was not until1983 that Africa was divided among the threecommands: EUCOM, CENTCOM andPACOM.

In 1983, the UCP was again revised inorder to recognize Africa’s growing strategicimportance to the both the United States andEurope in the context of the Cold War.European Command was given responsibili-ty for all continental African nations saveEgypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya andEthiopia. These nations were seen as havingcloser ties to the Middle East and weredeemed Central Command’s responsibility.This left island nations off the eastern coast(Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and TheComoros) within the Pacific Command;those off the western coast were assigned toAtlantic Command. This division, as onemight imagine, led to difficulties co-ordinat-ing U.S. activities and thus gave rise to the

first thoughts of creating a single, unifiedAfrica Command.

With the end of the Cold War thestrategic paradigm the U.S. had used for near-ly fifty years to understand and respond tothe global security environment graduallybecame less and less relevant. No place wasthis more apparent than in Africa whereAfrica’s strategic importance to the U.S. hadbeen defined almost entirely in relation toU.S. Cold War security objectives. In theabsence of the Cold War, U.S. national secu-rity policy makers in the 1990s struggled tounderstand exactly where and how Africa fitin the security context. The initial answerwas that Africa’s security challenges mani-fested no direct threat to the U.S., militarilyor economically (given the assumption thatthe collapse of the bipolar division of theglobe would now allow free market-basedaccess to world commodities) and thereforewere relevant to the U.S. primarily in ahumanitarian context. However, the eventsof 9/11, combined with 20/20 hindsightmade clear that Africa was integral, notperipheral, to global security in general, andU.S. security in particular, in the post 9/11world.

This was a world in which catastrophicthreats to a nation-state’s security were notsimply confined to rival nation-states withthe capacity to build large sophisticated con-ventional militaries with the means to deliverWMD. Rather, such threats could come fromanywhere in the world, including fromamong the poorest, least developed, and leastsecure countries on the planet. If a smallgroup of terrorists operating out of an unde-veloped country in Central Asia could inflictmore damage on the U.S. in a few hours thanthe entire Japanese Imperial Navy did at PearlHarbor, the U.S. could no longer afford to pri-oritize its security concerns using traditionalconventional power-based criteria. To fur-ther complicate matters, it became clear thatnon-state actors could now be just as danger-ous, if not more so, as an aggressive state-based power. In this post 9/11 world, African


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security issues could no longer be viewed asonly a humanitarian concern. Cold, hard‘real-politik’ dictated a U.S. national interestin promoting a secure and stable African con-tinent.

Security and stability in Africa however,are not merely a function of developing com-petent military and police forces.Experiences in Africa and the Balkans in the1990s and in Afghanistan and Iraq over thelast 5 years have made clear that those toolsonly provide security and stability on a tem-porary basis. Sustainable security and stabil-ity are dependent on good governance, therule of law and economic opportunity. Thoseelements of security, in turn, have a symbiot-ic relationship with suchthings as health and edu-cation. If a secure andstable Africa is in U.S.national interest, then theU.S. would need to take aholistic approach toaddressing the challenge.Additionally, in the new,more volatile, fluid andunpredictable globalsecurity environment,the old adage about anounce of preventionbeing worth a pound ofcure does not simply

make sense from a resource perspec-tive but also from a risk mitigationand management perspective.

AFRICOMIt is in this context that formerSecretary of Defense Rumsfeld askedhis military and civilian staff to re-examine the merits and feasibility ofestablishing a stand-alone UnifiedCommand focused exclusively onAfrica. Africa’s direct relevance to U.S.national security demanded thatDoD re-think the Cold War basedstructure that artificially divided the

continent among three different commandsthat were frequently distracted by responsi-bilities in their primary geographic regions.Keeping Africa divided among three com-mands would mean that, at best, Africawould remain a secondary and sometimeseven tertiary concern for those commands.As such neither the commands, nor the mili-tary services that supported them with per-sonnel, would deem it a priority to develop alarge body of personnel with knowledge andexpertise on Africa. It also meant that thebureaucratic barriers created by the ‘seams’between the commands would continue topresent challenges to coherent and efficientaction in the areas where the ‘seams’ met.

The Geographic Unified Commands as ofJanuary 2007

USEUCOM

USCENTCOM

USSOUTHCOM

USNORTHCOM

USPACOM

USEUCOM

USCENTCOM

USSOUTHCOM

USNORTHCOM

USPACOM

USAFRICOM

The Transformation of the 3 Unified GeographicCommands to AFRICOM

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The fact that the ‘seams’ ran through keyareas of conflict and instability on the conti-nent made them even more problematic.Additionally, the establishment of the AfricanUnion (AU) and its ambitious program for acontinent-wide multi-lateral security archi-tecture created further complications forDoD’s command seams, as EUCOM founditself working more and more inCENTCOM’s back-yard in Addis Ababa withthe AU. Further, both CENTCOM andEUCOM struggled to deal with emergingAfrican stand-by brigade structures that cutacross their respective areas of responsibility.

Beyond simply mandating a re-look atthe way lines were drawn on the DoD map,the Secretary also directed that the effortinvolve members of the U.S. governmentinter-agency, in particular, the State Dept andUSAID, and that the team consider innova-tive organizational constructs as well as mis-sion sets for a command dedicated solely toAfrica. The former Secretary believed that ifDoD was going to establish a command forAfrica it needed to be a twenty-first centurycommand, not a twentieth century com-mand and it needed to be tailored to addressthe unique security challenges of the conti-nent.

Secretary of Defense Gates has sinceembraced the effort, stressing that the com-mand should ‘oversee security co-operation,building partnership capability, defense sup-port to non-military missions’ and expressingthe importance of moving away from an‘outdated arrangement left over from theCold War.’

The result of the inter-agency studyteam’s work was a proposal for a UnifiedCommand for Africa that would concentrateits efforts on prevention rather than reaction.Its primary objective would be to contributeDoD’s expertise in the security arena in sup-port of U.S. diplomacy and developmentefforts to ‘prevent problems from becomingcrises, and crises from becoming catastro-phes.’ In that context the command wouldhelp build the capacity of African countries

to reduce conflict, improve security, deny ter-rorists sanctuary and support crisis response.In order to do this, the traditional military J-code organization structure designed forcombat operations would need to be funda-mentally changed to incorporate an integrat-ed civilian/military architecture that wouldemphasize and facilitate non-kinetic missionssuch as military capacity building training,security sector reform and military profes-sionalization, as well as support to thehumanitarian assistance, disaster relief andmedical assistance efforts of other USG agen-cies. The study team also recommended thatthe command not be developed in a U.S. vac-uum but rather that the specifics of its mis-sion, design and even possible location beinformed by consultation with internationalpartners. Particular importance was placedon consultation with African partners toinsure that it would be appropriate to theAfrican context. On 7 February 2007,President Bush publicly announced his direc-tion to DoD to develop and stand up aUnified Command for Africa by the end ofSeptember 2008 based on the principles out-lined by the inter-agency study team.

AFRICOM Myth vs RealityThe AFRICOM development process hasbegun, as has the international consultationprocess. The next 18 months will see fleshput on the bones of the AFRICOM skeleton.However, there is already much uninformedand sometimes sensationalist speculationabout the command which has led to numer-ous misconceptions, especially regarding itsstructure and purpose. In many ways, thecreation of this command is an historicopportunity to ‘catch-up’ with Africa’s quick-ly evolving continental and regional securityarchitectures and their increasing capacitiesto synergize African efforts in both the gov-ernmental and non-governmental spheres toaddress security challenges all over the conti-nent. It is an opportunity to strengthen andexpand U.S. and African relationships in such


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a way that our combined efforts can helpgenerate a lasting peace and stability on thecontinent.

Location, Location, Location There has been much speculation about thelocation of the command and the type offacilities that the command would require.Some believe the creation of AFRICOMmeans DoD will be establishing militarybases for U.S. army, navy or air forces on thecontinent. That is most definitely not thecase. In the last seven years DoD has engagedin a major global force restructuring projectinvolving the withdrawal of U.S. troops frombases overseas. The creation of AFRICOMwill not alter that process. Africa Commandwill be a staff headquarters not a troop head-quarters. Consequently, the intent is to estab-lish staff personnel presence in locations onthe continent that best facilitate partnershipwith African nations and institutions basedon consultations with those nations and insti-tutions. AFRICOM will not be accomplish-ing its mission if the physical presence of thecommand itself becomes a burden to hostnations. For that reason, as well as for forceprotection considerations, the commandfootprint in any given location will likely berelatively small and discrete. As is the casecurrently, U.S. military personnel involved intraining or exercises in Africa would deployto the continent from their home bases in theU.S. for the duration of their training mis-sion. Such mission lengths are usually mea-sured in terms of weeks.

Who’s in Charge?Another concern/criticism that has beenraised about the establishment of AFRICOMis that it will attempt to usurp African leader-ship on security issues on the continent or itwill militarize U.S. foreign policy in Africa.Neither assertion is true. With regard to lead-ership on the continent, DoD recognizes andapplauds the leadership role that individual

African nations and multi-lateral Africanorganizations are taking in promoting peace,security, and stability on the continent. Thisis exactly the type of initiative and leadershipneeded to address the diffuse and unpre-dictable global security challenges the worldcurrently faces. The purpose of AFRICOM isto encourage and support such African lead-ership, not discourage and suppress it. U.S.security is enhanced by African nations beingable to address and resolve emerging securi-ty issues in their countries, regions and acrossthe continent on their own. It would becounter-productive for AFRICOM to takeactions that undermine that goal. AFRICOMis intended to complement, not competewith the African Union. Its mission will be tofacilitate the African Union’s efforts to devel-op the capabilities and mechanisms acrossthe continent needed to promote and sustainpeace and stability.

The 600 Pound Gorilla?The next charge that is frequently levied isthat the creation of AFRICOM representsthe militarization of U.S. foreign policy. Thisis hardly the case, particularly if one exam-ines the facts. Africa Command is merely thelogical next step in a course set almost adecade ago as the US began to increase itsemphasis on supporting trade, developmentand health initiatives on the continent. UShealth and development programs for Africacurrently total nearly 9 Billion and includesuch major initiatives as the MillenniumChallenge Account, the African Growth andOpportunity Act, PEPFAR (the largest pro-gram in the world sponsored by a foreigngovernment to combat HIV/AIDs) andPresident Bush’s recent initiative combatmalaria. In contrast, US security assistanceprograms on the continent amount to nomore than $250M, or 1/36th of the non-secu-rity related programs in any given year.Despite newspaper headlines and unin-formed rhetoric to the contrary, the facts andfigures show that trade, health, development

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and governance issues and programs, notmilitary programs, dominate the landscapeof US policy toward Africa today and willcontinue to do so in the future. The creationof a DoD command for Africa will in no waychange this US policy focus.

AFRICOM, just like EUCOM, CENT-COM and PACOM today, will be a key sup-porting organization in the implementationof US foreign policy as articulated by theSecretary of State. The creation of a singleU.S. DoD point of contact for Africa will sim-ply allow for the better synchronization andcoordination of DoD efforts to help buildsecurity capacity in Africa with State andUSAID efforts to improve governance anddevelopment capacity and opportunities.The inclusion of State Department, USAID,and other U.S. government inter-agency per-sonnel in the command structure improvesthe Command’s capabilities by injectingknowledge and expertise into the organiza-tion but not authority. Inter-agency person-nel detailed to AFRICOM will be there tohelp AFRICOM conduct its mission on thecontinent. They will not be conducting themissions of their home agencies. The tradi-tional lines of authority in these agencies andbetween these agencies and US Embassies inAfrica will not change nor will the presenceof inter-agency personnel in AFRICOMdilute or undermine the independence oftheir home agencies.

‘It’s About the Oil…..’Many pundits, both inside and outside Africa,have asserted that AFRICOM’s primary pur-pose will be to secure U.S. access to Africanoil. Much has been made of the fact that theU.S. currently receives roughly 15 per cent ofits oil from Africa and that percentage is pro-jected to grow over the next five to ten years.That said, the U.S. is far from the only bene-ficiary of African oil. Given the nature of theglobal oil market, African oil production isimportant to all oil consuming nations.While Africa’s growing importance as a glob-

al oil producer is certainly a factor in the con-tinent’s strategic significance, it was not, ashas been explained previously in this paper,the rationale for the creation of AFRICOM.It would not, therefore, be AFRICOM’s mis-sion to provide security for African oil or, forthat matter, any other African naturalresource. Rather, AFRICOM will work tohelp African nations develop their owncapacities to protect their natural resourcesto insure they are not illegally exploited anddiverted, thereby undermining economicdevelopment potential while possibly fuelingconflicts or even terrorism. If African nationshave adequate capability to protect their ownnatural resources, then the global market sys-tem will be sufficient to ensure internationalaccess to them as needed.

It’s also important to note that oil is notthe only natural resource worth protecting inAfrica. The international press focus onAfrican oil obscures the importance of othernatural resources, particularly the moremundane, such as timber and fish, to Africaneconomic potential. For example, coastalAfrican nations lose billions of dollars ofresources annually to international illegalfishing. The extent to which AFRICOMcould help such nations develop maritimesecurity capacities to protect their territorialwaters could contribute to those countries’economic health, a key component of longterm stability. DoD’s involvement in helpingAfrican nations protect these more environ-mentally friendly natural resources is notunprecedented. In the 1980s and early 1990s,there were several U.S. security assistanceprograms that focused on helping Africanmilitaries build the capacity to protect theirfisheries resources and even their gameparks.

‘Show me the money!’So if AFRICOM is not going to base U.S.troops, sailors or airmen in Africa, or secureand control African oil fields, then the ques-tion arises as to what exactly this command


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will look like and what specifically will thecommand and its staff do? To begin with,AFRICOM, unlike existing U.S. UnifiedCommands, will be structured and staffed soas to emphasize and facilitate security capac-ity building and civil/military activities, thebulk of the command’s mission. An initialworking draft of the command’s missionstatement reads as follows:

US Africa Command promotes US NationalSecurity objectives by working with Africanstates and regional organizations to helpstrengthen stability and security in the area ofresponsibility. US Africa command leads the in-theater DoD response to support other USGagencies in implementing USG security policiesand strategies. In concert with other US govern-ment and international partners, US AfricaCommand conducts theater security co-opera-tion activities to assist in building security capaci-ty and improve accountable governance. Asdirected, US Africa Command conducts militaryoperations to deter aggression and respond tocrises.

This working draft mission statement placesemphasis on what the February 2006 DoDQuadrennial Defense Review (QDR), refersto as ‘anticipatory measures.’ In otherwords, AFRICOM’s primary objective willbe, as the QDR put it, to ‘…prevent problemsfrom becoming crises and crises from becom-ing catastrophes.’ Given AFRICOM’s missionemphasis on prevention versus reaction, oneof the most significant organizational struc-ture innovations currently being developedfor the command is the creation of a majorcommand element called the Directorate forCivil/Military Activities. This element willbe separate from, and equivalent to, the tra-ditional operational element of the com-mand. Further, for the first time, DoD willhave a non-DoD civilian as a senior official inAFRICOM’s chain of command. A StateDepartment Senior Foreign Service officerwill lead the Civil/Military ActivitiesDirectorate and serve as one of at least twodeputies reporting directly to the AFRICOMCommander. This Civil/Military Activitiesdirectorate will be staffed by both military

and civilian personnel, with a large percent-age of the civilians coming from other U.S.government departments and agencies suchas State Department, USAID, Treasury,Justice, Energy and Homeland Security toname a few. European and Africa partnernations may also be invited to second person-nel to this component of the command atsome point in the future.

The new Directorate will oversee all ofAFRICOM’s capacity building assistance atthe bilateral and multi-lateral level. Areas offocus will include security capabilities (bothland and maritime), medical skills, com-mand, control and communications, disasterrelief, and security sector reform/restructur-ing (such as being done in Sierra Leone,Liberia and DRC). In particular, theCivil/Military Activities Directorate will bethe primary interface with the African Unionon developing ways in which AFRICOM canprovide effective training, advisory and tech-nical support to the development of theAfrican Standby Force. State Departmentleadership of, and presence in, thisDirectorate will also enhance AFRICOM’sability to support such State Department-funded endeavors as the AfricanContingency Operations Training andAssistance (ACOTA) program, a mainstay ofthe U.S. effort to build peace support opera-tions capacity in Africa. Additionally, the inte-grated approach AFRICOM will facilitatewill allow DoD’s various military exerciseprograms in Africa such as the AFRICANENDEAVOR communications exercise, JointCombined Exchange Training exercises, andMEDFLAG exercises to be more effectivelysynchronized with African Standby Forcedevelopment goals.

The Civil/Military ActivitiesDirectorate will also co-ordinate AFRICOM’smodest humanitarian assistance and civicaction projects as well as HIV/AIDs preven-tion programs with other U.S. governmentagencies that have the lead in the develop-ment and health sectors. This type of coordi-nation/co-operation has already proven

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effective in the Horn of Africa, whereCombined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africahas worked closely with USAID and regionalAfrican governments responding to floodemergencies and conducting civic action pro-jects such as digging wells and buildingschools in places where development agen-cies have identified critical needs. AFRICOMwill build on this success.

DoD, working through EUCOM,CENTCOM, and PACOM currently hasexisting programs in many areas. AFRICOMwill continue to execute those programs and,over time, seek to use its leverage as a stand-alone Unified Command to gain additionalresources to strengthen and expand them, aswell as develop new ones to address emerg-ing African security needs.

Importantly, an AFRICOM ‘presence’in Africa (as opposed to a military base) is themeans by which the Department of Defensecan more easily consult with our friends onthe continent, collaborate on important ini-tiatives that promote security and stability,and learn from our African hosts about howAfricans view their own challenges, opportu-nities, and remedies for helping the continentachieve its full potential.

ConclusionAs illustrated above, the United Statespresently enjoys thriving security, economic,and political relationships with most of the

countries on the African continent. We wantto continue to build on that. In that sense, thecreation of Africa Command finally bringsDoD in line with the rest of the US govern-ment and US policy toward Africa. DoD’sdevelopment of an Africa Command tostreamline its Cold War legacy organization-al structures with regard to Africa, is a logicalstep in what has been and will continue to be,a long journey for both the US and Africa – ajourney toward a more stable, peaceful andprosperous world. The security challenges ofthe Twenty-first century demand that Africabe an integral, not peripheral, element ofthat world in a security context, as well as inpolitical and economic contexts.Consequently African countries should bepartners in the journey, as this journey willonly be successful if we share the road andhelp each other along the way. This idea ofpartnership has characterized the USapproach to security challenges in other partsof the world, which is one reason why the UShas had geographically focused commandsfor those other regions for some time. In thatcontext some might argue an AfricaCommand is long overdue. Whether it’soverdue or right on time, the AfricaCommand is a concrete manifestation of theUS commitment to establish a serious longterm partnership with African nations toaddress the issues that present challenges toour mutual security interests in this new century.

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3. International Lessons for

Africa

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Modern Peacebuilding

Rory Stewart

On 10 January 2004, I was sitting in my officeboth as a British Government Official anddeputy-Governor of a province in SouthernIraq. This was unusual. The US-led invasionhad toppled the Iraqi government but nonew Iraqi government was yet in place, so Ihad been placed as the acting Governor.About a week earlier, elections had takenplace and an Iraqi Governor had beenappointed. No sooner had he been appointedthen a large crowd gathered outside thebuilding carrying huge banners saying,‘Death to the Governor’. The Governordemanded that we clear the crowd, but weexplained that the crowd had permission todemonstrate: they had freedom of expres-sion and freedom of association and ignoredhim. About half an hour later, the crowdsurged forward towards his office; his policecordon opened fire on the crowd, killing fivepeople and wounding twenty. We persuaded

the Governor and his police to go home, andplaced a company of British troops to defendthe building. Towards six in the evening,however, the crowd began to dissipate andthe British troops returned to base. A fewhours later, though, some Iraqis broke intothe Governor’s building and looted it. Theysmashed all the windows and stole all the fur-niture and computers. The following day, wewent to see the Governor. My military col-leagues explained that neither the Britishpublic nor British politicians would want tosee soldiers being killed defending an emptybuilding, that property was less importantthan life. The Governor replied, ‘you would-n’t let the crowd loot your building wouldyou?’ And he was correct. From that momentonwards, any trust between the coalitionforces and the Iraqi Governor was complete-ly lost. And indeed this was one of the funda-mental reasons for the collapse of security inthat province.

Although there was a lesson to belearned, it was not a simple lesson. Of coursethings could have been done differently, andgoing forwards, things were tried differently.And, part of the problem was my lack ofexperience. But the problems went deeperthan that. We knew a great deal about thecrowd and had sympathy for their griev-ances, since the Governor was, in fact, all thethings the banners said – corrupt, violent andnepotistic. For example, a hundred of hisfirst cousins were in the police force, most ofthe jobs in government were given only tohis own Albu Muhammed tribe and his viewon security was basically similar to that ofSaddam’s. We were also concerned by Britishdomestic opinion and by the BBC televisioncameras which were filming our response to

Rory Stewart OBE is the Chief Executive ofthe Turquoise Mountain Foundation. Heserved briefly as an infantry Officer in theBlack Watch before joining the Foreign Officeand serving in the embassy in Indonesia andthen as British Representative inMontenegro. On leave of absence, he walked6000 miles across Iran, Pakistan, India andNepal and Afghanistan. In 2003, he wasappointed as the Coalition Deputy Governorof Maysan and Dhi Qar in Iraq. In 2004, hebecame a Fellow of the Carr Centre atHarvard University. He is the author of ThePlaces in Between and OccupationalHazards about his experiences respectively inAfghanistan and Iraq. He lives in Kabul.


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the riot. The fundamental problem, though,was that we could not define the conditionsunder which coalition forces were preparedto kill Iraqis, or prepared to allow their ownsoldiers to be killed. People claim that thelooting, which took place in Baghdad in April2003, occurred because there were notenough troops on the ground or becauseState Department planning was ignored. Butthe planning, which US State Departmentproduced in its famous ‘Future of IraqProjects’ report after hundreds of hours ofconsultations and hundreds of interviewswith Iraqis, only stated that there was a pos-sibility of looting after the invasion and themilitary should be prepared. What they didnot say, however, was that there would betotal and catastrophic looting three daysbefore the Marines had even made it into thecentre of Baghdad. Furthermore, the prob-lem was not a lack of troop numbers. In al-Amara, there were enough British troopswith good training from Northern Ireland,good doctrine and good morale who wereconfident with what they were doing. Theproblem was that they simply did not believethat their priority was to defend the IraqiGovernor’s building against the crowds. Thiswas probably also true for the US Marinecorps in Baghdad in early 2003.

The current model of peacebuilding orstate-building assumes the existence of idealadministrators, who come from abstract pla-tonic universes to create peace or build astate. In the case of Iraq, this wasAmbassador Bremer. In the case ofAfghanistan in the early days, it was UN rep-resentative Lakhdar Brahimi. Today, it isPresident Karzai. These people are meant tobe ideal Machiavellian princes, who are infi-nitely informed, flexible, capable, competent,charismatic and able to reshape a society intotheir ideal image of what that society is sup-posed to be. Such people, however, do notexist. One cannot just sit down and map outan ideal vision of society. Rather, in the caseof Iraq, the process starts from a muddled,half-understood picture of what Iraq was like

under Saddam Hussein and probably anequally muddled and equally half-understoodpicture of what one’s own society is like.Then a theory is formed of how one getsfrom one to the other. But what are the the-ories? What are the assumptions used? Whatare the lessons learned? And what are theobjectives?

My experiences as a bureaucrat havingserved in the Foreign Service for ten yearshave shown that it is far from clear whatthese objectives are. The recent CommissionReport on the Israeli actions in Lebanon, forexample, starts from the assumption thatthere were clearly identifiable objectives. Inthis case, it was preventing rockets beingfired into Israel and regaining kidnappedIsraeli soldiers. And the criticism was theinability of the politicians and the military todevise a pragmatic plan to get from wherethey were to achieving these objectives.Perhaps government actually does work likethis in Israel but it certainly does not worklike that in Britain where even the overallobjectives shift continually.

Tony Blair, the former PM, does nothave an answer to why he invaded Iraq. Evenhis Cabinet did not know the answer to thisquestion. The US-led coalition began withthe idea of invading, toppling SaddamHussein and getting out again as soon as pos-sible. Donald Rumsfeld, the then USSecretary of Defense, said that within threemonths, the aim was to be down from150,000 to 30,000 troops and to leave AhmedChalabi running Iraq. Six months later, I wassitting with the other provincial governorsand all the two and three-star generals hear-ing from Ambassador Bremer that we weresupposed in six months to privatize all theState Owned Enterprises, computerize theBaghdad Stock Exchange, reform the univer-sity curriculum, set up women’s centres,recruit 45,000 more policemen, etc. In otherwords, the objective modestly described byAmbassador Bremer was to create a prosper-ous, democratic, peaceful Iraq at peace withitself and with its neighbours. Five months

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after that, the objective was to try to get outagain as soon as possible and declare a victory.

Economic policy followed the samepath.The coalition began with an objectivestating that they entered the country in orderto create a free-market system andAmbassador Bremer had some very sensibleobservations. He pointed out, for example,that US$10 billion was being wasted in Iraqon only two things: subsidizing oil and gas,and the ration card system. US$5 billion ayear is spent in Iraq on subsidizing oil, dieseland gas in an oil producing country. It makesthe cost of diesel so cheap that people aresmuggling it out of Iraq to sell it on the blackmarket in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Thisfinances extensive criminal gangs andensures that there are long queues at thepetrol stations and that no Iraqis can gainaccess to their own fuel. Therefore, as far asthe Ambassador was concerned, it was a no-brainer to cut US$5 billion from the budgetsince Iraq is an oil producing country and theprice of diesel and gas would, therefore, stillremain low, and we could simultaneously getrid of the criminal black market.

Another US$5 billion a year is spent ontrying to provide rations to the Iraqi people.Every Iraqi family receives wheat, cookingoil, baby milk, kerosene, rice and a series ofother commodities every month.Ambassador Bremer suggested monetizingthe food basket and simply giving every fam-ily US$300 a month in cash so they could buytheir own food. This would get the govern-ment out of the business of supplying food,which it did not do very well and liberate theshopkeepers, making good business for farm-ers and increasing consumer choice. Theonly problem was 95 per cent of Iraqis inevery opinion poll rejected these reformscompletely out of hand and there was simplyno way of getting these things passed in thecurrent system and simply no way of imple-menting them in the security environment.So, the entire economic policy shifted fromradical economic reform towards complete

stasis, where the coalition was essentiallysupporting the old fashioned import-substi-tution and industrialization policies ofSaddam Hussein. Particularly, this meant Ihad to work out in my province and dealwith 3,000 employees of the State OwnedEnterprise for palm oil processing when allthe generators and equipment had been loot-ed and all the plantations had been destroyedby tribes who had released their camels intothe plantations.

Lessons learned are always a constanttheme wherever I have worked. In Bosnia,the lesson learned was that elections mustnot be held too soon otherwise a sectariangovernment will arise. Therefore, in Iraq,elections were delayed for two years untilJanuary 2005. But during that election, theextreme Islamist militia-dominated SadristParty in the Maysan province won threetimes as many votes as the next party in theprovince and in fact, right the way acrosssouthern Iraq. Later that year in October,another election took place there. But theparty went on to increase their share of thevote from 85 per cent to 90 per cent acrossthe south. In Bosnia, the lesson learned wasthat a heavy footprint was needed withenough people on the ground and enoughUN administrators. But the lesson learnedfrom Kosovo was to implement a light foot-print. Therefore, in Afghanistan, a light foot-print with 25–30,000 troops was aimed forevery province instead of UN administrators.But the light footprint strategy was a cata-strophe, and so the lesson learned herebecame to set up a direct Administration. Soin Iraq, a coalition provincial Administrationwas set up and thirty year-old Englishmenwere put in as Governors of provinces, whichunsurprisingly failed.

Development workers have said thatthe fundamental problem in Iraq is the lackof security. If security can be created, thendevelopment can be created. But the militaryhave argued that the fundamental problem isin fact the lack of development and that secu-rity cannot be created if there is no develop-


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ment. Others have claimed that the reasoncoalition forces in Southern Afghanistan arebeing attacked is that they do not have jobs.If they were working building roads andwere economically prosperous, they wouldstop attacking. But the reality is that whenjobs are generated for them, they work onthe roads during the day and then attack dur-ing the night. The interventionists have beenthinking like Marxists in the sense theyassume people’s basic motivations are eco-nomic when in fact their motivations maywell be religious, national, political or politi-cal-ideological.

Finally, one comes to the question ofwho are these ideal Machiavellian princes for-mulating these theories? There are threegroups, who by and large represent the inter-national community and each have their ownparticular limitations: soldiers, developmentworkers and diplomats. Soldiers are recruitedand trained to fight wars. They do not likepoliticians either at home or in the develop-ing countries, where they operate.Development workers are also extremelyunhappy working with politicians becausethey think both ‘politics’ and the ‘military’are dirty words. They also believe their soleobjective is to alleviate poverty. In the case ofIraq, they do not think that the country ispoor enough to justify their presence.Diplomats are basically happier sitting inpenthouse apartments in New York, draftingresolutions for the UN than sitting in smallfly-infested offices in Southern Iraq.Meanwhile, the job on the ground involvesincredible complexity of dealing with walk-ins from Iraqis claiming to be who they arenot and affiliating themselves to one ofnumerous expanding political parties.

These international officials are oftentagged as neo-colonials, which is not strictlytrue since although colonial governmentswere often very racist and oppressive, theywere also professional and knew what theywere doing. These neo-colonials, however,do not know what they are doing. For exam-ple, the British government in India in the

1920’s and 1930’s was full of people who hadstudied Indian languages, spoke them fluent-ly, spent twenty or thirty years serving as dis-trict officers in remote districts. If they didnot balance the budget or raise revenues,they had no money to spend, and if they didnot keep security, they would be killed.Today, it is very different. The British comeout with the United Nations, officials onlystay for six months or a year, they do notspeak the local language and they sit indefended compounds. If tax revenues are notraised, it does not matter because interna-tional aid assistance can be attained. If secu-rity is not kept, it does not matter because assoon as any crowd gathers outside the gates,helicopters can evacuate staff. And the offi-cials are not worried about spending thirty orforty years on the ground in any particularcountry because they are already thinkingabout the next job posting at the UN in NewYork or how to climb up the ladder.Therefore, it is not surprising when an offi-cial at the Embassy admits to spending 70 percent of his time on sending polishedtelegrams back to head office and not a greatdeal of time out in the villages; or in the caseof a British diplomat, acting as a glorifiedtravel agent ensuring visiting members ofParliament and Ministers have a good triparound the district.

The second side of the equation is thatthe international community is now full ofpeople who have done MBAs, who try toapply their business language and theoreticalmodels to countries that do not respond tothe bureaucratic structures of trying to iden-tify processes, drivers and outcomes. Thereare constant complaints that Afghans cannotplan, and fail to follow the bureaucratic pro-cedures. In the example of President Karzairesponding to a request for food in a particu-lar province by putting wheat onto a heli-copter, the international community getsvery angry. They declare it is no way to run acountry, that there are processes and bureau-cratic systems in place and that this kind ofrequest should be fed from the district coun-

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cil up to the Minister, so that the Minister canallocate it within the budget. Yet, a questionback to the international community is whatdo they think it means to be a politician? Partof the problem is that these people are tech-nocrats and academics and they do notunderstand what politics means and whatpoliticians need to do for them to remain inpower.

On the other side, there are structuralproblems faced on the ground. There havebeen failures in the international communityin Bosnia, in Kosovo, in East Timor and inAfghanistan. Yet, sometimes it sort of worksand sometimes it does not, and it is quite dif-ficult to know why because the internationalcommunity is equally incompetent in allcases. One reason has a lot to do with thesociety in which the international communi-ty is dealing. In April 2004, for example, anelection took place in Ar Rafai, a town ofabout 120,000 people in northern Dhi Qar. Itwas a good, ration card election where theyelected ten people who were non-tribal, non-political, young technocrats with engineer-ing degrees from Baghdad University. Butfour days after they took office, a Sadrist mili-tia group commanded by a twenty-eight yearold with five men walked into their officeand abducted and tortured them. One of theCounsellors escaped and demanded that weact. So the Iraqi police were asked to inter-vene, but all 450 policemen in the provincerefused to move against the militia’s group offive. Then, the Italian military were asked tointervene, but after the twenty-eight year oldcleric fired a rocket propelled grenade, theywent away. What was needed here was apolitical solution. Therefore, I gathered theSheikhs of the major tribes, the police chiefsand the headmaster of the local school to asktheir advice. The headmaster suggested thatwe just hold another election, the sheikhssaid that they could not touch him becausehe was not from their tribe, the imam saidwe should forget it because the ‘young manhad had a difficult life’. I did not concludefrom this meeting that the leaders did not

understand the principles at stake – every-body understood the principles of the rule oflaw and impunity. It was that nobody wantedto take political responsibility and/or takethe risk involved in arresting this man andhanding him to justice because they had nofaith in the system or in the future. They justcould not see the point. Part of the reason forthis was that Saddam Hussein had drawn allthe power of the country up into the centreand he had run the country through his secu-rity and intelligence services. Coalition forceswere compelled to abolish the security andintelligence services and in their absence,everything collapsed and those provincialsocieties that had not been allowed to admin-ister themselves for fifty years were suddenlybeing made to take political responsibility.

Added to this was the fact these mendid not want foreigners in their country. Onetalks about the abstraction of the ‘interna-tional community’, but in the end, that justmeans foreigners. And in the case for Iraqand Afghanistan, this meant non-Muslim for-eigners and often non-Muslim foreign troopsin their villages and in their towns, whichthey do not like. It is not a question of howmany jobs you provide, and it is not a ques-tion of sorting out the rule of law or theindependent judiciary; they just do not wantforeigners there.

Four or five years ago, the internationalcommunity was telling itself a very conve-nient story that peacebuilding worked verywell in East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo,Afghanistan and therefore would do so inIraq. At some unconscious level, there wasthis idea amongst liberal interventionists thateven at the time was considered a prettypeculiar story. It was a story that chose toignore a completely different trajectory,which could have been taken and includedVietnam as well as much more recent inci-dents, such as Somalia and Rwanda.

Peacebuilding in Africa has to addressthe question of nationalism. This may in thecase of Sudan have an Islamic context, butmay, in the case of Zimbabwe, have an anti-


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colonial context, yet it may also have echoesof Francophone Africa. For example, whereare the French now? Are they in the positionthat they were in ten years ago? Can they pre-sent themselves anymore in a place like Coted’Ivoire as neutral peacekeeping forces thatcome in and improve things? Are people inthe world going to put up anymore with theidea of foreigners and internationals cominginto their country and telling them what todo?

This realization strikes all the waythrough because this is what defines it.When people claim the problem in Iraq is theelectricity, it is not. Yes, the electricity stilldoes not work in Iraq and it does not work inKabul, nor does it work in Kosovo sevenyears after the invasion and after US$1 billionwas spent on it by the international commu-nity. But the difference between Kosovo,Kabul and Iraq is that in Kosovo and Kabul,by and large, people give the interventioniststhe benefit of the doubt and assume thattheir inability to provide the electricity isbecause of their incompetence. In Iraq, theyassume that it is a deliberate conspiracy tohumiliate the Iraqi people. The Dean of theScience Faculty of Baghdad University askedwhy electricity was being deliberately with-held from the Iraqi people. I explained tohim, that Iraq is generating 6,000 megawatts

of electricity and it costs US$1.5 billion tocreate a 1,000 megawatt generating station.The demand is 12,000 megawatts. He repliedthat under Saddam Hussein, a singleprovince could provide the electricity for thewhole of Iraq. Now, if the Dean of theScience Faculty of the Baghdad Universitybelieves this, then surely so would 95 per centof the people in the streets.

My sense coming out of my involve-ment, not in Africa, but in these other inter-ventions in the last ten years is that the inter-national community needs now to recognizehow little it knows and how little it can do. Italso needs to recognize the incrediblestrengths that exist within local societies,their own capacities to solve problems andthat their most pressing need is to create anarrative of national identity after decades ofconflict and civil war. This is fundamentally achallenge not for management consultants,not for technocrats, not for soldiers, not fordevelopment workers, not for diplomats butfor the political leadership of the countryconcerned which needs to draw on all theintractable, subtle elements of history andtradition and bind them together into a senseof a nation. The best lesson for the interna-tional community is that of TS Eliot whosaid: ‘The only wisdom is the wisdom ofhumility, humility is endless’.

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Learning from Afghanistan

Chris Brown

In thirty-three years of soldiering,Afghanistan was for me the most complexmission I have ever undertaken – far morecomplex than my experiences as a planner inboth Bosnia and Kosovo. From my perspec-tive, the military aspect of peacekeeping isthe relatively easy part. But that is not thetest: the real test is integrating the militarycomponent with all the other componentsthat go – or do not go – toward making a suc-cessful peacekeeping operation. This latterpoint has acute relevance to African securitytoday.

In peacekeeping, there is no template orinstant recipe for success. Thinking like thatwill only guarantee problems being thrownat you during the peacekeeping mission,wherever it is, that you had not anticipated.And whilst that should not perturb any sol-dier, it must be understood that the challengeof a peace support operation is not its mili-tary complexity, it is the complexity of co-ordinating all of the lines of activity.

As a soldier, I come at issues from asecurity perspective but I will weave securityinto the other aspects that make up such amission. It is important to set the politicalcontext for the situation in Afghanistanbecause at the time Headquarters ARRC

took over command of ISAF in May 2006,the country had already come quite a longway in the five years since the ending of theTaliban regime. Therefore, we had to buildand pick up from where our predecessorshad left off, not start from scratch in the sameway we had done in Kosovo, for example.However, breaking into an existing missionhas its own challenges, not least how toregain the initiative.

The challenge was that the internation-al community and the emergingGovernment of Afghanistan had agreed anambitious Afghan National DevelopmentStrategy for the country’s reconstruction atthe London Conference on Afghanistan inlate January 2006, building on the plans setout in Bonn in late 2001. It became obviousearly on that some of the time scales and tar-gets in that plan were unrealistic. Thereappears to be a temptation in Westerndemocracies to attempt to endow ThirdWorld emerging nations with First or SecondWorld models of governance, economic sys-tems and morality; this is inherently risky.

One manifestation was the decision atan early stage to give Afghanistan democra-cy. Presidential, National Assembly andProvincial Council elections had all takenplace within four years of international inter-vention. There was a need to assist theAfghans to exercise (and be seen by theAfghan people to exercise) the authority theynow had. In the initial stages of this (and anyother) intervention the military may havebeen the logical focus for coordinating alllines of activity, but we need to make surethe capability exists to do it properly or elsepeople very quickly point the finger andblame you for any failings. The sooner there

A Royal Artillery officer, Major GeneralChris Brown is General Officer CommandingNorthern Ireland. He was formerly Chief ofStaff, Headquarters, Allied Rapid ReactionCorps, and was deployed in that role inAfghanistan as ISAF IX from May to October2006. He recently completed an MPhil(International Relations) at PeterhouseCollege, Cambridge.


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is a civilian authority capable of co-ordinat-ing the rebuilding of a failed state, the betterimage of normality it presents, particularlyto the international community whosedonors will be looking for signs of progressand stability. Although that may necessitatean internationally imposed interim civilianauthority, such as the High Representative inBosnia, the goal must be to hand over therunning of the national development strate-gy to the indigenous government, particular-ly where the country has been gifted democ-racy. Ensuring that the international actorswere working to their plan as theGovernment of Afghanistan would alsoinculcate a sense of Afghan ownership.However, there was insufficient capabilitywithin the indigenous government; capacitybuilding, particularly within the civil serviceat all levels of governance, was required.Democracy may be neither a tradition in thefailed state nor a priority for those trying torebuild it, but it will almost certainly be a pri-ority for the international community whosemoney needs to be seen to create institutionsin its own image. As a military force in sucha complex situation, particularly one whichhas been in existence for some time, you playthe hand you are dealt and make the best ofit.

When Headquarters ARRC arrived inISAF, the situation was further complicatedby the fact that Afghanistan was effectivelysplit in two from a security perspective: theUS-led coalition operating in the east and thesouth, and NATO operating in the north, thewest and in the city of Kabul. While the twoforces were responsible for equal areas ofland-mass, the coalition was about two and ahalf times larger than NATO forces. NATOforces mostly comprised provincial recon-struction teams (PRTs – a mix of military andcivilian capabilities charged with extendingthe authority of the Government ofAfghanistan through redevelopment andimproved governance in which the militaryelement was designed primarily for the secu-rity of the PRT); it did not include much

combat capability. This was very different towhat had happened in the south, where a USeconomy of force mission was now beingreplaced by a combat brigade led by theCanadians with strong battle groups fromCanada, Great Britain and the Netherlands.The US remained (and remains) dominant inthe east, where the majority of the threat upuntil that stage had been. This split (not onlygeographic but also in terms of mission,ethos and rules of engagement) was confus-ing enough for the military, let alone thecivilians who had to work with us.

ISAF IX under Headquarters ARRCcommanded by General David Richards wascharged with uniting the security functionunder NATO command (except the high-endcounter-terrorist mission and the responsibil-ity for funding and training the Afghan secu-rity forces which would remain under UScommand). With eighteen months to pre-pare, General Richards produced his draftcommand intent, which articulated rightfrom the beginning that this was to be anoperation in which the international militarywere not in the lead. His intent was thereforewritten around how to encourage, facilitateand support the other actors to deliver thesort of success needed within the frameworkof the Afghan National DevelopmentStrategy. Gaining and retaining the consentand support of the Afghan people was alwaysgoing to be critical. The key to that was tomake the average Afghan feel more prosper-ous under the Government of Afghanistanthan under the Taliban. From this, it is clearthat the mission’s focus was not a conven-tional military effort. Rather, it was aboutextending and deepening the safety of theareas in which the Government and theInternational Community operated, lookingtoward handing over responsibility for securi-ty safely to the Afghan National Army andthe Afghan National Police: our ticket home.

What was required was an effectivemeans of co-ordinating all aspects of theAfghan National Development Strategy, butit was too late to revert to the UN mission

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(UNAMA) for this, let alone the military. Thegovernment of Afghanistan was the obviousfocus of responsibility for the co-ordinationof all the elements that were needed in orderto put Afghanistan back on its feet; however,it lacked the depth and the experience. ThePresident was encouraged to demonstratepersonal ownership and leadership by creat-ing and chairing a Presidential AdvisoryGroup (effectively a national security coun-cil) with an implementation team that washeavily underpinned by military officers andinternational civilian staff split into four sub-groups or ‘pillars’ responsible for what themilitary calls a ‘line of operation’. ThePresident agreed a series of objectives. Thisgave the actors the authority to go aheadwith what needed to be done in order to takethe overall campaign forward. ISAF plansofficers provided horse power to developobjectives into executable plans. Engineerofficers from the US Army Corps ofEngineers and ISAF tied in reconstructionprojects, focused on a concept of AfghanDevelopment Zones (ADZs) which aimed toproduce an area within which there wasimproved security with an Afghan face,increased development and better gover-nance. The international military effortwould not be fixed as had occurred for exam-ple in Helmand in the early summer of 2006,but would manoeuvre primarily outside theDevelopment Zones to defeat insurgentthreats and extend the ADZs.

We had a trial run at this concept inJune 2006. On the back of a military opera-tion in Farah, western Afghanistan, to denysafe haven to insurgents fleeing north fromHelmand, water and road building projectswere co-ordinated. The local Governor wasencouraged to get the message across to thepeople. So what the average Afghan in thisarea saw was not just a military securityeffort, but military security backed up bydevelopment, construction and governance.It was complex and by no means perfect, butit set the scene for what was to follow.

In July, ISAF took over responsibility for

the south. NATO was now responsible for 87per cent of the land-mass (up from 50 percent). We reached broad parity in numbersbetween ISAF and the Coalition and we gotour first real combat capability: theCanadian/ British/Netherlands brigade. Wethen applied the ADZ concept to the south.In the initial phase these Zones were relative-ly small, focused around existing PRTs. Bootson the ground are important in a peacekeep-ing operation and, although in Iraq it did nottake as many combat forces to defeatSaddam’s army as some people had suggest-ed, what was required was a surge in num-bers after the combat operation in order toensure security for the subsequent rebuildingof the country. Afghanistan was worse off interms of boots on the ground per squarekilometre than Iraq. In such a huge countrythe Taliban who had been kicked out in 2001had gradually filtered back into this area andhad offered security of a sort; the Afghan wastorn between doing the right thing (support-ing his government) and the Taliban towhom he had a natural affinity. ADZ expan-sion could not be achieved without a fight.The Taliban had identified Kandahar as theircritical city and they had occupied this area ofPashmul in order to cut, or at least control,the ring-road, which was the main artery forall reconstruction and traffic into and out ofKandahar. And from intelligence we knewthey intended to try to cut the ring-road tothe east and north of the city as well. GeneralRichards had always made it clear that wewould pick our fights; this was NATO’s firstand only deliberate brigade attack. And itwas multinational: a Canadian battle groupin the north and US forces with Canadians inthe east, US forces (including special forces)in the south and Dutch in the west concen-trating on about 500 plus Taliban. The oper-ation was heavily supported by air. Failurehere would have had severe consequences:NATO would have been defeated in its firstattempt to underscore its credibility; theTaliban would have succeeded in cutting offKandahar; and the Government of


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Afghanistan would be looking decidedlyfragile.

Again, the military bit was (relatively)easy, although it proved challenging to bringto bear sufficient forces to achieve decisivedefeat (the willingness to flex forces to wherethey were needed found some nations want-ing). My challenge was to try and pull togeth-er all the activity that needed to come in onthe back of the military operation to ensurenot only a tactical defeat against the Taliban,but also to turn it to operational advantageby making the Afghans understand that itwas in their interests to keep the Taliban out.This involved the co-ordination of all theother actors involved. Our approach hadbeen to structure the HQ so that it haddefined links, each headed by a one star offi-cer, to the non-military pillars of the cam-paign. In the short term we were right upagainst Ramadan in order to achieve immedi-ate impact and we were fast approachingwinter in terms of housing reconstruction. Itdidn’t work perfectly – it never will – but itsufficed. That effort continues to this day andwill continue for as long as it takes.

On 5 October 2006, NATO ISAF tookover responsibility for the east ofAfghanistan. NATO was now the majorityshareholder, but still with in excess of 10,000forces under US command for the counterterrorist mission and the training and fund-ing of the Afghan National Army. NATOneeds to re-assess its approach to training theindigenous force. It is fundamental to thesuccess of an operation like this and is equal-ly applicable in an African situation. If theUN does not come over the horizon like the7th Cavalry to relieve the AU force, the AU isleft holding the baby. The only alternative isto create an indigenous security force. ButNATO is not ready to fund it or really takeresponsibility for it.

What should the intervention forcetrain the indigenous army to do? It is not abad start to design the force for security oper-ations as opposed to war-fighting: the con-ventional end of peace-keeping operations –

the relatively easy end, not try and get it todo what forces that have been doing peace-keeping for a long, long time can do. Itshould be the face of security in the villages,so that the more sophisticated forces canoperate against the heart of the enemy.

What was achieved by the end of 2006in Afghanistan was an improvement in thegovernment’s ownership and capability toco-ordinate the future of Afghanistan, plusan improvement in governance, reconstruc-tion and security in the ADZs. However,Kabul remains just one of numerous com-peting demands for the average Afghan’s alle-giance; and Afghan allegiances changedepending on who is the greater threat at thetime. Most Afghans would say they are proudto be Afghan – as long as it does not involvetaxation or interference in what they andtheir forefathers have done for centuries. Socentral government has to be reinforced bystrong local governance.

In conclusion, there can be no universalpeacekeeping template which is equallyapplicable, for example, to African situationsas it is to Afghanistan. However, there aresome principles which I believe Afghanistanunderscores:

∑ International interventions should aimto hand control over to a civilian, ideal-ly an indigenous, co-ordinating authori-ty as soon as practical in terms of thesecurity situation and the capability ofthe civil authority. That may mean thatthe mission of the international mili-tary force transitions from the provisionof security to the training of an indige-nous force and support of other lines ofoperation; the military need to be pre-pared for that.

∑ Success in a complex peace supportintervention is not guaranteed by tacti-cal success in one particular geographi-cal area or aspect of the overall cam-paign: success is determined by integra-tion and co-ordination of all the ele-ments of rebuilding a failed state. In this

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respect national force elements (andthis applies equally to nationally-orient-ed IOs and NGOs) must not becomefixed in geographic sectors at theexpense of a theatre perspective.

∑ Breaking into an existing operation isdifficult, particularly if the military aredoing six month rotations; peacekeep-ing demands continuity and the mili-tary tend to be the worst in that respect.

∑ A multinational commander needs toknow what his forces can and cannot dofrom the outset, and certainly beforethey actually get to the point of red-carding it.

NATO is still very much at a cross-roads interms of whether it really wants to do thiskind of complex peacekeeping outside of itstraditional area. The AU also needs to beclear on its level of ambition and theresource implications. But I am an optimistin terms of Afghanistan. I really do believethat success is possible, not least because byand large the Afghan people, unlike theIraqis, have had twenty-five years of civilwar: they now want to make a go of theirlives and the vast majority welcome the inter-national community’s efforts to help them.


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More or Less as Given:

Global Issues Impacting on Africa

Richard Cobbold

IntroductionAt least some of the subjects here describedmay not necessarily be at the top of mostAfrican agendas, but they are important glob-ally and more or less directly to Africa.African issues that principally originate with-in Africa will not be discussed. These are cer-tainly to be resolved primarily by Africans.What is perhaps slightly less obvious, is thatthe impact on Africa of all these other globalissues has to be reconciled primarily byAfricans.

The description of this selection of cur-rent great issues is necessarily brief and prob-ably shallow; but it aims to stimulate morequestions than answers.

The Reduction in AsymmetryGlobalization has happened, and is still hap-pening; if something as pervasive as global-ization can be said to be going to various des-tinations, then we are still unsure where theyare. But there are clues and lots of ideas. Theworld is not yet flat, as Thomas Friedman

first suggested in 2005. One thing that isemerging is that there is an increasing sym-metry about asymmetry.

The Military CaseWhat is meant by this may perhaps best beillustrated by a simple military example. Avital part of military capability is in com-mand, control, communications, computers,intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance(C4ISR) systems. With these, there is a formi-dable capability available to state actors, butthrough the ingenious use of commerciallyavailable technology, asymmetric warriors –mostly non-state actors – can acquire aC4ISR capability that can approach or evensurpass that available to symmetric warriors.This is especially so when the conflict is sub-stantially a ‘war amongst the peoples’ to usea phrase much attributed to General SirRupert Smith. This counter-intuitive state ofaffairs may not continue indefinitely, nor isthe obverse true that ‘industrial warfare’ willnot have a role to play in future conflicts; butto put it into proportion, the US and UKfought ‘industrially’ for the first month afterinvading Iraq in March 2003 with great suc-cess, but have been fighting ‘amongst thepeoples’ with some difficulty ever since. Thepoint here is that the choice of whether ornot to fight amongst the peoples may notrest with the symmetric warriors.

‘War amongst the peoples’, combinedwith a morally eager but politically challeng-ing tendency towards humanitarian interven-tions, have led to conflicts where the militaryhave not been able to produce a full victoryby their own efforts. It is now twenty-fiveyears since Prime Minister Margaret

Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold is VicePresident, Strategic Development, DuosTechnologies International. Before joiningDuos, Admiral Cobbold was the Director ofthe Royal United Services Institute forDefence and Security Studies (RUSI), aposition he held from 1994 to June 2007.Cobbold is a fellow of the Royal AeronauticalSociety, a Governor of the London NauticalSchool, and served as a Specialist Adviser tothe House of Commons Defence Committeefrom 1997 to 2007 and in the same capacityto the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2002.

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Thatcher sought and brought back victory inthe Falklands, in a campaign in which Britainsuffered more casualties killed than in thecurrent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan,and the Falklands campaign lasted less than100 days. It will come as no surprise toAfricans that Iraqi civilians are being killed ata far higher rate than the coalition and alliedmilitaries.

Now, if it is a commonplace notion thatthe military cannot, alone, get a full cam-paign result, they may be able to hold thering whilst other agencies and actors do thestabilization, reconstruction and even recon-ciliation. But those others may not be able to do their bit because the four conditions ofsecurity are deemed not to exist. Just howmuch security is needed in such circum-stances is a nice question. There are risks tobe taken, and it is not axiomatic that all therisks have to be taken by the military. Theprocess can resemble either a virtuous or avicious circle. But once the endeavourslumps into a vicious circle, it is hard tochange. For success, the military and thelegitimate civilian authorities should bealigned in their intent. It is not certain thatthe West has done very well in this, but thekey characteristic of an expeditionary strate-gy – quick in, do job, and quick out again -has gone, leaving the US and UK to play nine-teenth century garrisons in twenty-first cen-tury conditions.

As late as the turn of the millennium, itall seemed relatively straightforward; theadditional cost of interventions was low, thecasualties were light, the fighting was overquickly, and the ventures brought (short-term) popularity to the intervening politicalleaders. It is no longer like this; indeed it hasfor some time found the ‘quick out’ elementhard to achieve, and Britain still has troops inBosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, as well asin Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both US and UK want to get out of Iraqwith some dignity and some credible declara-tion of ‘Job Done’, if not of ‘MissionAccomplished’. The insurgents and the ter-

rorists seem set to harry the coalition out ofIraq, so that it is perceived by the outsideworld, and particularly the Muslim world, tohave been driven out defeated.

Afghanistan may be another story, andthe UK Defence Secretary has called theNATO mission there a noble cause, and theformer NATO ISAF commander, GeneralDavid Richards, agrees with him. Iran is verydifferent again, and one might ask thought-fully whether or not a ground interventionthere is out of the question.

The Move from Uni-PolarityAfter seventeen years from the end of theCold War, the world is no longer uni-polar,even in the security field where the US hasmaintained a pronounced dominance forlonger. It is becoming, and already maybe is,bi-polar or even multi-polar. That is not toanticipate a US terminal decline and fall – farfrom it.

But after the 2008 Presidential Election,the new President will make changes, ifchange has not already happened by then.He/she will not isolate the US, but there willbe a shift of style. There will be a real needfor allies, and not just in the declaratorysense. Some sort of improved accommoda-tion will be sought with the main Europeanpowers and others.

The slate of 9/11 has not yet beenwiped clean, but the Global War on Terror –a label that is rather neuralgic to many out-side the US – has claimed many casualties onboth sides and particularly in the middle ashinted at earlier. The current wave of terror-ism will though be reduced to the level of thenoise of criminality, but it will take time – ageneration or more – and will get worse, andspread further before it gets better.

If sustained economic growth gives thebest long-term antidote to terrorism, so alsowill poverty and deprivation nurture it. Froma global point of view, but not necessarilyfrom an African perspective, the US, as thegreat economic engine, rather than as the


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great military engine, may play a global leadin countering terrorism.

ChinaThe second pole is China: not yet equal, buta pole nevertheless. China has the world’sfourth biggest economy and it is growing rel-ative to its competitors. A simple extrapola-tion of growth graphs indicates that Chinabecomes the world’s biggest economy in themid-2040s. Now extrapolating graphs is atbest an uncertain business, and one shouldnot underestimate the resilience and latentenergy of the US economy to surge ahead,nor the ambition and needs of the Chinese.The commodity needs of China – for oil,copper, cobalt, timber and more – are phe-nomenal and they look to Africa to meetmuch of them. There will be global scarcitiesand these will lead in one form or another tocommodity wars.

Importantly, China has different valuesfrom the West and challenges the West’s val-ues. They reject the primacy and the poten-tial ubiquities of democracies and humanrights; they see societies populated by indi-viduals, rather than individuals making soci-eties. China seems to want, or need, toexport their values in a way that is not partic-ularly attractive to the West, but strikes achord with many Muslims, who reject theWest’s consumerism (but maybe not Chineseconsumerism), morality and emphasis on theimportance of the individual.

China wants to be present and powerfulin Africa for both economic and strategic rea-sons, and may have pressurized the US totake a renewed if late interest in Africa: aninterest in which the new Africa Command isa powerful symbol and symptom.

China is undoubtedly boosting thecapabilities and scope of its Navy, seekingout to the second island chain and beyond,and across the Indian Ocean to the Africancoast. They are not seeking supremacy inthese seas over the US, but are sending a con-sistent message to the US that their suprema-

cy can be challenged locally and episodically.Their increasingly bold use of nuclear-pow-ered submarines, their demonstration of anemergent anti-satellite capability, and theirnow overt pursuit of a carrier strike capabili-ty, all support this. This is the ‘peaceful rise’as the Chinese describe it, and it is not forreversing, even if it gets to a different level.Sooner or later, there will be a confrontationwith India in the Indian Ocean. Whether ornot China’s political system proves to be astrength or a weakness in the long run seemsuncertain, but it is unlikely to affect whetheror not China is acquiring polar status.

IndiaIndia is also an emerging pole, but perhapsless obtrusive than China. India is a stabiliz-ing force and does not directly challengeWestern values, though it can be sceptical ofthem. India is of course a massive democra-cy and has a newly impressive relationshipwith the US. India may yet scuffle withPakistan, but large-scale hostilities are lesslikely now, partly because both India andPakistan have nuclear weapons. Also Indiahas perhaps grown past some of the long-standing rivalry with its neighbours. There isa touch of irony here, because this cross-bor-der situation hints at a less bad proliferationof Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD),and even good possession of them.

Terrorism with WMDThe consequences of Iran acquiring nuclearweapons need to be anticipated. Clearly,there will be great challenges for the diplo-matic community, and the politicians willhave to select from a menu of rather unat-tractive options. Pundits will pontificate, butall will need to take in that getting it wrongwith Iran could have colossal repercussions.

One can speculate, and some will do soluridly, but one of the worst outcomes wouldbe terrorist attacks with WMD, and particu-larly nuclear weapons. What would be the

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point when the mayhem and murder causedby conventional weapons, used imaginativelyand with an understanding of the vulnerabil-ities, may be so huge? The rationale wouldpresumably be to produce even higher, morevaried and more widespread peaks of terrorthan can be devised with Stanley Knives andlarge aircraft, the so-called Weapons of MassEffect (WME). The plots of August 2006 tobring down ten or more aircraft operatingfrom London Heathrow using crude explo-sives are just another example that thankful-ly came to nothing. But the statistics are notnecessarily in our favour.

Such terrorism could directly and mas-sively affect Africa, but in a continent alreadyscarred by mass conventional killings, theyare less likely to do so than in Europe or theUS. It’s a matter of whether there is thedemand for extra terror, where terror isalready common-place.

EuropeIs Europe an emerging pole? The answer is‘maybe’. Some may ask whether Europe isgoing nowhere, that the European project isstuck. There is inadequate consensus, andthere is no enemy as there was fifty yearsago, though terrorists snarl outside, andsometimes inside, the gates. The newEuropeans come from avid nation states;older Europeans mostly seek to congregatetogether. But what Europe needs to achieveis the ability to look outwards effectively. Tobe coherent, Europe needs to re-create itself.Could Europe be one end – one pole – of agreat transatlantic economic, diplomatic andpolitical Alliance. Probably not without a realEuropean defence structure, and Europe hasa long way to go to be a real partner with theUS (even if they wanted to). OperationArtemis in 2003 may have been a jewel in theCongo, but was by global standards verysmall. The EU’s current big idea is the EUBattlegroups, but it may only be a big ideabecause Europe will find it hard consistentlyto bring them to full operational capability.

RussiaRussia is not yet a pole, but seems intent onre-creating the sustained challenges andunpleasantness of the Soviet era. Russia seesthe West sneaking back not only through theold non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries, butalso into the non-Russian republics of the for-mer Soviet Union. With an economy notimproving sufficiently fast or efficientlyenough, Russia may be trying to punchabove its weight but with a power below itsaspirations.

NATO could re-discover a familiar rolein once more confronting Russia. Russia haslots of nuclear missiles and increased defencespending, but as yet, inadequate militarycapabilities. Russia cannot be another Chinain Africa for more than a decade, and possiblydoes not want to be. But if their Navy goesback to ‘blue water’ operations frequentlyand on a large scale, then Russia may be onits way.

Major Conventional WarsThe West is focussed almost exclusively oncounter-terrorism. That does not mean theWest is doing too much, but it may not bedoing enough of the right things, and may beputting insufficient emphasis on other neces-sary issues. One such issue is the need tothink about a major inter-state, inter-alliance,conventional war that could escalate tonuclear, and having thought, to do what isnecessary about it. It is not just around thecorner, but maybe fifteen to twenty-fiveyears ahead, just over the horizon for politi-cal forecasting and major defence systembuilding. The first warning indicators mayalready be with us, for those who wish to see.

So why bother, some may ask, if youare up to your arm-pits in counter-terrorismimperatives? But that is the wrong question.It needs to be asked if the risk of beingcaught short can be avoided without havingcredible deterrence. It may be recalled withsome satisfaction how the business of strate-gic deterrence during the Cold War seemed


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to be mastered; but the Cold war has longgone and it cannot be perversely wishedback. Deterrence against a major future con-ventional war may be a far trickier proposi-tion, more multi-dimensional, and where thediffering rationales and values of the antago-nists are unfamiliar.

Information WarfareEnmeshed within ‘war amongst the peoples’is information war, a type of asymmetricconflict where Western democracies maystruggle because they are constrained bylaws, morality and the media; the last is ofcourse a principal (and occasionally princi-pled) actor in information warfare. Al-Qa’idais said to spend some 25 per cent of its bud-get on information warfare, and that seemsto be a good investment. In the sorry and yet-to-be-forgotten saga of the fifteen kidnappedBritish sailors and marines, the main Iranianeffort was to get their message across to theMiddle East media, not to the West. Whyshould the Iranians bother with the West,when the Western media was doing such agood job themselves as the victims and theircommand chain opened up a series of self-inflicted wounds.

Information warfare can be conductedover long and short timescales. Eventually, anation’s will to continue a struggle and toprevail can be determined by success in infor-mation warfare. But this may be a conflict inwhich one may never know it is engageduntil it is realized too late that the strategy,doctrine and resources is lacking to be able toconduct it properly.

Admiral Mullen, the US Chief of NavalOperations, has said, perhaps a little tonguein cheek that he did not want to get opera-tion orders with information annexes, butinformation orders with operations annexes.Information as a weapon is getting flatter, itis becoming more evenly available (as is disin-formation, spin and propaganda), it is global-izing fast, and it can spread over Africa.

Climate Change and SecurityAnd finally, the climate is changing and theglobe appears to be warming. The changeand the warming may well be acceleratingand are hard to predict as they have to beconsidered in conjunction with existing longand shorter term cycles. There seems to be agrowing consensus that the change and eventhe acceleration may increase, if enough isnot done. A number of open feed-back loopscould be found, for example the release ofmethane gas from the Siberian permafrost.Change will be hard to reverse, and the pol-luters will be intransigent as they press theirown differing interests; if the major pollutersdo not take action, i.e., doing somethingmuch more than just talking blandly, then allthe efforts of other countries will have littleeffect beyond being worthy exemplars thatwill gradually become boring. Reversing cli-mate change is different from not doingworse than is being done at present; it meanstaking radical steps. The US has to lead andact, and there is not much time, for pollutioncomes from those that are industrializing andthose that are post-industrialization.

The Gulf Stream could vanish, as mightBangladesh. There will be some winners andmore losers; many will be displaced andmany will be discontented both amongstthose who move and amongst those living intheir destinations. Many commodities,including water, will become more scarce,both exacerbating old scarcities and uncover-ing new ones. The poorer will be the worseaffected, but the forces of globalization willenable them to do something about it. Africawill be sorely affected. The two major causesof climate change insecurity will be migra-tion and scarcities. Africa may need to look toitself for solutions; for those outside may nothave the time, the resources or the inclina-tion to help decisively.

The worse predictions assume thatenough will not be done until too late.History is littered with examples of civiliza-tions that have seen trouble coming but haveput off taking decisive action until tomorrow.

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So the worse predictions could be reason-able. We have got used to being able tosnatch chestnuts from the fire at the lastmoment. The last moment may not be soonenough.


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The New Global Security Agenda:

How Might We Deal with It?

Ved Malik

Over the last few decades, a distinctive fea-ture of the strategic and security relatedenvironment has been the unprecedentedand sheer dynamics of the change in the con-cepts, paradigms and complexities of nation-al, regional and global security. There arethree main reasons for these changes. First,the rapid advances made in science and tech-nology, particularly in the field of informa-tion technology; second, globalization, mul-tilateralism, and regionalism are replacingbilateral international relations and also thestrait-jacketed concept of sovereignty; andthird, there is a more liberal approach tosecurity, and awareness of the comprehen-sive nature of security. Comprehensive secu-

rity includes not only the traditionaldefensee-related threats but also challengesin societal, political, economic, technologicaland environmental dimensions of security.

These changes are being understoodbetter and more easily by liberal and stabledemocratic nations than nations ruled ordominated by the military or quasi-democra-tic countries.

National Power The concept and doctrine of national poweralso has undergone change in the new globalsecurity environment. This is not just mili-tary but economic, political, cultural andtechnological power. Remember, greateremphasis on military power as compared toother components could not save the SovietUnion’s collapse. The true mark of a greatpower today is strength in all areas. China ispursuing such a comprehensive power.There is a growing recognition that nationalsecurity problems require integrated politi-cal, economic, social, military and diplomat-ic responses: both at national and interna-tional levels.

Trends and Statistics of Armed ConflictsTrends and statistics of the last fifty yearshave shown that the armed conflicts aroundthe world have been gradually moving downthe paradigm scale of intensity as well asinclusivity. Potential nuclear war has givenway to restrained nuclear deterrence. Totalwar, even a conventional war, has yielded to‘limited war’, ‘restricted war’, and severaltypes of ‘low intensity conflicts’. There areseveral reasons for this trend, including the

General Ved Malik was Chief of the ArmyStaff of the Indian Army from October 1997to September 2000 and concurrently,Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee fromJanuary 1999 to September 2000. As Chief,he oversaw intensified anti-terroristoperations in Jammu and Kashmir andNorth East India and management ofdisputed border with China. In 1999, heplanned, co-ordinated and oversaw executionof Operation Vijay to successfully defeatPakistan’s attempted intrusion in KargilSector. An alumnus of the National DefenseCollege, New Delhi, he has written severalpapers on defense planning and securityissues, and authored a book Kargil:FromSurprise to Victory. He was a member ofIndia’s National Security Advisory Board fortwo years. Currently, he is President of theObserver Research Foundation (ORF)Institute of Security Studies and HonoraryAdvisor to the Centre for Policy Research.

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fact that national attention has shiftedtowards developmental economics, com-merce and trade issues. Global and regionaltrade and the economics of internationalfinance have made more and more nationsinterdependent in a free market and export-oriented world. Also high-speed long-rangecommunications have shrunk the world.Even the insular and inward looking nationshave no options but to join ‘internationaliza-tion’ and ‘engagement’, thus reducing thechances of open or intense conflicts.Moreover, there is close monitoring of like-ly conflict situations and wars by the media.It ensures greater public accountability ofthe governments. And the maintaining oflarge standing armed forces and equippingthem with the state of the art weapons andequipment is very costly. Besides, there ismore likelihood of heavy casualties onaccount of greater lethality and reach ofnew conventional and non-conventionalweapons. Also, the destruction of anenemy’s military potential and occupationof large foreign territories are not easilyattainable military objectives, even in asym-metric situations. This has been seen inLebanon, Iraq and many other places. Andlastly, the challenges of human developmentare a hot subject. It includes issues likehuman rights, international laws of war,protocols on nuclear, biological and chemi-cal weapons and efforts to prevent collateraldamage in conflicts.

Empirical evidence points towards a sig-nificantly lowered probability and durationof a regular, high intensity conventional war.Even less likely is a regional war. The forceoption has become more and more costly,and less and less effective. Ever since the USpre-emptive action in Iraq, much against thewishes of many of its European allies, thedebate on unilateralism versus multilateral-ism has intensified. There is now increasingrealization in the world, including in the US,that in any major conflict situation, there isno alternative to multilateralism to preventconflicts or for conflict resolution. This does

not mean that any nation is prepared to com-promise on its security or give up its effortsto become powerful. But these trends cer-tainly have a strong impact on the emergingglobal security agenda.

So what are the new security threatsand challenges? These are diverse and multi-dimensional. Currently, military threats donot lie as much in the armies invading acrossborders, but more often in the form of limit-ed wars, insurgencies, and domestic andcross border terrorism, with higher technolo-gy and lethality. This includes the possibleuse of nuclear and biological weapons in thefuture. To maintain political stability and cre-ate a climate conducive for socio-economicdevelopment, intra-state security hasacquired greater importance. And in securityagendas, internal and external security hasgot enmeshed more than ever before.

Non-military threats include ethnicconflicts, religious fundamentalism and com-munalism, gun-running, drug trafficking andillegal migration of people, human rightsabuses, environmental degradation and con-flicts over access to natural resources likewater and oil, economic under-development,corruption and bad governance, and evenAIDS-like diseases.

As many of these security challengesare not solely of military nature, heavyreliance on military establishments, andpreparation and use of large-scale militaryforces to meet these challenges, is often con-sidered less necessary.

Role of the MilitaryThe military has to be prepared for an elon-gated spectrum of conflict and security ranging from assistance to civil authority,peacekeeping, peace enforcement, counterterrorism, limited wars to a war involvingWeapons of Mass Destruction. The military,therefore, requires very careful prioritizing ofits roles and likely missions. It requiresgreater versatility and flexibility. It has also tosynergize with other instruments of power,


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and governance, which have a role in theenlarged security matrix.

Some Thoughts on the Nature of WarsIn the emerging security scenarios, it is diffi-cult to identify political objectives that wouldjustify a total war between nations. A warwill be influenced by strong limiting factors,the most important of which would be theneed to avoid a nuclear exchange. Increasingcosts of weapon systems and problems of re-supply will impose their own dynamics inlimiting the scope and direction of futurewar. So, even if a conventional war breaksout, it is likely to be limited in time, scopeand space. The characteristics of such a lim-ited war are likely to be limited political andmilitary objectives; not to capture large terri-tory but to cause domestic political/econom-ic damage and international indignity; limit-ed duration of war; limited in geography;and limited force levels.

Controlling ascent of ‘escalatory lad-der’ by political and military leadershipwould be more important. Careful orchestra-tion of military operations, diplomacy anddomestic environment would be essential forits successful outcome.

Wars may no longer be taken to the log-ical conclusion of military victories as wasthe case in the past. Even the US and themultinational forces could not achieve a totalvictory in Gulf wars or in Afghanistan. Thewar would be conducted with the objectiveof achieving political success rather than amilitary victory. It must include politico-mil-itary conflict resolution and military exit.Therefore, a nation which can define achiev-able political goals clearly would have aninherent advantage.

In the emerging security scenarios,prior efforts to shape the conflict environ-ment has become essential. It is necessary tocreate a favourable political climate for theapplication of force. Attaining the desiredpolitical results from a military campaignwould be highly dependent on the

Government’s ability to generate and sustaindomestic support (public consensus) andinternational understanding.

How to Deal with the Key Challenges?In the new security agendas, defining politi-cal goals and its translation into militaryobjectives would be difficult, sometimesuncertain and indirect. The key military ideaspertaining to the end result such as victory,decision, or success, would have to reflectheavier political emphasis and attributes. Thesuccessful outcome of such a war hinges onthe ability to react rapidly to an evolving cri-sis, which may often erupt by surprise. Thiswould be a major challenge for the military.For the military is expected to be able to reactquickly to the changing circumstances, inorder to get into an advantageous position onthe ground and to diminish incentives forescalation.

In the present age of transparency andopenness, mobilizing and sustaining domes-tic and international support for militaryoperations would depend on the ability ofthe military to operate in a manner that con-forms with political legitimacy (fight a right-eous war), e.g., avoiding human rights viola-tions, civilian and military casualties, andminimizing collateral damage.

Political requirements and militaryobjectives would need a heavy reliance onintelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissancefor target selection. Airpower, precision guid-ed weapons, stand-off armaments and use ofinformation would be the first choiceweapons. Employment of ground forcesacross the borders may be discouraged ordelayed.

Information operation becomes impor-tant due to the growing transparency of thebattlefield. In order to achieve and retain themoral high ground and deny that to theadversary, political and military leadershipwould need a comprehensive media, publicaffairs and information campaign. Thiswould have to be fully integrated and syn-

Ved Malik

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chronized with the planning and executionof the military operations. Psychologicalwarfare has always been a part of classicalwar; it becomes more important now.

Counter-TerrorismTerrorism is not just a military problem. Inthe worldwide counter-terrorism strategy,besides checking violence, an ideology that isirrational and not acceptable has to be isolat-ed and targetted. Therefore, both hard poweras well as soft power are needed: hard powerto deal with armed terrorists, and soft powerto deal humanely with societies, their cul-ture, traditions and ethos. ‘Ideologues’should, therefore, be included in the opera-tional fight.

India has been one of the longest vic-tims of terrorism. It has been handled suc-cessfully in many parts of the country. Moreimportantly, terrorism has not been allowedto destabilize the nation, politically or eco-nomically.

India adopts a comprehensive approachto counter-terrorism. It believes that counter-terrorism can be effective only if there is amulti-pronged approach based on a nationalconsensus. Its approach treats terrorism as aphenomenon with political, economic,social, perceptual, psychological, operationaland diplomatic aspects. All these need simul-taneous attention. The policy seeks a holisticapproach to all these dimensions.

The security forces employ the princi-ple of ‘use of minimum force’ during suchoperation and not the overkill required inwar. The security forces not only fight mili-tants and anti-social elements, but also reas-sure innocent people feeling insecure orneglected due to inadequate civil administra-tion.

Along with sustained operations, civicaction programmes are undertaken. In someareas, Indian Army formed ArmyDevelopment Group and launched OperationGoodwill. The overall aim is to win hearts andminds of the populace. It is counter-produc-

tive to alienate hundreds and thousands inorder to kill a suspect. At no stage can anynation afford to give a full licence to the secu-rity forces to operate freely. There is arequirement to clearly define their responsi-bility, authority, legality, and accountability.

ConclusionTo conclude, the new global security agendais about comprehensive security and compre-hensive national power. Security threats andsecurity agendas have become more region-al, if not globalized. We need regional andglobal co-operative security, a strong andmore assertive United Nations.

There is a need to bridge the gapsbetween the traditional and new approach tosecurity, between national development andsecurity issues, through cross-cutting policyagendas, by establishing connections withrelated disciplines like international relations,regional studies, socio-politics and socio-political economy. The integrated securitymatrix involving internal and external facetsmakes it imperative that security policiesinclude direct and indirect threats and chal-lenges posed by adversarial countries, non-state actors, and other intricate factors thatimpact security in a global and regionalframework.

Counter-terrorism is one of the moreimportant security agendas. But there are nomilitary ‘end solutions’ to terrorists or insur-gency problems. The military can only createconditions wherein the adversary is com-pelled to come to the negotiating table. Weneed to develop multilateral institutions, andmultinational co-ordination, required tocounter terrorism. Blocking financial sup-port, disrupting networks, sharing intelli-gence, and simplifying extradition proce-dures: these are measures, which can only beeffective through international co-operation.The final solution – conflict resolution andmilitary withdrawal – lies in the politicaldomain.

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Appendix

96

ParticipantsAdolphe Onusumba (the Hon), MP and FormerMinister of Defence, DRC Arnold Fields (Maj Gen USMC retd), ACSS, US Asher Susser (Prof ), University of Tel Aviv, Israel Barry Desker (Prof ), IDSS, Singapore Bheki Masondo (Mr), National Intelligence Service(NICOC), SAChris Brown (Maj Gen), British Army, UK Christiane Agboton Johnson (Dr/Ms), President ofMALAO, Senegal Christopher Clapham (Prof.), Cambridge University,UK Daniel Opande (Lt Gen retd), Former Commander,UN LiberiaDominic Medley (Mr), Head of Prism Group ISAF,UK Frank Rusagara (B Gen), Commandant: RwandanMilitary Academy, Rwanda Geofrey Mugumya (Mr), Director of Peace andSecurity Dept, African Union Greg Mills (Dr), The Brenthurst Foundation, SA Henri Boshoff (Mr), Institute for Security Studies,SA Isaac Nkama (Mr), Dir Econ Affairs (Africa) BoeingCorp, ZambiaJakkie Cilliers (Dr), Head: Institute for SecurityStudies, SA Jeremy Astill-Brown (Mr), Regional Adviser, AfricaConflict Prevention Pool (DFID), UK Johnnie Carson (Ambassador), National IntelligenceOffice for Africa, US Jonathan Oppenheimer (Mr), De Beers Group, SA Knox Chitiyo (Dr), RUSI, UK

Larry Swantner (Col retd), USAF, US Mac Alexander (B Gen retd), SA Mahao Maaparankoe (Col), Lesotho Army, LesothoMarie Muller (Prof Ms), Dean of Humanities,Pretoria University, SA Martin Edmonds (Prof ), Director CDISS., UK Martin Rupiya (Dr), Institute for Security Studies,SA Michael Spicer (Mr), Business Leadership SA, SA Patrick Mazimhaka (HE), Dep Chair African Union,Rwanda Peter Fabricius (Mr), Foreign Editor, IndependentNewspaper Group, SA Pius Mokgware (Maj Gen), Botswana DefenceForce, Botswana Richard Cobbold (R Adm retd.), RUSI, UK Rory Stewart (Mr), Turquoise MountainFoundation, UK Sabelo Gumedze, Institute for Security Studies, SA Saki Macozoma (Mr), Standard Bank, SA Shlomo Brom (B Gen retd.), Senior Fellow INSS, TelAviv University, Israel Siegmar Schmidt (Prof/Dr), Landau University,Germany Steve Stead (R Adm retd.), The BrenthurstFoundation, SA Tandeka Nkiwane (Prof/Ms), UNISA, SA Terry McNamee (Dr), RUSI, UKTheresa Whelan (Ms), DASDI, Pentagon, US Ved Malik (General rtd.), former Chief of Staff,Indian Army; Head: ORF, India Werner Böhler (Dr) Konrad Adenauer Foundation(SA), Germany Wiryono Sastrohandoyo (Amb), CSIS, Indonesia

The African Military in the 21st Century2007 Tswalu Dialogue, 3 May – 6 May

Hosted by Jonathan and Jennifer Oppenheimer& organized by The Brenthurst Foundation

in conjunction with theAfrican Union (AU),

Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), London,African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS), Washington,

S. Rajaratnam School for International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore,Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies, University of Tel Aviv,Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), South Africa

and Business Leadership SA

Supported by the Government of Denmark

Appendix

97

PROGRAMME

THURSDAY 3 MAY 200711h30-12h00: Depart from Anglo Hangar13h00-14h30: Arrival; lunch and settling in17h15-18h00: Drinks18h00-19h55: Introduction, Greg Mills;Welcome, Jonathan Oppenheimer –followed by dinner

20h00: After-dinner keynote talk – RoryStewart, ‘The Challenges and Dangers ofPeace-Building’(Chair: Jonathan Oppenheimer)

FRIDAY 4 MAY: MOTSE07h00-onwards: Breakfast

8h30: Session One - Current and EmergingAfrican Security Threats. (Chair: Patrick Mazimhaka) Presenters: Richard Cobbold (theinternational security environment);Geofrey Mugumya (an African perspective).

This session should provide an overview ofglobal and African security threats –projected into the future. Are theseprimarily inter- or intra-state in nature; arethey ‘traditional’ or human in focus? Whathas been the impact of recent developmentson African security, and what are the likelykey drivers in the future?

10h45: Tea

11h00: Session Two - Assessing the AfricanMilitary(Chair: Barry Desker)Presenters: Frank Rusagara; Steve Stead;Arnold Fields.

This session will address the following:1. What operations are militaries

currently involved in and why?2. In what tasks should they be involved?

3. What is the current capability of theAfrican military to execute these tasks?This should be looked at not only froma design/equipment point of view butalso from the angle of training,professionalism and accountability.

4. Do these capabilities align with needs,both current and projected?

5. Is it possible to categorise Africamilitaries?

6. What is the current capacity of theAfrican military to absorb newtechnologies?

7. What is likely to be the impact ofextraneous events such as HIV-Aids?

8. Is the African military prepared to dealwith new threats, including terrorism?

9. What is the role for intelligencestructures in this regard; does Africahave appropriate intelligence structuresto deal with the likely tasks?

10. What are the relations with foreignmilitaries and donors; are theseappropriate to the task at hand?

13h15: Group photo followed by lunch 14h00: After-lunch talk - Ved Malik, ‘Thenew global security agenda; how might wedeal with it?’

14h30: Session Three - Assessing ContinentalReponses to Security Needs (Chair: Johnnie Carson)Presenters: Daniel Opande; Martin Rupiya;Saki Macozoma

This session is intended to address thefollowing:1. What has been the record of the

regional and continental bodies indelivering peace and security?

2. Are there the appropriate institutions –and resources?

3. Where are the gaps?4. What has been the record of African


98

peacekeepers in Darfur; Burundi; andin the Congo?

5. How are others responding: in thedeveloped and developing world?

15h30: Tea Break15h45: Recommence discussion.17h00: Pre-dinner drinks18h00 -19h30: Dinner

20h00: After-dinner talk - Chris Brown,‘Afghanistan as an example of staterebuilding’(Chair: Richard Cobbold)

SATURDAY 5 MAY: MOTSE07h00-onwards: Breakfast

Break-away into two groups: Session to runfrom 08h00-13h00 (with 10h30-11h00 tea-break)

Group One: Chaired by Patrick Mazimhaka(Boma) ‘The African Standby Force (ASF)and peacekeeping in Africa: What are thecore challenges?’Presenter: Christopher Clapham to befollowed by discussion.

Group Two: Chaired by Jakkie Cilliers(Motse Hall) ‘AFRICOM: What will it meanand do for Africa?’Presenter: Theresa Whelan to be followedby discussion

13h30: Lunch

Afternoon at leisure: Option of game drivesfollowed by a walk or drive to the Dune forsupper

20h30: Talk on Stars by Tswalu StaffRetire to Motse for after-dinner drinks

SUNDAY 6 MAY: LEKGABA 07h00: Light breakfast 08h00: Depart for Lekgaba

09h15: Summary Session(Chair: Michael Spicer)Presenters: Patrick Mazimhaka; Greg Mills;Johnnie Carson.

This session is intended to consolidate theoutputs of the previous sessions, including:1. What types of regional and

continental structures are required thatare currently lacking?

2. What sort of assistance might best beprovided by the external (non-African)community?

3. What will AFRICOM mean forAfricans?

4. What do Africans have to do forthemselves?

5. What has to be done to improve civil-military relations?

6. Is there a role for non-governmentalagencies in providing African security?

10h15: Concluding remarks10h40: Depart for the waterhole11h00: Brunch at waterhole12h00: Depart for the airfield12h45– 13h15: Charter flights depart forJohannesburg

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