A prayer for Marie: creating an effective African standby force

Parameters, Winter, 2004 by Mike Denning

While many African militaries are rich in peacekeeping experience and leadership talent, their inability to organize and deploy rapidly reflects the relative poverty of their states. Individual country budgets rarely are sufficient to provide adequate living standards for military personnel, to acquire and maintain equipment, of to undergo realistic, large-unit training. Outside of South Africa and perhaps Nigeria of Ghana, few African states are capable of mobilization, regional power projection, or sustained, intense military operations. (23) Moreover, regional military success stories are few and far between. For example, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), largely considered to be the most capable regional peacekeeping force, has demonstrated mixed results at best in its peace enforcement capacity. During its UN missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, it failed to maintain neutrality toward the Liberian factions, had 500 peacekeepers captured by rebel forces, and was seen by other African nations as simply a cover for the spread of Nigerian influence. (24)

So is the ASF initiative dead in the water? Not completely. While the G8 did not offer the AU a blank check, neither did its members categorically dismiss the ASF initiative. One senses that if an alternate proposal were presented--a proposal that satisfies the operational requirement, is within Africa's reach, and is fiscally prudent--the G8 would be much more receptive. In developing such an alternative, certain fundamental questions should be addressed--what capabilities does an ASF need; how should it be organized, trained, and equipped; and what role should the United States play in bringing it to fruition? These are all legitimate questions which need to be considered before one can expect international and US buy-in.

Capabilities Required: Speed and Teeth

With the hindsight of historical African conflict, any credible ASF alternative should contain two distinct capabilities--the ability to organize and deploy rapidly and the ability to conduct Chapter VII operations. (25) The need for speed is self-evident. An effective African Standby Force must be able to arrive within days of being needed, not months. While the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) each offer testimony to this distinction, Rwanda is certainly the most gruesome example. In the days that followed the 6 April 1994 airplane crash killing Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana--the event which triggered the genocide--the violence widened until the entire country was engulfed in a killing spree. In the course of 100 days, approximately 800,000 Rwandans were killed--a pace of 8,000 killings per day. As Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and DRC bear witness, most civilian casualties occur during the early months of conflict. (26) Thus, creating an ASF for speed--speed of organizing, deploying, and operating--is essential to success.

The second capability for an effective ASF is that it must be constituted of warfighters. Far too often, intervening forces are deployed to a Chapter VII environment with Chapter VI authority--and the results are inevitable-soldiers legally helpless to counter the bloody and humiliating events of Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Goradze. A Chapter VII-capable force is documented in the Brahimi Commission's report on United Nations Peace Operations: "UN peacekeepers must be able to carry out their mandate professionally and successfully. Rules of engagement should be sufficiently robust and not force UN contingents to cede the initiative to their attackers. This means that mandates should specify an operation's authority to use force." (27)