Africa Plans Continental Peacekeeping Force to Deal With Future Crises

CNSNews.com ^ | May 27, 2003 | Stephen Mbogo

[Tailgunner Joe]

An initiative aimed at bolstering homegrown African peacekeeping efforts has been welcomed in a continent that has traditionally relied on outside help when its many conflicts have gotten out of hand.

Military commanders from numerous African countries agreed recently to establish a standby peacekeeping force within the next few years, designed to intervene in conflicts like those currently underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Liberia and Burundi.

Jan Kamenju, a retired army lieutenant-colonel now based at the Security Research and Information Center in Nairobi said it was certainly possible to establish the envisaged force, although the process would be expensive.

"The capability for such a peacekeeping force is there," he said in an interview here. "It will greatly borrow from lessons learned by African forces that have participated in international peacekeeping missions."

He forecast that a joint Africa military alliance similar to NATO could be realized if regional integration efforts continue.

In East Africa, for instance, military forces from various countries have been undertaking joint training exercises, helping to create better understanding between them.

The process has been invigorated by the war against terror. A U.S. counter-terrorism taskforce based in Djibouti is working with the armed forces of several East Africa and Horn of Africa countries, with the aim of improving security in the region.

Military forces in West Africa have previously undertaken joint peacekeeping missions in civil war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"Unlike in the 20th century, Africans are now understanding each other more and are eager to form alliances to seek African solutions to African problems," Kamenju said.

Meeting recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, African military chiefs agreed that the force would fall under a soon-to-be-established peace and security council, a body being set up under the Africa Union (AU).

The council will be empowered to approve intervention in situations of civil war or suspected attempts at genocide, without the need to obtain the go-ahead of the country or countries involved.

According to a plan released after the meeting, regionally based stand-by brigades will be set up, with each country in the region pledging troops and logistical support, initially to U.N. missions and later to AU observer missions.

At the end of that process, the AU peacekeeping force will be constituted from these trained and experienced brigades.

Africa has historically looked to peacekeeping forces from outside the continent to re-stabilize areas involved in conflicts.

Researchers have suggested that it was this dependence on the outside world that permitted the situation in Rwanda in 1994 to escalate to the degree it did. In the end, more than one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu militias.

At the time, African governments looked to the U.N. to intervene, but the intervention, when it came, was generally regarded as far too little, far too late.

Now, the AU has launched a pilot peacekeeping initiative in neighboring Burundi, where conflict between the two ethnic groups continues to simmer. Military personnel from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique have been deployed to ensure that a recently-signed ceasefire agreement between the government and rebel groups is respected.

By contrast, a U.N. force has been successful in restoring normality in Sierra Leone, which experienced 10 years of a brutal civil war in which thousands regarded as government supporters - including women and children - had limbs hacked off by Revolutionary United Front rebels.

Conflict and a general state of insecurity have been largely responsible for the continent's inability to attract foreign investment and expand local economies.

The World Bank says that although investment returns in Africa are high - averaging around 30 percent - foreign investors prefer are leery of the security situation and official corruption, factors that the bank says reduce investment returns to around seven percent, compared to 10 percent in Europe.