Burundi’s At War Again; African Standy Force; Peacekeeping Conundrums
It certainly looks like the 2006 Comprehensive Ceasefire Agreement is shattering.
This is the third series of firefights in the last month (running gunbattles punctuated by an occasional ambush is probably a better description).
The Burundian military conducted several airstrikes on an infiltration and base area in April (April 23 and April 30). I believe these are armed helicopter strikes, not fixed wing, but if someone knows differently add a comment. (The Rukoko Swamp or Rukoko Marshes, is a major base camp area and infilitration route for rebels. It is located on the Burundi-Congo border.)
ONUB (United Nations Operation in Burundi), is regarded as a peacekeeping success. Given its mandate, I think it was. I note the Burundian government (which is a coalition government) is asking for regional and international help to end the fighting.
While looking for more information on Burundi I found a recent article on the African Standby Force, written by John Haberson of CUNY.
I wrote a US Army War College paper on the subject (I think 1997). The article mentions 1994 as a seminal date, but the idea has floated around for decades.
Key grafs:
Specifically, African states have moved to organise the African Standby Force (ASF), supported by sub-regional and country-level military units. One of such sub-regional units, the Eastern African Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) has been the collective responsibility of Eastern African and Indian Ocean countries, except Burundi. The whole structure is to be governed by an assembly of East African heads of state and government.
What are the specific objectives of this new security architecture and how is it to be structured, organised, funded and implemented? In January 2004, African defence ministers met in Addis Ababa to formulate the “Draft Framework for a Common African Defence and Security Policy.”
This policy reflected the adoption two years earlier of the AU “Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council” that also included establishment of a military staff committee to advise this new council, the creation of the ASF to implement the Council’s decisions.
But the idea goes back still further to the 1994 Cairo Declaration on the Code of Conduct for Inter-African Relations, the 2000 AU Declaration on Unconstitutional Changes of Government and the Kampala declaration in the same year of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development, and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA).
As designed, the multinational ASF would consist of five sub-regional brigades of 3000-4000 troops plus a sixth one based in Addis Ababa.
Good idea? Yes. Creating it is a huge challenge. A regional African peacekeeping force ought to have a cultural advantage when entering a civl war (intra-state conflict) — ie, a better knowledge of ethnic issues than peacekeepers from Europe and Asia. That, of course, is not always the case. Training, discipline, intelligent leadership, professionalism — these are the critical qualities.
Here are some other thoughts on peacekeeping, from this week’s Creators Syndicate column (via StrategyPage):
Somalia and Bosnia ought to provide valuable and critically important lessons, which should organizationally and operationally inform and guide new missions. They do, though only in the most glancing sense. Every major U.N. peacekeeping operation remains a “shake and bake” exercise with personnel contingents assembled piecemeal, equipment a collective hodge-podge, supply a sometimes thing and airlift often supplied by the U.S. Air Force, since no one else can do it.
