The Speed to save

After a series of crises, the African Union creates a new rapid-response mechanism for military intervention

In October 2014, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop spoke before the United Nations Security Council and pleaded for help. His speech came after several bloody weeks during which insurgents set roadside bombs and launched motorbike attacks against peacekeepers in the nation’s troubled north. The attacks killed nine Nigerien Soldiers in Gao and 10 Chadian Soldiers in Kidal.

“The international community must send these terrorists a strong message,” Diop told the U.N. “That’s the only message that they understand.”

Diop went on to make a suggestion. Peacekeepers, he urged, need to change their tactics.

“Perhaps the Security Council could envision putting in place a rapid intervention force capable of fighting effectively against these terrorist elements,” he said.

He was asking for something that peacekeeping missions historically have not been particularly good at: speed and precision. Training, mission bureaucracies and mandates sometimes prevent peacekeepers from launching interventions quickly and repelling and neutralizing spoilers in combat zones.

Mali is a prime example of this deficiency. In 2012 and 2013, as extremists consolidated power in the north, the U.N. and the African Union spent months deliberating and seeking consensus for an intervention. It was only when extremists seized the strategically important town of Konna and prepared to march south toward the capital, Bamako, that an intervention was launched principally by two nations: France and Chad.

Since then, the nearly 10,000 uniformed personnel of the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali have preserved order in the major cities of northern Mali. But they have had difficulty doing the “search-and-destroy” work that Chadian and French forces did so effectively in early 2013, notably to clear jihadist hideouts such as those in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.

Events since the Malian crisis have only highlighted the need for a continental rapid-reaction force. In late 2013, a civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR) required a swift French intervention code-named Operation Sangaris, in collaboration with AU forces. In December 2013, Uganda unilaterally and controversially sent a force to South Sudan after growing frustrated with the slow international response to the turmoil there.

More speed was needed in all these instances, said Solomon Dersso, a senior researcher for the Institute for Security Studies. “AU member states failed to muster the required responses, and whatever responses they marshaled in the end were too late, too little,” said Dersso, who is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in an interview with IRIN.

Denis Sassou Nguesso, president of the Republic of the Congo, spoke for many African leaders when, in a nationally televised address in early 2014, he said the time had come for action. Africa “must take her destiny into her own hands before waiting for the support of the international community,” he said. “The moment has come for Africa to take a firm position. Whether it is in Nigeria or CAR or South Sudan, Africans must put themselves on the front lines.”

The AU Changes Its Strategy

The African Union is aware of the need for more speed in interventions. The 2002 protocol establishing the African Standby Force (ASF) called for each region of the continent to develop readiness to deploy an intervention battalion in 14 days. This was a top priority after the genocide in Rwanda, where a slow and inadequate intervention allowed the killing of 800,000 people in about 100 days.

But the ASF has been struck by delays and setbacks. Originally intended to be active by 2010, the date now has been pushed back to 2015. Some regions may miss that deadline.

In the aftermath of the failure to promptly intervene in Mali, the AU weighed its options. The issue was a hot topic when leaders gathered for the AU’s 50th anniversary celebration in Addis Ababa in May 2013. The product of the discussion was the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC), designed to be an intermediate mechanism available until the ASF is ready.

The ACIRC calls for a “reservoir” of 5,000 troops contributed voluntarily by nations from across the continent. Out of this reserve, the ACIRC would call up tactical battle groups of 1,500 personnel that could deploy in 10 days or less and sustain themselves for at least 30 days. The structure also calls for an artillery support group, light-armor elements and an air wing.

“The aim is to establish an efficient, robust and credible force,” said AU Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in a report outlining the plan. The force could be deployed rapidly, conduct quick maneuvers and make way for larger AU and/or U.N. peace operations, she said.

The ACIRC has two key differences from the ASF.

•  It relies on lead states: Unlike the ASF, which is aligned to Regional Economic Communities, the ACIRC draws support from wherever capacity exists on the continent. For instance, although the intervention in Mali was first planned by the Economic Community of West African States, it was Chad –– not an ECOWAS member –– that ultimately sent 2,000 troops to the embattled nation. The subregional framework of the ASF has the unintended consequence of excluding contributing countries that are outside the affected region but may be best able to intervene.

An ACIRC intervention would be different. It could consist of multiple troop-contributing countries from around the continent or one key country willing to send a complete brigade of 1,500 Soldiers. “This new approach reflects an attempt to … validate what has happened during the most recent conflicts where the deployment of African operations was only made possible by the mobilization of key voluntary states,” wrote Dr. Romain Esmenjaud in a 2014 paper published in the journal African Security Review. “One can think of the role played by Chad in the CAR or by Uganda and Kenya in Somalia. Interestingly, this role has sometimes been played by states that do not belong to the subregional organizations covering the crisis.”

•  It’s more flexible: The ASF explicitly outlines six scenarios where an intervention would be launched. The roles for the standby force range from a military advisory role to the prevention of genocide. Although these scenarios were intended to offer guidance for the urgency and the scope of the problem, they ended up limiting interventions in actual conflicts not matching any scenario. The ACIRC, on the other hand, is broader and gives itself more leeway to intervene in a number of scenarios, including the “neutralization of terrorist groups,” responding to cross-border criminal activities or putting down an armed rebellion. The ACIRC does not limit itself to peacekeeping and says it can be called into action for the more proactive role of peace enforcement.

“This willingness to enlarge the role of African troops is an obvious reflection of the irrelevance of existing scenarios which the Somalia and Mali crises have demonstrated,” Esmenjaud wrote. “In both cases, African troops have had to engage in real wars that the ASF doctrine would theoretically not have allowed.”

A ‘Just-In-Time’ Model

Dr. Cedric de Coning, a South African security expert and advisor to the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, said intervention models need to be changed. But first and foremost, he said, African militaries should be praised for the strides they’ve made in peacekeeping over the past two decades.

“When we say the ASF is not working, we don’t give enough credit to the African forces and the African countries that are actually deploying and doing these jobs,” he told ADF.

De Coning said the ASF model of a standing rapid-response brigade that can be called into action by a regional organization is a difficult task. Few regions anywhere in the world can achieve it. For instance, the Danish-led Standby High-Readiness Brigade of the United Nations has been abandoned, and the European Union’s Battlegroup rarely has been used, he said.

“When you look at it, none of these standing capacities have worked yet,” he said.

Meanwhile, African nations have established themselves as among the world’s finest peacekeepers. They have built a coalition to win back Somalia from al-Shabaab extremists, they have helped maintain peace in Darfur and they have prevented the worst bloodshed in the CAR. “The only part of the ASF that is not performing is this expectation of the brigades, but capacity has been built and we now have 70,000 African troops deployed through the AU and the United Nations,” de Coning said. “There’s enormous capacity here. There’s no other region in the world that has 70,000 troops deployed other than NATO and the U.S.”

De Coning argues that the key now is to create what he calls a “just-in-time” model for a rapid response to African crises. This would focus on building capacity at a national level as opposed to a regional level. Then, in the event of a crisis, the AU would assemble a “coalition of the willing” based on which countries were able to contribute forces and had sufficient national interest to intervene. The old model of disinterested or neutral peacekeepers is not practical, he said, when it comes to the highly volatile counterinsurgency work that describes most African conflicts today and, most likely, in the future.

“Only those countries with a national interest will be willing to send people at a high cost to themselves in terms of blood and treasure. That’s why I think the standing model will not work,” he said. “It is highly unlikely that that kind of predesigned standing brigade will ever meet the specific requirements of the case at hand.”

Speed is already a great asset for the AU; all that is needed now is proper leadership, funding and the will to build the correct coalitions “just in time” to respond to a particular crisis, de Coning argues.

“The reason that the African Union or the African troops can deploy faster than the United Nations is because they don’t have all the standards and rules and bureaucracies in place that the U.N. or the EU has,” de Coning said. “The EU or the U.N. won’t deploy until there is a proper hospital in place, there’s proper barracks in place, and they have proper communication equipment in place. So if you have those standards and rules, it’s going to take you 90 days to deploy.”

De Coning urged the AU not to create a complex system similar to the U.N. that will only slow down future deployments. When building coalitions, he said, it is important to preserve the interpersonal president-to-president or general-to-general cooperation that puts boots on the ground and planes in the air as fast as possible.

“The comparative advantage of the AU and all the African countries is that they can deploy fast, and they’re willing to be more robust,” de Coning said. “If you turn around and build a new bureaucracy, then you’ve lost the comparative advantage.”