Ghana Takes a ‘People-Centric’ Approach

Vice Adm. Mathew Quashie, Ghana’s chief of defence staff, spoke with ADF after he gave the keynote address on June 25, 2014, at the U.S. Africa Command Academic Symposium at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ADF: Perhaps we could start with a bit of background about yourself and some of the career posts that have led you to your current position.

Quashie: Like every one of us, I started from the basics. I did my basic-level naval course at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, U.K. In the Navy, you have to do a lot of technical courses in the beginning. I specialized in communication. Then, as I joined my fleet, I did whatever I had to do as a watch-keeping officer, and then eventually I became the second in command. I took command of several ships, but I think the most significant one was when I became the captain of our flagship, Achimota. At that time we had an appointment called the senior officer afloat, so I became the most senior seagoing officer. Significantly, this appointment took me to Liberia and then later to Sierra Leone for ECOMOG [Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group] operations. I have been on the staff several times in the commands and also in the Navy headquarters. The top jobs were chief of staff of the Ghana Navy Headquarters and the flag officer of the Eastern Naval Command from 2005 to 2009. After that I became the chief of naval staff of the Ghana Armed Forces from 2009 to 2013, and that was my last appointment before I became the chief of defence staff. I also taught in the staff college here and the staff college in Nigeria. I’ve done a couple of United Nations peacekeeping operations in Lebanon and Western Sahara. In Western Sahara, I became the chief military personnel officer, CMPO.

ADF: You have spoken about the need for “population-centric security sector transformation” in Ghana. What does that mean to you? It’s not something often mentioned by the military.

Quashie: In the past, when we talked about national security, we only thought about the nation’s territorial integrity. And more often than not, people forget the issues that impinge on national security, which are best described as “people-centric.” If you have conflicts, the people suffer. In areas where there are conflicts, like in the northern part of our country and sometimes the eastern part, people are made homeless. You have floods, which are a security threat that affect people. You have fires that affect people. If things are not going well and the economy is not right, it slows development. It affects people by way of education, health and maybe food. So if these things are not gotten right, it will affect the security of the state, because out of this there could be agitation and unemployment. So I think that, with time, the world has realized that security is not just the physical security that you see. The issue of health, the issue of education, the issue of employment, all these things, if they are not addressed properly, will cause security problems. There is a need for us to look at the needs of the human being and deal with these issues. I think if we are able to do that, then we’ll have peace and tranquility, and the country can develop.

ADF: What is the role for the military in that?

Quashie: You know, more often than not, when conflicts happen it is not enough for the police alone to handle them. Most of the time they get overwhelmed and then, constitutionally, they can get support from the military. So any time it starts, we are on standby. When you have floods, we have our engineers who repair bridges and roads. We respond to fire outbreaks and the collapse of buildings. I would say that the military is always ready, professional and systematic. They do these types of things better than other organizations. This is the type of relationship we have for assistance to civil authority.

ADF: Of course, the military can’t be everywhere, and the police can’t be everywhere. In a lot of places, notably in northern Ghana, the most important figures are traditional leaders. Is there an effort being made by the military to partner with these traditional leaders to provide security?

Quashie: We have different levels of security arrangements in the districts and the regions across the nation. We have DISEC [District Internal Security Committees], and we have REGSEC [Regional Security Committees]. The military has members on those committees. These are the people who collaborate with the chiefs. So the military doesn’t go directly unless we are put in places where they need the military support, then we can deal with the chiefs. But generally it is the regional and the district bodies, of which the military is a part, that go to the chiefs initially and do the collaboration. For example, if the military is in Bawku [an area in northern Ghana where there has been ethnic fighting], we make sure that we are always in tune and in touch with the chief there so we can altogether assist to bring peace to that region.

ADF: Ghana has recently invested in added protection and surveillance of its exclusive economic zone. This includes protecting shipping lanes, protecting energy extraction and protecting fishing rights. Ghana has invested in high-tech tools for maritime domain awareness and is creating a naval special forces unit for rapid response to maritime threats. Could you describe these efforts and explain why they are important?

Quashie: I’d say about a decade ago we were struggling to maintain and manage the Navy, but in the process, the discovery of oil occurred. Countries like ours, even though we have a coastline, we were not too conversant with issues of maritime strategy and maritime security. And therefore, [historically] mostly our issues of security have been land-centric. That was the case until the issues of narcotics by sea and poaching became prevalent. They had been there long ago, but the new threats, the new trends, like the narcotics traffickers using the vast sea, made it necessary to address it. And then, significantly, when we struck oil, we had already learned from other countries how the protection of oil reserves and oil resources can be a big [challenge for] a nation. So there was a reawakening and a bit of a paradigm shift from land-centric to focusing on maritime security issues. Based on that, we quickly had to resource the Navy to be able to meet these new, contemporary challenges. And that is how we came up with more ships; we built a Slipway [at the Western Naval Base in Sekondi], got a domain center for monitoring ships, and recently added the Vessel Traffic Management Information System, which was done by the Maritime Authority of Ghana in conjunction with the Navy, and the Air Force is also involved in maritime patrol. So we try to link all these maritime resources and the various stakeholders to be able to marshal resources and effectively patrol our waters.

ADF: What has been the impact?

Quashie: We’ve gained some dividends. Because recently, even though sea robbery is going on in the Gulf of Guinea, we see that they normally do it from our eastern border with Togo, and then they go way out of Ghana and by the time they are making landfall, they are in the other country. They do this because they know that we have got a formidable Navy that is patrolling our waters to keep it safe.    

ADF: What is Ghana doing to secure its land borders?

Quashie: We have the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, and we have the Immigration Service, which deals with the border mostly, and then the police who are everywhere. And so they collaborate to do searches, sometimes random searches and mandatory searches at the borders. Our president is the chairman of ECOWAS [the Economic Community of West African States] now, and, based on the issues in Mali and Boko Haram in Nigeria, he called the security chiefs of the subregion for a meeting. There, one of the main issues was we realized that there is a need for us to collaborate in terms of border patrols. This will be put in place and will really go a long way to putting the cross-border criminal activities at bay.

ADF: You have also mentioned peacekeeping. Ghana has a rich history of contributing to peacekeeping operations. About 80,000 Ghanaian peacekeepers have served in 31 U.N. missions in the past four decades. What is Ghana’s philosophy when it comes to deciding whether to participate in a peacekeeping mission, particularly on the African continent?

Quashie: Ghana has a foreign policy where it strives to be at peace and in a good relationship with all countries and to support subregional, regional and global bodies. That includes ECOWAS, the African Union and the U.N. So this is our main mandate and the philosophy of our foreign policy. So wherever there is a problem in the world, we put ourselves as ready to assist if it’s possible. But the constraints are that we’ve also got to look at our home security. We are now in five countries: Côte d’Ivoire , Mali, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan. So obviously we think we have enough for now, taking into consideration the strength of our military, our population and the resource level. Those are our considerations. As I’ve declared earlier, we want to be a global partner in peace support operations.

ADF: With President John Dramani Mahama taking over the chairmanship of ECOWAS, you have a leadership role in the regional organization. What will that mean?

Quashie: Yes, I automatically become the chairman of the ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff. You see, all these institutions have been set up to facilitate subregional security. We have the ECOWAS Standby Force, which is evolving. It is this force that initiated the issue of going into Mali, AFISMA [African-led International Support Mission in Mali], before the U.N. came in and took over. So we try to be the first line. We try to find a domestic solution to the problems before you call the international body to assist.

ADF: Do you have a hope or a vision for the future of the ECOWAS Standby Force? Do you think that in the future, if there is a crisis like the one in Mali, there will be a West Africa force ready to deploy rapidly?

QUASHIE: This concept is still evolving. It’s a new thing to take on. The challenges have to do with logistics. The GDPs of most African countries are limited. These are the challenges, but we never stop talking to the international communities to see how best they can help. And they’ve been doing that. The European Union assisted in support and training in Mali, plus the U.S. and the U.K. and other countries. They all came to provide the necessary support.