Peace and Security Architecture

(ISS Today)-Progress and success in the efforts towards the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) have been mixed. The first notes of progress and success certainly relate to the bold constitutional provisions for the right of intervention by the African Union, something that was unimaginable during the first generation of continental integration when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) charter principles of sovereign equality, non-interference in the affairs of member states and the pacific settlement of disputes were held as political articles of faith. Another important step is the establishment of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, which has the African Standby Force as its operational instrument. This contrasts starkly with the OAU’s Central Organ that lacked the capacity to implement its decisions relating to peacekeeping interventions.

Progress towards the establishment and operationalisation of the African Standby Force (ASF) has been slow. The ASF was mooted at about the same time as Europe’s Standby High Readiness Brigade, or the Shirbrig. The Shirbrig was operational in the second half of the 1990s and has been deployed as a rapid deployment capability for the United Nations Missions in Ethiopia-Eritrea (UNMEE) in 2000, and contributed a hybrid headquarters component for the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in 2003 during the transition from the ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL).

While Europe is now pursuing the establishment of a much larger European rapid deployment force, the African initiative suffered from inertia right from the start when the idea was shelved from 1995/1996 until 2003. Subsequently, the Africa Union has been unable to meet the first timeline of mid-2005, by which time it was to have established a strategic level management capacity for political and observer missions, while its Regional Economic Communities (RECs)/Regions were to put in place brigade-size standby forces for complex peacekeeping. The new timeline of mid-2006 has also passed without the realisation of these capabilities. The hope now is that by 2010 the AU would have developed the capacity to manage complex peacekeeping operations, while the RECs/Regions would have established the capacity to deploy a mission headquarters for complex peacekeeping.

These benchmarks are attainable in principle but it all depends on how the readiness for these capabilities are measured or gauged. In the meantime, the key benchmark in gauging the readiness of the regional capabilities seems to be the Euro RECAMP, a field training exercise to be sponsored by the European Union in 2010. RECAMP is one of the key external initiatives in the area of peacekeeping training, alongside other initiatives by the United States (such as the African Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) and Operation Focus Relief (OFR)), the UK, and the Nordic countries (such as the Training for Peace (TfP) in Africa Programme, or other support towards centres of excellence for peacekeeping training).

The African Union and the different regions are at different stages in the development of policy tools in the areas of peacekeeping doctrine, training policies, etc. Not much has been done in the Northern region by way of deepening the Northern Africa Regional Capabilities (NARC). In the Eastern Region there are still fundamental problems relating to the syndrome of overlapping RECs and the lack of substantive regional integration and ownership. More pertinently, the Eastern region seems to be experimenting with a regional security mechanism outside of a framework of political and socio-economic integration in one of the most polarised regions of the continent. Southern Africa seems to suffer from a complacent view of regional peace and stability and is therefore in no hurry to establish all the requisite structures of the regional standby force. It is only in West Africa where sufficient progress has been made in almost all aspects of the regional standby arrangements.

Both the African Union and the RECs/Regions are lagging behind on the establishment of substantive civilian and police structures. Even though the concept of the ASF initially focused on the military, recent conflict resolution experiences in Darfur have especially underscored the need for substantive police involvement in complex peacekeeping, to add a physical capability for the protection of human rights. Darfur has also underscored the need for substantive civilian mission leadership, mission management and support capabilities. Yet, in spite of this reality, some RECs/Regions do not see the need to establish full multidimensional and multidisciplinary standby capabilities in respect of the civilian and police components. It can therefore be argued that any new intervention will still be approached on an ad hoc basis, as has been the case in Somalia.

External partners of the AU constantly complain about the lack of absorptive capacity in expediting sufficient institutionalisation for strategic level management of the ASF. But that seems to be only part of the problem. For its part the African Union has for a long time complained about being swamped by of partner liaison meetings, leaving precious little time for the real work. Even though this is no longer the case, it is arguable that the peacekeeping work of the African Union may be characterised as ‘political business as usual.’ In other words, peacekeeping does not appear to have been fully mainstreamed into the political work of the Union and this may explain the inefficient management of the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), the largest ever peacekeeping undertaking by the continental Authority.

From another angle, the slow progress in the establishment and operationalisation of the ASF is precisely because of the divided focus of the African Union, the simple reality being that it finds it more imperative to resolve its hot conflicts before sorting out the standby arrangements.

From the establishment of the Central Organ and the minimalist peacekeeping interventions by the Organisation of African Unity in 1993, to the maximalist peacekeeping agenda of today’s African Union Peace and Security Council, it is the funding and other support from external partners that have made all peacekeeping interventions possible. This speaks a lot not only to the ownership debate, but also to the emerging division of labour between the ‘haves and the have-nots’ and the era of peacekeeping on the cheap.

Global peace and security is not divisible into geo-political regions; neither are the tools for ensuring and maintaining global peace and security. The international community needs to rethink its post-cold war policies regarding the United Nations, policies that have given rise to an African peacekeeping architecture that is for all intents and purposes unsustainable. We need to be reminded that ASF missions are at best stop-gap measures and not ‘inter-locking’ alternatives to intervention by the United Nations.

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