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The Need for ‘Civilianising’ the African Standby Force
Solomon Ayele Dersso, Training for Peace Programme, ISS Addis Ababa
The African Standby Force (ASF) is emerging as a highly militarised enterprise. This is evident for anyone closely observing developments in the operationalisation of the ASF - one of the essential pillars of the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Architecture. The need particularly for the civilian dimension to emerge as the most important feature of the ASF, i.e. the “civilianising” of the ASF, is probably an area that did not receive adequate attention among policy makers and analysts in the field.
The establishment of the ASF is a result of the paradigm shift in the approach of the continental body, the AU, to the maintenance of peace and security in Africa. There has clearly been a shift from the OAU’s unflinching adherence to state-based principles of sovereignty and non-interference to the AU’s principle of the responsibility to protect enshrined under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act, what Ambassador Said Djinnit, former AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, famously called the principle of non-indifference. The result has been the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture for which the ASF is envisaged as one of its implementing tools. According to the Protocol on the Peace and Security Council (PSC) as well as the Solemn Declaration on a Common Defence and Security Policy, this admittedly ambitious but necessary structure, is planned to operate as a mechanism for undertaking various peacekeeping and peace-building functions, including humanitarian intervention stipulated under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU.
There is no doubt that the ASF is an entity with a responsibility to uphold and promote the noble ideals of peace and security, democratic order, human rights and rule of law – ideals or situations that are in short supply on our troubled continent. Indeed, this is what makes it worthy of all our attention and support. This same reason makes the evolution of the ASF as a militarised enterprise a worrisome trend that needs to be reversed by ‘civilianizing’ the ASF.
The military-heavy nature of the ASF, as some would like to call it, is manifested in different forms. It starts with the terminology used to describe it, beginning with the term ‘Force’ in its name. The military-heaviness of this terminology has led to huge misconception about what the ASF is and stands for, not only among members of the general public but also even on the part of experts and others working in the area. The term ‘brigade’ used to refer to the regional peacekeeping elements evokes the same confusion and controversy.
This has been recognised even by the African Chiefs of Defence and Security who in their March 2008 meeting decided to change the name of the ASF and some of its nomenclature. They agreed that the terms ‘Force’ and ‘Brigade’ had too much of a military connotation and did not accurately reflect the multidimensionality of peacekeeping. While this change is yet to be effected, the peacekeeping component of the Northern Region has adopted the designation Northern Africa Regional Capabilities instead of the official ‘Standby Brigade’.
Aside from the terminology, the militirisation is also evident on an institutional level as one of the components of the ASF is the Military Staff Committee. This serves as the chief policy/decision advising or proposing body. It is purely composed of senior military officers, who are defence attachés of African embassies to the AU. The question is then why would a multidimensional entity have an exclusively military body as its policy and decision-originating mechanism? The military-heaviness of this is expressed not only by the fact that it is a military-only body but also most importantly in terms of the content of the policy proposals or decisions that originates from it.
The need for civilianizing the ASF additionally emerges from the fact that the civilian dimension of the organisation is the least developed or institutionalised of the three components of the ASF. There is no civilian personnel at the AU ASF Planing Eelement (PLANLEM) as well as in a number of Regional Economic Communities (RECs)/Regional Mechanisms (RMs), as yet. This raises various problems. First, the PLANLEM does not have the expertise nor a responsible person to follow up the institutional and policy development of the civilian dimension of the ASF. Although this has not hampered the development of a civilian policy framework, thanks to civilian experts and training institutions, at the AU level the absence of civilian personnel means that the policy has yet to find proper owner. The implication of this is that this policy framework is not institutionalised and hence not properly integrated into the overall ASF framework.
It has also led to the absence of participation of the civilian component in the development of the various policy tools and structures of the ASF. This means that even if the civilian component is made fully operational, it will be operating within a military-heavy framework, which is established and dominated by the military and to a lesser extent the police components. This will perpetuate the military-heaviness of the ASF and undermines the civilian component and thereby ultimately deny the ASF its promised genuine multidimensionality.
There are three considerations that make the ‘civilianise’ the ASF important. The first of this, which is a reflection of the change in the nature of peace support operations, is the nature of the tasks that the ASF is envisaged to undertake. These relate to not only humanitarian relief, Security Sector Reform, Disarmement Demobilisation and Reintegration, human rights, constitutional reform, electoral reform, transitional justice and reconciliation, legislative and institutional changes, but also those relating to infrastructural development and economic recovery.
Secondly, there is a policy imperative that the ASF should be a multidimensional body. This is provided for in Article 13 of the Protocol on the PSC, which states that the ASF ‘shall be composed of standby multidisciplinary contingents, with civilian and military components’.
Last but not least is the character and historical record of African military forces. They have a checkered history in supporting peace and stability and in respecting democratic order, rule of law and human rights. They are, on the contrary, more famous for thwarting democratic processes and constitutional rule and for their dictatorial tendencies. According to Professor Patrick J. McGowan of Arizona State University, between 1956-2001, there were 80 coups, 108 failed coup attempts, and 139 coup plots by the military in 48 sub-Saharan African states. Despite important changes in recent years, the coups d’etats in Guinea, Mauritania, and recently Madagascar give little reason to believe that African militaries have changed their spots. Given this record, it is naive to expect these same militaries to be in charge of implementing the noble ideals such as restoration of peace and security, establishment and consolidation of democratic order, rule of law and human rights in distant societies. The attack that some within the ASF establishment try to direct against some civilian institutions, as observed in a recent workshop held in Addis Ababa, gives further credence to this view.
Clearly, one would be justified to be apprehensive about the military-heaviness of the ASF and add voice to the call for civilianizing the ASF. For the structural flaw that this entails will ultimately have serious implications on the nature and quality of service to be delivered by the ASF.
Given this, it is important that the AU, as it prepares to test the operational readiness of the ASF through Exercise AMANI Africa in 2010, revisits the way the ASF is being developed and take the necessary corrective measures to make the ASF a truly multidimensional body to which the civilian component forms an important part. Firstly, this should involve effecting the changes to the name ASF and some other military-heavy nomenclature such as ‘brigade’. Secondly, the current military staff committee should be also renamed and restructured to have multidimensional composition. Thirdly, the long overdue posts for the civilian component should be speedily filled and the component is accordingly made fully functional. Finally and most importantly, the various policy frameworks as well as the structures they institutionalised should be revised to allow the civilian component to feature prominently and be fully integrated into the ASF framework.