KAMPALA
By Halima Athumani
A year to the target deadline, the Eastern African Standby Force (EASF) has been trained and is currently awaiting deployment on its first mission.
"I'm proud to say that the EASF is actually complete and is now available," Simon Mulongo, a former Ugandan security official appointed as the force's first chairman in 2008, told Anadolu Agency in an interview.
The force was established in 2007 and is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.
It is composed of troops from 13 countries that signed the Memorandum of Understanding to the establishment of the EASF, including Burundi, the current chair.
The other members are Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Seychelles, Sudan and Uganda.
South Sudan has been an observer since 2013 and currently waits for an endorsement by the East African Community to acquire full membership.
"We had to go about challenges of language because some of them are Francophone, others are Anglophone and so it has not been very easy," recalled Mulongo.
He said that they had ultimately agreed on English as the standard communication language, while at the contingent levels troopers can use their native languages.
"[The mission was] to develop a fully operational, multi-dimensional and integrated East African Standby Force, ready for deployment by 2015," Maj. Gen. Oketta Julius Facki, the Ugandan army's representative in parliament, told AA.
Currently each troop-contributing country has a task force that will enable the rapid response force to react within the minimum time required by the African Union Commission (AUC) which is 6 days.
Each of the troop contributing countries is supposed to have a brigade under military training to test its capability on whether it can make a minimum deployment as a solution to African problems.
"Instead of depending on the Americans and the United Nations, since we're already part of the UN, can we project some capability to defend, protect and secure our own citizens in Africa?"
In a continent plagued by internal strife and regional tension, African states are seeking to establish rapid-intervention forces that could be deployed in the event of conflict in member states.
During their 2002 summit in Durban, South Africa, African Union (AU) leaders agreed that all of the continent's five regions should prepare standby troops ready to intervene quickly to keep the peace.
In 2004, each region was tasked with preparing a 3,500-strong force to be ready for deployment by 2015.
The African Standby Forces, currently in the making, will operate under well-established regional blocs.
The Western Africa Standby Brigade is under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States; the Central African Standby Brigade, under the Economic Community of Central African States; and the Southern African Standby Brigade, under the Southern African Development Community.
-Challenges-
Though trained and ready ahead of schedule, the EASF still faces several challenges.
"What's needed now is the political will," Mulongo told AA.
"Whereas the concept of the joint and combined force generated by African member countries is extremely good, the truth is that there could be internal contradictions that may not make it favorable for that regional force to be deployed in the region."
The Peace and Security Architecture, a protocol adopted by the African Union to face crises, says that if two countries from the same region are in conflict, forces from outside the region – or countries that are not parties to the conflict – should be the only ones to deploy forces to the conflict area.
"Some countries want to go out alone for military missions, such as Uganda, which would not be comfortable working with other forces," said Mulongo.
In December, Uganda unilaterally sent troops into South Sudan amid raging fighting between President Salva Kiir's troops and rebel forces loyal to sacked vice-president Riek Machar.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has admitted that his soldiers were engaged in combat fighting alongside Kiir's troops.
Questions, however, remain as to what to do with the troops once they are trained for peacekeeping and enforcement.
"Would they remain in the units of EASF, or would they continue to operate in their national force missions until they are required?" Mulongo asked.
Another challenge would be the use of lethal force which, must be based on a UN Security Council mandate.
"How can you actually direct that a certain regime falls? And what does that mean to the sovereignty and integrity of a given country?" Mulongo wondered aloud.
-Financing-
But of all these challenges, financing remains the toughest.
Providing funds for specialized aspects of the force, such as intelligence and logistics, remains a source of concern for the countries contributing troops.
"How do you go about logistics? Where do you get resources? How do you lift them and who is going to supply them, because we're doing the job of the UN Security Council," Mulongo asked.
The issue requires that the AU and the UN reach an understanding so as to allow the latter to fund missions under Chapter 8 of the UN Charter, including those managed by regional bodies, such as the AUC.
"Sometimes we've had problems because the provision in the charter doesn't allow the UN to fund through anybody else, except if it is a mission mandated by the UN," he added.
Under the Peace and Security Architecture protocol, the AU has a peace fund, which can be accessed to support such operations.
The fund is supported by several bodies, including the European Union, to facilitate peace-support operations on the African continent under the AUC.
"We didn't just want to sit there and wait for the UN to agree," said Mulongo. "But, of course, the contributions are very meager."
There are about 15 missions currently operating under the AUC, including the African Union Mission in Somalia, along with missions in Chad, Liberia, Comoros and Burundi – the latter of which has been scaled down from a military to a political mission.
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