Kigali — Defence Chiefs and other security experts are attending a four-day workshop on Disaster Management and Crisis Response in the East African region at Imperial Botanical Hotel, Entebbe in Uganda, which is ending on August 29.
The purpose of the workshop is to discuss ways in which the army and other security organs like the police force can be involved in managing disasters, whether they are man-made like civil disturbances, or are natural calamities like floods or earthquakes.
Indeed, like one consultant commented, security forces remain largely idle during peace time since the way they are constituted is only for war. Yet these forces are highly organized, and they can respond to disasters in much quicker time than other bodies.
They also have another added advantage - that of getting a big pie from the national budget that can be shared with other institutions. Resources like trucks can be used to ferry a big number of people from disaster-struck areas. There are many instances where one reads of foreign forces evacuating people from a disaster area.
There are others when army engineers are used to very quickly put back a bridge that has broken down, or army doctors sent into areas of affliction - not because civilian experts have failed out of incompetence, but are overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the disaster.
More, security forces are considered to be more rustic - rough-edged if you wish - so that we assume they can deal with even bloody conflicts that are not for the faint-hearted, with more expediency.
The fact that this is a regional force can lend a lot of respectability and zero bias in such cases as unraveling sectarian unrests.
In countries where there is a high degree of accusations of leaders being partial to their geographical birthplaces, a regional disaster management force is highly appealing as it would be regarded as a neutral force.
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The number thing the military needs to do is to go back in the barracks. They need to get out of the peoples houses -parliaments and other such legislative fora - and become accountable to the taxpayers: the citizens that they are supposed to protect and serve. These shrouded and secretive kinds of meetings only serve to reinforce the view that they are venues for exchanging ideas on how to rig elections through orchestrated violence, torture and terrorising the citizens usually at the behest of the sitting governments and life presidents. The armed forces who are bankrolled and paid for by the citizens rightly belong to them: the people. They certainly do not belong any one person be they president or not. It is certainly unconstitutional and simply unacceptable and unprofessional to witness military forces aiding and abetting in subverting the electoral process thereby helping steal elections from the people; like they just did in Zimbabwe and Mauritania. Also, evidently the armies are unnecessarily too huge. They are a drain to economies especially when their budgets are not vetted. And so they should be reduced and those soldiers who remain should be deployed to work to help build the infrastructure that is so lacking in most of Africa. The armies should be encouraged to have employable skills besides fighting skills. And that shouldn't be restricted only to just doctors and engineers. There are skills besides these that army personnel should be asked to acquire and utilize.