Africa: More Peacekeepers, Capacity For Lethal Action Needed Africa Committee Told

13 July 2001
allAfrica.com
By Charles Cobb Jr.

Washington, D.C. — The number of international troops needed for effective peacekeeping in Africa is much larger than anything being considered now, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa was told Thursday. "A serious mission in Congo could easily require 100,000 troops itself," said Michael O'Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in arms and security issues.

O'Hanlon said his studies of past counterinsurgency efforts indicate that in "difficult missions," military intervention requires at least several troops, "and possibly even 10 or more for every 1, 000 members of a country's civilian population."

Using this criterion, O'Hanlon said, a "tenfold expansion" of ACRI was needed. A "serious" mission in Congo alone "could easily require 100, 000 troops itself," he told the subcommittee. "Possible operations in Angola and Sudan, to say nothing of a more effective mission in Sierra Leone, could push the total up further. Counting ongoing missions as well as hypothetical ones, total deployed troops could again quite easily reach 200,000."

The subcommittee, was convened by its chair, congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) to seek "clarification" of press accounts suggesting that the Bush Administration wants to move away from the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) which has trained about 8,000 soldiers from eight African nations. "This would be an inexplicable pullback," said Royce. "Let's stay engaged with the realization that mistakes may be made."

"ACRI's future is under interagency review," the State Department's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa, William M. Bellamy told the subcommittee. The purpose of the review, said Bellamy, is to "explore options." The administration, he insisted, is "committed to continuing the kind of political-military engagement with Africa that ACRI has established."

One idea under consideration, Bellamy said, was transforming ACRI "into something along the lines of" Operation Focus Relief. That program, created during the Clinton Administration, partners the United States with West African armies to support UN peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone. Unlike ACRI, training in the use of lethal force can be conducted.

Also testifying, Senegal Ambassador, Mamadou Mansour Seck, a retired general, told the subcommittee that peacekeeping requires U.S. help with weapons. "We don't need the military - the GIs from the U.S. - to come and do the job for us. [but] You have to prepare for peacekeeping like a war. You have to prepare for an eventual enemy."

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