African standby force

Map of the five regions of the ASF

The African Standby Force (English: African Standby Force , in short: ASF ) is an international military association , that of the African Union is controlled.

history

decision

The ASF is part of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and emerged in the context of bloody conflicts in the 1990s on the African continent, especially the genocide in Rwanda . Against this background, the Organization for African Unity (OAU) decided to found the African Union (AU) as a strong continental alliance. As part of this reorganization of the continent's political organization, the APSA was created with the African standby force as one of five pillars for the maintenance of peace in Africa. In 2003 the protocol on the establishment of the Peace and Security Council was ratified, which also provided for the establishment of the African standby force.

implementation

The five APSA pillars with the Council for Peace and Security as the central institution

The ASF is to be set up in two phases:

• 

  Ugandan soldiers during a maneuver by the East African Brigade in Djibouti in November 2009
  Phase 1 (scheduled for June 30, 2005): The ASF should be able to cope with some of the possible types of missions. In addition, the troops are to be given more strategic training. The brigades are to be set up and trained at the regional level.
• Phase 2 (planned until June 30, 2010): By the end of this phase, the ARSP should be able to take on more complex peacekeeping missions. In addition, the rank of major general is to be introduced to steer the troops. The main aim of the regional brigades is to enable a rapid deployment in crisis situations.

For the implementation of phase 2, timetables with concrete measures were developed, timetable I for the period June 2006 to March 2008 and timetable II for April 2008 to December 2010. After the troops could not be fully operational in 2010, timetable III until December Established in 2015.

In October 2015, the regional brigades were brought together for the first time for an ASF maneuver in South Africa. The maneuver , which had to be relocated from Lesotho to South Africa for political reasons , was considered an important test of the ASF's readiness for action. In 2016, the full operational readiness of the ASF was officially announced. In 2017, a commission of experts on behalf of the AU Security Council examined the regional brigades of the ASF for operational readiness and found significant deficiencies in two of the five brigades. The ASF's logistic center in Douala, Cameroon, was officially inaugurated on January 5, 2018 . In October 2018, several workshops took place on the orientation of the African Union, in particular with regard to changed requirements such as terrorism, for example through Boko Haram .

structure

East African Brigade logo

Like the entire African Union, the African standby force relies on the cooperation of several regional alliances. These correspond to the most important economic alliances on the continent: (multiple answers)

Regional brigades of the African standby force

North Africa (NARC)	West Africa (ESF)	Central Africa (CASF)	East Africa (EASF)	South Africa (SASF)
Egypt	Benin	Equatorial Guinea	Ethiopia	Botswana
Algeria	Burkina Faso	Cameroon	Djibouti	Lesotho
Libya	Ivory Coast	Republic of the Congo	Eritrea	Madagascar
Mauritania	Gambia	Sao Tome and Principe	Kenya	Malawi
Tunisia	Ghana	Central African Republic	Comoros	Mauritius
Western Sahara	Guinea-Bissau	( Angola )	Rwanda	Mozambique
	Cape Verde	( Burundi )	Seychelles	Namibia
	Liberia	( Democratic Republic of the Congo )	Somalia	Zambia
	Mali		Sudan	Zimbabwe
	Nigeria		Uganda	South Africa
	Niger		( Burundi )	Swaziland
	Senegal			Tanzania
	Sierra Leone			( Angola )
				( Democratic Republic of the Congo )

According to the plans, each of these regions should provide a brigade of around 5,000 men, which together form the African task force with 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. An internal investigation in 2017 showed that the brigades from North Africa and Central Africa did not meet the requirements and that their development was significantly behind the three other armies.

Competencies

In the founding act of the African Union, it is explicitly stated that the AU has the right to intervene in a member state after a resolution of the assembly in order to fight war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity and to restore peace and security. Six scenarios have been set for intervention by the ASF:

1. Military advice to a political mission
2. Observation mission in cooperation with the United Nations
3. Sole observation mission
4. Preventive peacekeeping mission
5. Complex peacekeeping mission
6. African Union intervention, e.g. B. to prevent genocide

For scenarios 1 to 5, the ASF should be able to form a task force within 30 days, for scenario 6 a powerful force should be available after 14 days.

organization

Smail Chergui , currently Commissioner for Peace and Security

The headquarters of the ASF is in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa , the logistic center (LOGBASE) in Douala , Cameroon. The African Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union is of great importance for the organization of the ARSP. The PSC is the only institution authorized to order or terminate ARSP missions. The PSC is advised on military issues by a committee of the ASF's military staff. In general, the force is under the direct control of the African Union Commission, with the Peace and Security Commissioner playing a central role in the ARSP. The member states hand over the command of their troop contingents to the Commission.

The African Union as a whole is supposed to steer and coordinate the activities of the five regions, for example to promote the standardization of the material. It also serves as a supervisory body for the development and management of the regional brigades. In order to do justice to the international nature of the force, leadership positions are to be filled in a rotating system that takes into account the competence and contribution of the states.

Structures for organizing the brigades are also to be created at regional level. The founding contract of the ASF provides that a headquarters and a permanent planning unit should be created in each of the five regions. In addition, facilities for logistics and training of soldiers are planned.

literature

• POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AFRICAN STANDBY FORCE AND THE MILITARY STAFF COMMITTEE, African Union, Addis Ababa, 2013
• Alhaji Sarjoh Bah, Elizabeth Choge-Nyangoro, Solomon Dersso, Brenda Mofya and Tim Murithi: The African Peace and Security Architecture , 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ISSAfrica.org: African Standby Force: how the AU can get it right. October 30, 2015, accessed April 22, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): African Standby Force - Strong Troop or Castle in the Air? | DW | October 19, 2015. Retrieved April 22, 2019 (German). 
3. ↑ ISSAfrica.org: Is the African Standby Force any closer to being deployed? November 2, 2018, accessed April 19, 2019 . 
4. ^ Constitutif Act of African Union. July 6, 2013, accessed April 19, 2019 . 
5. ^ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Ten Years of the African Union | bpb. Retrieved April 22, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Foreign Office: Foreign Office - The African Union. Retrieved April 22, 2019 .