Editor's Foreword

{ Regions: Deployment of mission HQ for
Chapter VI and preventive deployment
within 30 days.
The focus of the regional brigades in the first half of
2010 will be in ensuring that they are operationally
ready for deployment if needed to execute any of the
six scenarios above.
The five regional brigades planned and held various
exercises during 2009 in anticipation of the AU’s
Exercise Amani Africa, planned for 2010, and which
will test their readiness to implement the conflict and
missions scenarios. The West Africa ASF has already
completed two exercises, while the East Africa ASF is
planning one for late 2009 or early 2010. The East and
West Africa ASF exercises are supported by European
and US funding, equipment and advisers.
The South African Development Community
Standby Brigade (SADCBRIG) recently held Exercise
Golfinho in South Africa. The September 2009 fieldtraining
exercise, involving 7,000 troops from 12
countries, was preceded by a map exercise in Angola
in January 2009 and a command post exercise in
Mozambique in April 2009. In an effort to prove its
own operational competence, the SADC made a
deliberate decision not to draw on external support
for the planning and execution of Exercise Golfinho,
which was instead a locally driven exercise from the
scenario-generation stage onwards.
Tackling the two most difficult situations – a
scenario-six intervention mandated by Chapter VII
of the UN Charter and a scenario-five multidimensional
peacekeeping operation – Golfinho involved
the joint deployment of military police and civilian
components. It also tested force interoperability;
meanwhile the issue of strategic lift was overcome by
using multiple modes of transport (air, road, rail and
sea) to assemble the force. Portuguese-, French- and
English-speaking troops were dispersed throughout
the formations, with each of the battalions composed
of as many countries as possible (other regional
standby forces have tried this tactic with mixed
success). SADCBRIG deemed the exercise a success
saying that all objectives were met, lessons were
learned and shortcomings were identified. After the
exercise, SADCBRIG declared that it could deploy to
anywhere in Africa or even beyond, provided that
the strategic lift is available and logistical support
can be sustained. Indeed, the biggest challenge for
the APSA is not how to intervene in complex emergencies,
but how to equip, fund and sustain such
interventions.
Sub-Saharan Africa
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The situation faced by the AU Mission in Somalia
(AMISOM) is an example of the type of contingency
that the ASF brigades should be able to address, and
exposes the amount of work that remains to be done
by the regional brigades before their 2010 readiness
deadline. Since its establishment in June 2002,
AMISOM has consisted of a lead nation assisted by
other contributing nations; in contrast to the ASF
concept. The AU has learned lessons from these
deployments and hopes to address them through
a serious of regional-level exercises culminating in
Exercise Amani. But unlike the SADCBRIG Exercise
Golfinho, the AU is already using international support
to plan and execute Amani Africa.
TerroriSm in Sub-Saharan africa
Following counter-terrorism operations by US and
Pakistani forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well
as similar efforts by Saudi Arabia, there has been
some movement of al-Qaeda operatives into Yemen,
where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula appears to
have relocated. Yemen’s security forces are facing
substantial difficulties in combating the threats posed
by insurgents, as well as al-Qaeda, but if they can
respond effectively, jihadist migration could shift
towards Somalia.
Though some Somali Islamists seem to harbour
relatively little rancour for the internationally recognised
and essentially secular Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) – particularly after the TFG’s
change of leadership – the administration remains
beleaguered (see IISS Strategic Survey 2009, p. 279). The
TFG was reformed through greater Islamist representation
but, nonetheless, militant Islamism has intensified
with the rise of the rejectionist terrorist groups
al-Shabaab (the youth), which is tied to al-Qaeda, and
Hizbul Islam. In addition to staging terrorist operations
against the TFG throughout Somalia, al-Shabaab
retaliated against a September 2009 US military operation
in Somalia that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan –
one of the most-wanted al-Qaeda members in Africa,
linked to the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania
and Kenya, and the 2002 hotel attack in Kenya – by
attacking AU peacekeepers in Mogadishu, and has
recruited operatives from the Somali diaspora in
North America. Meanwhile, the activity of al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) continued in 2009.
The group has focused mainly on Algerian security
forces, with one attack in summer 2009 killing about
30; in May they also killed a British hostage.
Sub-Saharan
Africa