African Standby Force


The African Standby Force is an international, African continental, and multidisciplinary peacekeeping force with military, police and civilian contingents that acts under the direction of the African Union. The ASF is to be deployed in times of crisis in Africa. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, serves as the Force's Headquarters. Douala, Cameroon, was selected in 2011 as the site of the AU's Continental Logistics Base.
In 2003, a 2010 operational date for the force was set, and subsequently missed.

Origins

Before the founding of the African Union in 2001, its predecessor Organisation of African Unity did not provide appropriate tools for a collective and comprehensive acting of African states in times of violent crisis, mostly due to the shared value of non-interference into the internal affairs of states. During the 1990s, a series of violent conflicts in Africa, most importantly the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, urged the African states for a change in their common security collaboration. After the establishment of the AU in 2001, the non-interference clause of OAU was not longer valid. The Constitutive Act now gave the AU the right to intervene in a member state in grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
The same year, a new African Peace and Security Architecture was presented, in order to build and strengthen African capacities for managing and resolving conflicts on the continent. The APSA comprises five pillars that complement one another: A Peace and Security Council, a Continental Early Warning System, a Panel of the Wise, a Peace Fund, and an African Standby Force. The ASF is therefore a constituting element of the APSA.
The establishment of the ASF was directed by the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, which was signed in July 2002 and entered into force in December 2003. The key document explicitly recognized the roles of the RECs in promoting peace and security in Africa.
For that reason, the final concept for the ASF, presented in the Maputo Report of July 2003, at the time provided for five regional Standby Brigade forces: A North Africa Regional Standby Brigade, an East Africa Standby Brigade ; a Force Multinationale de l'Afrique Centrale ; a Southern Africa Standby Brigade ; and an ECOWAS Standby Brigade. The same document defined six ASF deployment Scenarios. The organization at that time agreed on force levels of about 15,000 soldiers continentwide.
The ASF Policy Framework Document from May 2003 aimed the development of the ASF in two phases:
  • Phase One : The AU's envisaged the establishment a strategic level management capacity for the management of Scenarios 1-2 missions, while Regional Economic Communities /Regions would complement the African Union by establishing regional standby forces up to a brigade size to achieve up to Scenario 4.
  • Phase Two : By the year 2010, the AU planned to have developed the capacity to manage complex peacekeeping operations, while the RECs/Regions will continue to develop the capacity to deploy a Mission Headquarters for Scenario 4, involving AU/Regional peacekeeping forces.
Three ASF Roadmaps were developed to guide the operalization of ASF:
  • Roadmap I covered the period from June 2006 to March 2008
  • Roadmap II covered the period from April 2008 to December 2010
  • Roadmap III covered the period from December 2010 to December 2015
The ASF Roadmap III recognized that most goals of Phase One were not met until 2010 and therefore set the date for the achievement of the Full Operational Capability to 2015. In December 2013, an assessment of the African Standby Force by an AU Panel of Experts concluded that the ASF is unlikely to achieve FOC in 2015 without major efforts made by all stakeholders.

Composition

Article 13 of the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union foresaw an ASF to be composed of standby multidisciplinary contingents, with civilian and military components in their countries of origin and ready for rapid deployment at appropriate notice. For that purpose, the protocol urged the member states to take steps to establish
standby contingents for participation in peace support missions decided on by the PSC or intervention authorized by the AU Assembly. The strength and types of such contingents, their degree of readiness and general location should be determined in so-called Peace Support Standard Operating Procedures, and shall be subject to periodic reviews depending on prevailing crisis and conflict situations.

Mandate

According to the PSC Protocol, signed in 2002, the ASF should enable the PSC to perform its responsibilities. Article 13 of the protocol specifically directs the following functions to the ASF:
According to the protocol, the ASF is suggested to cooperate with the United Nations and its Agencies, other relevant international organizations and regional organizations, as well as with national authorities and NGOs, where appropriate. The detailed tasks of the ASF and its modus operandi for each authorized mission are to be considered and approved by the Peace and Security Council upon recommendation of the commission.

Mission scenarios

The Maputo Report and The Policy Framework for the Establishment of the ASF from May 2003 mentions six scenarios for the deployment of the regional contingents of the Force in Peace Support Operations, ascending in their complexity of structures, management efforts and resources for deployment and sustainment.
As long-term goals for the deployment of the Force, it was planned that scenario 1-4 should be able to deploy in 30 days, scenario 5 should complete deployment in 90 days, with the military component being able to deploy in 30 days, and finally, Scenario 6, implied that will be important the AU can deploy a robust military force in 14 days.
The ASF Roadmap III demanded the six mission scenarios for PSOs to be revised and adopted to new paradigms of Peacekeeping.

Rapid Deployment Capability

The ASF Policy Framework and the Roadmap for the Operationalization of the ASF called for the establishment of a "Rapid Deployment Capability" capable of intervening, within fourteen days, in cases of genocide and gross human rights abuses under Scenario 6. The RDC was decided to be an integral part of the regional Standby Forces to be deployed at the entry point, as a precursor to the deployment of a larger mission. At the end of 2013, the Expert Panel of the AU stated that the goal, recommended in Roadmap III, to test, evaluate and operationalize the RDC by 2012, was not met.

Current status

Exercises

From 2008 until 2010, the training and capacity building cycle AMANI AFRICA I, designed to evaluate the effectiveness ASF for an AU mandated peace support operation was conducted by the African Union in collaboration with the European Union. It climaxed in the first continental exercise, called a Command Post Exercise, of this kind in Addis Ababa. AMANI AFRICA I focused mostly on validating policies and processes, at the continental strategic level, in employing the African Standby Force within the broader African Peace and Security Architecture. According to the AU, it provided objective evidence to support proposals for further organizational and operational developments of training, procedures and multidimensional capacities of the ASF.
The African Union Commission is planning to conduct a field training exercise in October 2014 in Lesotho at the climax of an ongoing training cycle known as AMANI AFRICA II. According to the AU, the AMANI AFRICA II cycle aims at enabling the ASF to achieve its FOC by 2015 and especially at "validating the capacity of the African Union to grant a mandate for the use of a Rapid Deployment Capability, as an initial operation for scenario six and lead in the process, a fully-fledged multidimensional peace operation."
Each regional force is not on the same level of development.
In January 2006 Ishaya Hassan of Nigeria was promoted to major general and assigned as the chief of the standby force staff, located in Addis Ababa. Hassan later died, and as of 2007 no replacement had been found. The position was vacant for at least three years.

North African Regional Capacity

The North African Regional Capacity or North African Region Capability was created to fill a sub-regional vacuum in North Africa. The Arab Maghreb Union has been dormant since its establishment in 1989. Throughout the last two decades, revitalizing the AMU proved to be very difficult due to political dynamics amongst member states. Thus, there was a need to create a regional mechanism to enable North African countries to contribute to the African Standby Force. This is why in mid 2007 a memorandum of understanding was drafted to establish NARC.
In the absence of a joint secretariat to coordinate cooperation amongst NARC member states, Libya voluntarily played this role during the initial phase of starting up NARC which lasted for three years. Later on, the second meeting of NARC Ministers of Defence held in Tripoli in December 2008 approved a recommendation to establish an executive secretariat to be located in Tripoli. Subsequently, the NARC Executive Secretariat and Planning Element were inaugurated in April 2009. It was however, expected that staff from other member states will join the Executive Secretariat and PLANELM in September 2010. While both Egypt and Algeria had identified staff for the two elements, these countries were yet to sign the hosting agreement with Libya, and in some cases the deployment of staff was constrained by domestic considerations including promotions and retirements. Meanwhile, progress in generating the civilian officers for the PLANELM lagged even further behind; this essentially meant that the NARC PLANELM was purely military in 2010.
While the Brigade HQ to be located in Cairo and the two logistic depots to be located in Algiers and Cairo have been identified, they have yet to be made operational, due to political and bureaucratic constraints within the member states. Furthermore, it seems that creating, rostering and deploying a civilian component is somewhat problematic due to the voluntary and individualistic nature of this component and the lack of AU strategic guidance in this regard.
It was reported via the Africa Research Bulletin that U.S. Army Africa's commanding general, Major General William B. Garrett III, had made a visit in early May 2010 to Tripoli to discuss relationships between the United States and Libyan land forces. He met Libya's chief of staff for Army Mechanised Units and executive director of the NARC, Major General Ahmed Oun.
On 28 May 2010, the NARC Executive Secretary, Major-General Ahmed Oun, signed, on behalf of NARC, the memorandum of understanding on cooperation between the African Union, the Regional Economic Communities and the Regional Standby Brigades of Eastern Africa and Northern Africa, at the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa.
It was reported in January 2011 by Magharebia that Algeria was to host the NARC headquarters. Under an agreement made on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, Algeria was planned to become the seat of both NARC headquarters and the force's administration.
The "Arab Spring" led to a major setback in the establishment of the NARC.
Members include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Western Sahara. Morocco and Mauritania are now more closely associated with ECOWAS peace efforts, and Tunisia did not become actively involved in the NARC.