Next US training of African peacekeepers in May

Phase two of ‘Operation Focus Relief’, a US partnership with West African armies to support UN operations in Sierra Leone is due to begin in late May, ‘Washington File’, a publication of the State Department, reported on Tuesday. It quoted the regional director for West Africa in the Department of Defence’s office of African Affairs, Charles Ikins, as saying on 21 March that the groundwork had been completed for training to begin. “We had to settle some training base locations questions, identify units to receive equipment and participate in training, and transport military equipment,” he said. Light infantry weapons would be issued to the two Ghanaian and Senegalese participating battalions in this training segment. In the first phase, initiated in late last year, US instructors in Nigeria equipped two battalions (about 1,5000 men) which are now deployed to Sierra Leone. Ikins said both battalions possessed significant prior peacekeeping experience in Liberia and Sierra Leone are now part of some 10,000 other UN troops in the field. A third phase will involve three additional Nigerian battalions. “All seven West African battalions will come under the command of UNAMSIL and will operate according to its UN mandate and rules of engagement,” he said. Operation Focus Relief is the US response to the crisis in Sierra Leone and differs from its longer-term African Crisis Response Initiative introduced by President Bill Clinton’s administration. Another programme, the African Centre for Strategic Studies, conducts civil-military relations seminars for civilians and military brass, Ikins said.