Major Military Exercise To Boost ECOWAS forces

Some 1,200 West African soldiers are scheduled to hold a major military air, sea and land simulation exercise to enhance the peacekeeping capabilities of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Benin next November, military chiefs said in Ghana on Thursday. The exercise is expected to guide the handling of future crisis situations in a sub-region, where there are currently four peacekeeping operations underway, in Cote d’Ivoire, Western Sahara and the UN’s biggest missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone. "ECOWAS should have a Rapid Reaction Force for quick deployment into crisis situations. It is the way forward. It is always better to intervene early," RECAMP Project Officer, Colonel Philippe Beny, told IRIN on Friday. At the closing session of RECAMP 4, Brigadier-General Elhadji Kandji, Deputy Military Advisor at the UNDPKO, said African peacekeeping operations were crucial in complementing the UN's role, particularly when the UN was not in the position to deploy rapidly enough as was in the case of Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. The November exercise forms the tactical military component of a just-ended major international peacekeeping and training seminar in the Ghanaian capital Accra, dubbed 'RECAMP 4'. However, behind closed door discussions continued Friday. RECAMP - Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capabilities - is a French security and defence policy, aimed at helping African states under the umbrella of sub-regional organisations to acquire military capabilities that would enable them to conduct peacekeeping operations on the African continent. RECAMP intervened in Central African Republic and Guinea Bissau in 1997 and 1999, and also in Ivory Coast to support the ECOWAS and UN peacekeeping missions after the failed coup in September 2002. The US government has a similar policy, American African Contingency Training Assistance (ACOTA) that is has been operating in Anglophone West African countries. An Initial Planning Guidance (IPG) document was presented on Friday that will direct the theatre of operations in Benin. It has been submitted to ECOWAS Chairman of Defense Staff, Lieutenant-General Seth Obeng. The IPG is expected to be further fine-tuned at a strategic conference scheduled to be held in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, next month. Though it is envisaged that training exercises initiate novel ways in which peacekeeping missions are conducted, RECAMP officials insisted that they are basically reinforcing the capability of ECOWAS countries to handle crisis situations themselves. "We must be realistic: this is not new training for the troops,” Colonel Beny told IRIN. “What we are doing is to create an imaginary crisis situation, share our experiences and then harness the common capabilities and procedures of both Anglophone and Francophone countries in the sub-region to tackle conflicts," he said. "We are all together in this exercise. Officers from France, Britain and the US are all part of the Joint Staff to help ECOWAS channel its military capabilities in the same direction and with similar goals," Beny added. International organisations and the donor community have echoed boosting the capabilities of sub-regional bodies like ECOWAS rather than individual countries as a way forward to tackle the myriad of conflict situations afflicting the African continent. A special facility, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, opened in Ghana last November to providing peacekeeping training for military officers in the region. According to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), there are currently seven UN military peacekeeping missions in Africa. For France, the evolution of the RECAMP programme to the changing situations is a permanent concern to tackle the new needs of African countries. "RECAMP is not competing with other programmes but is adapted to the stakes of peacekeeping on the African continent," said Deputy Head of the French Armed Forces, Rear Admiral Coldefy. “It is perfectly in tune with the defense and security policy of the African union and should be continued,” he added.