US committee told Congo needs 100,000 troops

The number of international troops needed for effective peacekeeping in Africa is much larger than anything being considered now, the US House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Africa was told on Thursday. “A serious mission in Congo could easily require 100,000 troops itself,” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying.
Studies of past counterinsurgency efforts indicate that in “difficult missions”, military intervention requires at least several troops, “and possibly even 10 or more for every 1,000 members of a country’s civilian population,” O’Hanlon said during a hearing on the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). Using this criterion, a “tenfold expansion” of the ACRI was needed, according to O’Hanlon. “Possible operations in Angola and Sudan, to say nothing of a more effective mission in Sierra Leone, could push the total up further. Counting ongoing missions as well as hypothetical ones, total deployed troops could again quite easily reach 200,000.”

The subcommittee was convened by its chairman, congressman Ed Royce of California, to seek “clarification” of press accounts suggesting that the Bush Administration wants to move away from ACRI, which has trained about 8,000 soldiers from eight African nations. “This would be an inexplicable pullback,” said Royce. “Let’s stay engaged with the realisation that mistakes may be made.”

[O’Hanlon’s complete report can be found at http://www.brook.edu/views/testimony/ohanlon/20010712.htm]