Peacekeeping in Africa: Politics, Security and the Failure of Foreign Military Assistance by Marco Jowell

Author:Marco Jowell [Jowell, Marco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Public Policy, African, Africa, Modern, Military, Peace, Political Science, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), Military Policy, World, History, Revolutionary, Geopolitics, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, 21st Century, General
ISBN: 9781786723413
Google: ZdWLDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 37814658
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2018-02-21T12:02:39+00:00

Exploring Training Delivery

To illuminate these issues it is useful to look a little closer at some of the courses delivered. What follows is a brief analysis of four of the courses delivered in 2013 at IPSTC: the Regional Senior Mission Leaders course, Protection of Civilians, AMISOM Force HQ and Human Rights in PSO course. The major donors to IPSTC – the UK, EU, Japan and the US – fund all four courses. The selected courses also cover the spectrum and levels of training at IPSTC, both AU and UN. On paper these courses prioritise both AU current and future PSO initiatives (the EASF and/or AMSIOM) and constitute the more relevant and better put together courses at IPSTC. I attended all of the above courses and this analysis is based on participant observation and ethnographic research methods. I conducted around 100 interviews with participants, IPSTC staff members, EASF officials and donors. I also attended After Action Reviews (AAR) as well as attending and assessing every module for each of these courses.56

Regional Senior Mission Leader Course (RSML)

The RSML course at IPSTC seeks to find a niche in African and AU-focused PSO training, but at the same time retains its core UN affiliated curriculum. As a result, the RSML course blurs UN and AU missions but loses depth in terms of course content given the broad spectrum of issues covered in the course. The RSML course is a lavish affair and is hailed as the ‘flagship’ course at IPSTC. There is clearly a great deal of pride on behalf of IPSTC in hosting this course as it is deemed the most prestigious in terms of PSO training. The course aims to train potential force commanders (FC) and civilian heads of mission. Although it is important to include these positions it is also crucial to focus training towards the level of deputy force commander (DFC) and police/military/civilian section heads (such as head of Civil Affairs, contingent or sector commander/police adviser etc.). Most participants are at colonel and equivalent level, meaning that it is unlikely participants on the SML course will be FC or HoM in the short to medium term. However they could deploy as senior staff officers in a mission at the operational level and should be trained accordingly.

The course I attended was delivered by a capable mentoring team lead by Gen (rtd.) Henry Anyidoho. It is significant that the mentors were all African former senior mission leaders themselves providing much needed African context, an important factor that was missing from previous RSML courses. However, three of the four mentors were from UNAMID, one had been in UNAMIR in 1993–1994 in Rwanda during the genocide and one was from the now defunct UNMEE, the more classical peacekeeping operation on the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea that closed in 2008,57 with no AU representation. As a result there was a clear lack of AU emphasis and understanding.

The RSML finds its roots in the UN Senior Mission Leaders course, a UN accredited course, targeting individuals destined for senior posts in UN PSO.

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