Understanding Africa: A Geographic Approach United States Military Academy West Point, New York Center for Strategic Leadership United States Army War College Carlisle, Pennsylvania January 2009The Transformation of African Militaries ‘Thomas A, Dempsey Key Points © African militaries are undergoing a transforma- tion that is professionalizing and internationalizing them, + Despite their ongoing transformation, Affican mili- taries remain limited in capacity by their combat- heavy force structures and lack of necessary support “tail” * Chronic underfunding of African militaries contrib- utes to persistent problems with corruption, * Some states on the continent are resisting both pro- fessionalizationand internationalization, whilesome conflict zones threaten a return to state-versus-state warfare. Generalizing about military organizations in an area as vast and diverse as Africa is risky at best. There are, however, features that are broadly characteristic of state-based militaries in the region. ‘These features reveal emergent trends in the profession of arms in Africa that may have important consequences for state, subregional, and regional security. The purpose of this chapter is to identify those features and trends, and analyze their implications for human security in Africa, African militaries have only recently emerged from a decades-long colonial and post-colonial interregnum, into a post-Cold War era of transformation. That transformation is building upon an ongoing professionalization and internationalization of African militaries that appears to be accelerating dramatically as we enter the 21st century. How this transformation will serve the interests of Africans 383themselves remains an open question. The one clear and discernable trend is that African militaries pursuing multilateral peace operations are becoming the central, and in some cases the dominant, stakeholders in African regional security. African Militaries Prior to the End of the Cold War The African militaries that emerged during the post-independence era lacked well-developed, genuinely national military traditions. This was in part a consequence of European systems of colonial rule imposed during the period surrounding the Berlin Conference of 1885. Furopean colonial regimes systematically rooted out indigenous military traditions promoting and supporting resistance to colonial rule. They did so with armies that were trained and equipped along European lines, recruited (or conscripted) from indigenous African communities, and led by European officers and Non-Commissoned Officers (NCOs), These colonial-era militaries served the agendas of the colonial regimes, imposing the will of those regimes on restive African populations and sustaining regime authority in the face of local resistance to colonial rule. ‘To the extent that these colonial-era militaries represented or shaped a military tradition themselves, it was a European tradition rather than an African tradition, rooted deeply in colonial systems of rule that lacked both Jocal legitimacy and basic functionality (Crowder 1971; Saul and Royer 2001; Howe 2001; Edgerton 2002). As colonial domination retreated in the wake of World War IL, newly independent African states made creation of state-based militaries one of their first priorities. Jn most cases, the officer leadership and much of the rank- and-file in post-independence militaries were drawn directly from the ranks of the colonial era forces. Post- independence military individuals and institutions brought the baggage of their colonial roles and missions with them, including @ focus on regime survival and a view of civil-military relations that had been distorted by decades of colonial rule. ‘These features of Africa’s new state-based militaries were reinforced by what Herbert Howe calls the era of “authoritarian personal rule” (2001, 35), African militaries found themselves serving new African elites in post-colonial regimes that were themselves lacking in both legitimacy and functionality. With weak rule of law frameworks and inadequately developed institutions of civil governance, post-independence African regimes witnessed a succession of military coups. As struggles for political power within African states became increasingly violent, the region witnessed the emergence of repressive, autocratic regimes, many of them run by military or former military leaders. During this period, African militaries came to be characterized by endemic corruption, systematic abuses of human rights, and the continuing focas on internal regime survival that have been ably documented by regional scholars (Jenkins and Kposowa 1992; Howe 2001; Edgerton 2002). ‘To the extent that African militaries developed a tradition of military service, that tradition tended, at the individual level, to be a thin veneer of what might best be called pseudo-nationalism over a reality of personal aggrandizement, factional loyalty, and institutional power- seeking, ‘The military focus on intemal mechanisms of regime survival undermined the professionalism and core competencies of the militaries themselves, Regime maintenance neither required nor rewarded most core military’ skills, leading to the atrophy of hard military capabilities at both the individual and institutional levels, Liberia under Doe, Sierra Leone under a succession of military juntas, Guinea under Lansana Conteh, Somalia under Barre, Democratic Republic of Congo under Mobutu, Uganda under Idi Amin, and Ethiopia under Mengistu and the Dergue, all illustrate the decline in professional and institutional military capacity that followed independence and that accelerated during, and in large part as a consequence of, the Cold War. 385Foreign security assistance programs during theCold Wat, whether from the West or the East, wereintended more to reward client-ruling elites and to reinforce their internal hold on power than to promote military professionalism or core competencies. Civil-military relations rooted in rule of law and in civilian control of military institutions were viewed by the West as less important than maintaining client loyalty, and were regarded by the East as irrelevant if not antithetical to Soviet Block agendas. Client African militaries were regarded by Western and Eastern patrons as first and foremost, guarantors of regime security against internal threats, and only secondarily as defenders of the state against external threats. Even during the Cold War, most threats were internally generated. State versus state conflict was rare. What conflicts did occur between African states tended to be limited by Cold War sponsors who were wary of situations with the potential to escalate into open warfare between the super powers. With the end of the Cold War, African military trends that had endured for more than a century suddenly found themselves upended by a wave of dramatic political, economic and social change. ‘That change has led to a fundamental reappraisal of the military role in society by African states and by their partners in the international community. This reappraisal has not been driven by a changing or declining threat: the new post-Cold War world has not witnessed a decreaseinconflictin Africa. Ifanything, conflict in the region has increased. ‘The disappearance of the Cold War competition has removed, to some degree, the “governors” on conflict imposed by Soviet and American policy makers. Military grade weaponzy, no longer limited by Cold War-era controls on arms sales, is swamping the region, lending greater lethality to local conflicts, What has changed in the post-Cold War world is the nature of the response to conflict on the part of African regimes and their partners, This change, most evident in the evolution of conflictmanagementmechanismsand collective security initiatives in regional African organizations like theFeonomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is, influencing African military institutions in profound ways. ‘The change in the nature of the African response is being, influenced in turn by political and economic change at the statelevel,as African statesmovetodemocratizeandembrace fundamental reforms in governance and. administration. ‘These changes are contributing to transformative change within African military institutions. ‘The post-Cold War transformative change ongoing within African militaries has two primary components. State military forces in Africa are professionalizing, at both the individual and institutional levels, Those same forces are becoming internationalized, shifting their operational context from post-colonial regime maintenance, traditional war fighting, and the struggle for black majority rule, to peace operations. ‘These operations, under the control of sub-regional, regional and international organizations, are providing a new context for African military institutions and operations. Together, the professionalization and internationalization of African military forces are changing the institutional cultures of those forces in fundamental ways. Post-Cold War Transformation: the Professionalization of African Militaries The professionalization of African militaries is in part a consequence of the end of Cold War agendas among external stakeholders in African security. The U.S. and its bilateral partners have shifted their focus from the survival of client regimes to promoting stabilization, reconstruction, and governance among African states. As a result of this shift, post-Cold War bilateral security assistance programs are viewed through amuch broaderlens than before. Nested within policy initiatives that value fostering civil-military relations ina democratic context, professionalization of African militaries has emerged as a fundamental objective of American, French and British security assistance programs in the region. 387‘The new generation of bilateral security assistance activities is not intended to reward political clites, but is focused instead on military and defense professionalization as a valued end in itself. These activities contain strong normative elements, endorsing civilian control of the military, promoting transparent accountability of military forces to democratic institutions, and encouraging compliance with broadly accepted international norms and standardsin he planningand conduictof military operations. ‘The Senior Leader Seminars conducted by the US. Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) are typical of this new direction in security assistance (Africa Center for Strategic Studies 2008). Similar programs have been initiated by other Key bilateral security partners, most notably France and the United Kingdom, and are designed to strengthen professionalization among defense and military leaders at the strategic level. Programs like theSenior Leaders Seminarshave been complemented by bilateral capacity building initiatives at the institutional, organizational and individual levels. These include broadly focused “train and equip” programs like the British Military Advisory and Training Teams (BMATT), the French Reinforcement des Capacites Africaines de In Paix (RECAMP) and the U.S. African Crisis Response Initiative, now known as the Contingency Training and Assistance Program (ACOTA) (Kwiatkowski 2000). American, French, and British objectives in pursuing these programs have shifted from influencing African political leaders (dispensing diplomatic “carrots”), to building real African military capacity, underpinned by professionally competent forces and leaders. The transformation in foreign security assistance is clearly illustrated by the emergence of “security sector reform” as the organizing paradigm for security assistance by Europewan and U.S, agencies (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2007; US. Army 2008). Emphasis by external partners on “train the trainer” approaches and on sustained engagement over time has sought to establish enduring improvements in theability of African militaries to deploy capable, professional forces in support of regional security agendas. Like the ACSS seminars, recent Western “train and equip” programs have had a significant normative ‘component. Training programsroutinely include substantial instruction on the law of land warfare, professional ethics, and standards of conduct. ‘The recent US, restructuring of the armed forces of Liberia, for example, has incorporated classes for new recruits on ethics, on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, on civilian control of the military, and on civil-military relations in a democratic state. Reinforcing the trend towards professionalization are political and military reforms among African states themselves. Democratic governance has become more prevalent across Africa since the end of the Cold War. With democratization have come institutional mechanisms for enforcing professional standards of behavior and for establishing the accountability of military forces to civil authority. The code of conduct adopted by the government of Mali for its armed forces in 1998 is an excellent example of this trend (Ayissi and Sangare 2006). ‘The movement towards increased professionalization is being strengthened and supported by the emergence of more robust national institutions for training and educating military leaders in Africa. Senior Service Colleges are proliferating on the continent, as are. national institutions for educating and training military leaders at the initial entry and intermediate levels of career development, ‘Transformation II: The Internationalization of African Militaries ‘The internationalization of African militaries refers to the growing prevalence of international peacekeeping missions as the operational context for African militaries, and the influence on institutional culture that those missions are exerting among African military organizations, ‘The rise of collective security as the dominant paradigm among 389African defense institutions is both a fundamental aspect of and a significant contributor to the internationalization process. Internationalization is changing how African professional soldiers regard themselves and how they pursue their professional responsibilities in ways that directly support and promote democratic governance, rule of law, and respect for human rights. ‘The process of internationalization really began in 1990 with the deployment of the ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to Liberia following the collapse of the Liberian state, A purely West African military intervention, this operation was initiated with little extemal support beyond the resources and will of the ECOWAS mentber states that participated in it. The :COWAS intervention in Liberia was followed by ECOWAS. peace operations in Sierra Leone in 1998, in Guinea-Bissau in 1999 and in Cote D'Ivoire in 2003. Beyond West Africa, an African six-state “coalition of the willing” deployed a peacekeeping force to the Central African Republic in 11997, while the Souther African Development Community launched a sub-regional peace operation in Lesotho in 1998, The African Union entered the fray at the regional level with peace operations in Burundi in 2003 and Darfur in 2004, In addition to participating in African regional and sub-regional peace operations missions, African militaries have furnished a growing share of United Nations Peacekeepers, both within and outside of Africa, ‘This trend has been reinforced by the practice that emerged in the 1990s of transitioning African regional and sub- regional peacekeeping missions to UN operations, with African peacekeepers “reflagging” as UN peacekeepers. By 2006, four of the top ten UN troop contributing states were African: Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya (United Nations 2006). As of the summer of 2008, the vast majority of ongoing military operations in Africa were peacekeeping missions, and those missions provide the lion’s share of operational experience for a growing proportion of African professional military leaders at every level. 390‘The peace operations that have come to dominate African military operations since the end of the Cold War have several common features. Mission mandates typically focus on restoring order and on protecting civilian populations, rather than on garnering power fora particular faction or on the survival of a particular regime. At the tactical level, officers and noncommissioned officers find themselves tasked with responding to community needs, facilitating humanitarian assistance activities, supporting peace processes, and participating in post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Rules for the use of military force are shaped by this mission set, and are heavily influenced by UN peace operations doctrine that emphasizes respect for human rights and rule of law, support for the establishment of legitimate and effective governance, and the duty of military forces to protect civilians from the threat of physical violence (United Nations 2008), At the operational and strategic levels, mission force commanders answer to civilian authorities in the form of sub-regional, regional, ot international peace and security commissions or councils. African military members and organizations deployed in support of these missions find their agendas being shaped by instruments that incorporate explicit guidelines promoting the observance of international norms and standards of conduct. The FCOWASmechanism for Conflict Management and Resolution furnishes a typical example, describing overarching objectives “to maintain or restore peace” that include humanitarian interventions, peace-building, and disarmament and demobilization activities. Military interventions under the auspices of the Mechanism are authorized in response to “serious and massive violations of human rights and the rule of law,” and “in the event of an overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected government” (EconomicCommunity of West African States 1999). Similar instruments have been adopted by SADC and by the African Union. With each successive peace operation, these instraments and the structures and organizations that they support are 391