BULAWAYO: As the third annual summit of the African Union (AU) draws closer, the spotlight is falling on the organization's newest branch: the Peace and Security Council, and its proposed standby force.
Inaugurated in May at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia, the 15- member council will be advised by a panel comprising five Africans of repute. Analysts hope the council - which still has to be ratified by a majority of AU members - will prove a more powerful and efficient agency than other bodies set up to resolve the continent's woes.
The council aims to provide a "timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations" on the continent, such as unconstitutional changes of government, humanitarian and natural disasters.
Inevitably, questions have been raised about funding for the standby force that will give council the muscle it needs to contain such situations. According to Kondwane Chirambo of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), trans-continental peace-keeping operations have shown themselves to be financially demanding and politically delicate.
And, some have fallen short of the demands placed on them. (Idasa is a think tank based in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.) He says that while the United Nations has provided back-up for certain operations, this has not always met "the demands of conflict situations in quantitative terms".
As an example, he gives the global body's decision to send an 11,000-strong peace-keeping force to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This was hardly adequate, he observes, when one considers that the DRC is almost a quarter the size of the United States.
Currently, there are six UN peace-keeping missions in Africa. The largest - consisting of 13,000 officers - has been deployed in Liberia. Others are located in Sierra Leone, the DRC, the Ivory Coast and Burundi. Ethiopia and Eritrea have 4,000 peacekeepers stationed between them.
African countries do contribute to some of these operations. Of the UN's 12,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, for example, a third is African. The protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council says that a Peace Fund which receives allocations from the AU budget will finance interventions in Africa.
Voluntary contributions can also be made by AU member states and 'other sources' such as the private sector or individuals. But, Chirambo notes that most African states are short of money without the added burden of footing the bill for a standby force.
"In theory, this is a laudable move," he says. "But we should be under no illusions that this is by any means a straightforward adventure. Peace building and security operations are extremely costly."
As a result, Africa may find itself turning to wealthy countries again to raise money for aircraft carriers, helicopter gunships - and the salaries of troops. It's a prospect that alarms political analyst Thomas Deve. "Africans will never progress by relying on handouts from the West," he told IPS.
At last month's Group of Eight summit in the American state of Georgia, US President George W. Bush proposed a scheme under which the body would train up to 75,000 African peace keepers.
These troops would be ready for deployment by 2010. Bush pledged to ask Congress for 660 million dollars to kick- start the programme. The AU summit will be held in Addis Ababa from July 6 to 8. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.
