PHOTO | AFP South African President Jacob Zuma (left) shares a light moment with SADC Chairperson and Malawi President Mrs Joyce Banda (centre) in Pretoria on November 4, 2013, during the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) summit. AFP
African leaders opened talks yesterday in South Africa to discuss the formation of a rapid-deployment emergency force to swiftly intervene in crises on the continent.
The idea of the new force is to bridge the gap pending the coming into operation of the long planned fully-fledged peacekeeping African Union’s African Standby Force.
The aim of the summit being attended by a handful of leaders — including those of Chad, Tanzania and Uganda is “to enable Africa to act swiftly and independently in response to the urgent security challenges this continent faces”, said host South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma.
“This decision came about due to the realisation that independent and swift African responses to crises that arise on our continent could not wait while the building blocks of the African Standby Force are carefully being put in place,” he said.
The AU’s standby brigade has made little headway since preparations for a proposed force of 32,500 troops and civilians drawn from the continent’s five regions started a decade ago.
“We believe that the time has come that African leaders must be able to act in the interim - swiftly, decisively and when needed,” said President Zuma.
The AU was criticised for not responding fast enough to the crisis in Mali after the military seized power in a coup in March 2012.
“We need to ensure that we are not helpless or slow to respond without the help of external partners,” said President Zuma.
“Africa can, and has the capacity and the means to act swiftly and decisively,” he added. “All what we need is to better organise ourselves.”
He expressed the hope that by end of this year there will be “a mechanism that can breathe life into our aspirations for African ownership and leadership in immediately and urgently responding to security challenges faced by this great continent”.
The meeting is being attended by countries that have said they are willing to contribute to the force. It was not immediately clear how many countries have so far pledged troops to the new force.
The new force will go by the name the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC).
Meanwhile, a joint summit between Southern African Development Community and some of DR Congo’s neighbours commended the Congolese army and the UN intervention brigade for recapturing M23 strongholds and restoring government control.
The 3,000-strong UN intervention brigade in eastern DR Congo is drawn from Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania. It joined 17,000 peacekeepers already deployed in the country, but it carries a special mission to help Congo’s army quell the rebellions in the region.
Rebels in the DRC ended their 18-month insurgency yesterday in a region that has seen some of Africa’s deadliest conflicts.
Kinshasa, emboldened by its biggest military victory in half a century, said its forces would keep up the momentum to go after Rwandan Hutu militia also active in the region.
END OF REBELLION IN SIGHT
The M23 rebel movement’s statement on Tuesday that it would “end its rebellion” and instead pursue its goals “through purely political means” came after around 200 holdout rebels were routed from their hilltop positions overnight.
“It’s a total victory for the DRC,” said government spokesman Lambert Mende, adding that the routed rebels had fled to neighbouring Rwanda. A local official said the M23’s top commander Sultani Makenga was among them.
The United States hailed the rebels’ surrender and urged “reaching a negotiated end to the rebellion as a critical first step to ending the instability in DRC,” said deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
The army launched a major offensive on October 25, steadily claiming the main rebel-held towns until diehard M23 fighters were forced to hole up on three hills about 80 kilometres north of the regional capital Goma and near the Rwandan border.
The insurgents — who at their strongest occupied Goma for 10 days a year ago — called for a truce on Sunday, but the army pressed on with its assault.
The UN special force in the region — which had so far been assisting with aerial reconnaissance, intelligence and planning — joined direct combat late Monday after getting the green light to bombard the hilltops.
“With all that the M23 left (in weapons and material), they can no longer come back,” Congolese general Jean-Lucien Bahuma, standing at the bottom of the captured hill in Chanzu, told AFP.
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