African Standby Force

A multidisciplinary peacekeeping force

The African Standby Force (ASF) (French: Force africaine en attente) is an international, continental African, and multidisciplinary peacekeeping force with military, police and civilian contingents that acts under the direction of the African Union. The ASF is to be deployed in times of crisis in Africa. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, serves as the Force's Headquarters. Douala, Cameroon, was selected in 2011 as the site of the AU's Continental Logistics Base (LOGBASE). In 2003, a 2010 operational date for the force was set, and subsequently missed.

The North African Regional Capacity or North African Region Capability was created to fill a sub regional vacuum in North Africa. The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) has been dormant since its establishment in 1989. Throughout the last two decades, revitalizing the AMU proved to be very difficult due to political dynamics amongst member states. Thus, there was a need to create a regional mechanism to enable North African countries to contribute to the African Standby Force. This is why in mid 2007 a memorandum of understanding was drafted to establish NARC. In the absence of a joint secretariat to coordinate cooperation amongst NARC member states, Libya voluntarily played this role during the initial phase of starting up NARC which lasted for three years (2005 2008). Later on, the second meeting of NARC Ministers of Defence held in Tripoli in December 2008 approved a recommendation to establish an executive secretariat to be located in Tripoli. Subsequently, the NARC Executive Secretariat and Planning Element were inaugurated in April 2009. It was however, expected that staff from other member states will join the Executive Secretariat and PLANELM in September 2010. While both Egypt and Algeria had identified staff for the two elements, these countries were yet to sign the hosting agreement with Libya, and in some cases the deployment of staff was constrained by domestic considerations including promotions and retirements. Meanwhile, progress in generating the civilian officers for the PLANELM lagged even further behind; this essentially meant that the NARC PLANELM was purely military in 2010. On 28 May 2010, the NARC Executive Secretary, Major General Ahmed Oun, signed, on behalf of NARC, the memorandum of understanding on cooperation between the African Union, the Regional Economic Communities and the Regional Standby Brigades of Eastern Africa and Northern Africa, at the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa. It was reported in January 2011 by Magharebia that Algeria was to host the NARC headquarters. Under an agreement made on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, Algeria was planned to become the seat of both NARC headquarters and the force's administration. The "Arab Spring" (2011) led to a major setback in the establishment of the NARC. Members include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, and Western Sahara. Morocco and Mauritania are now more closely associated with ECOWAS peace efforts, and Tunisia did not become actively involved in the NARC.

The SADC Standby Brigade was launched on August 17, 2007, in Lusaka, Zambia, with, initially, a military and police component. A civilian component was added later. The members who have signed the initial agreement include Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.

The ASF Roadmap III recognized major difficulties in the establishment of the ASF. Most importantly, it recognized that ASF was not able to reach its Full Operational Capability (FOC) by 2010, a goal that was set in previous Roadmaps and key documents. Therefore, the experts set the new date for the FOC to 2015. Furthermore, in the policy document it is observed that the ASF still lacked the ability to manage complex peacekeeping operations as specified in the ASF Roadmap II. Similarly, the AU experts ascertain that the RECs/RMs did not reach the full capacity to deploy a mission headquarters for Scenario 4 involving AU/regional forces. Other problems were seen in a low level of awareness and commitment among the different stakeholders as well as a lack of institutional capacity and effective coordination between the AU and RECs/RMs. Additionally, there was a slow development of the civil component in comparison with the other components. Concerning the political process, the Roadmap mentions that there was at the time no written procedure governing AU political decision making and subsequent Mission planning. Therefore, the experts stressed the need for the finalization and adoption of a comprehensive memorandum of understanding on the use of the ASF for AU mandated missions in order to clarify the relationship between the AU, RECs/RMs and member states. The Roadmap also outlined several fields of progress in the development of the ASF. These achievements include the production of a set of common policy documents, an annual continental training program, and improved training standards within nations and standby forces that could be used collectively, albeit at an initial operational capability at the moment, mainly for logistic and institutional reasons. Notable progress was also ascertained in the development of a harmonized Rapid Deployment Capability (RDC) concept. Lastly, the Roadmap saw progress in the evolution of the police component, notably in the area of policy development and the establishment of management capabilities at the strategic level of the AU and the operational level of the RECs/RMs. Achievements in the development of the Force to be reached in the period between 2010 and 2015, as stated in the Roadmap, are an "ASF Vision to be presented to AU Summit in January/February 2012; a staffed, trained and fully operational PSOD by December 2011; a fully operational RDC by December 2012, to be confirmed by the continental exercise AMANI AFRICA II; and finally, a fully operational ASF by December 2015 to be confirmed by the continental exercise AMANI AFRICA III." From July to December 2013, the AU conducted an assessment of the status of development of the ASF through an Independent Panel of Experts. One of the findings of the assessment was that it would be unlikely for the ASF to reach its FOC until December 2015 without major efforts by all stakeholders.

One important criticism of the ASF is the accusation that, due to the delay in its establishment, the Force could not be used as a tool of peacemaking in the latest occurrence of crises in Africa, such as the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, the war in Somalia, as well as the ongoing conflict in Eastern D. R. Congo. Another criticism is the fact that the RECs/RMs have very different perceptions on whether the AU or the UN should mandate the employment of the ASF. For instance, SADC and ECOWAS tend to prefer UN Security Council authorization. This lack of consensus on the mandatory authority leads to the AU's current inability to mandate a mission. Furthermore, it was claimed that the UNSC would tend to caution against regional interventions without its authorization, whereas the AU would have interpreted the status of the PSC as a legitimate authority within the framework of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter relating to Regional Arrangements. One major obstacle to assessing the achievement of ASF's FOC is a missing clear definition of the FOC.