{"id":20763,"date":"2015-10-20T03:26:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T03:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/african-standby-force-starts-first-military\/"},"modified":"2015-10-20T03:24:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T03:24:28","slug":"african-standby-force-starts-first-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/african-standby-force-starts-first-military\/","title":{"rendered":"African Standby Force starts first military exercises"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Members of the African Union’s new 25,000-strong multinational standby force are gathering to begin field training for the first time.
\n}<\/p>\n

The exercises in South Africa aim to make sure the force is ready by January to respond to crises across the continent.<\/p>\n

The force will be made up of five brigades from Africa’s economic blocs.<\/p>\n

It is being set up to avoid reliance on the outside world in peacekeeping across the continent.<\/p>\n

The logistical base for the African Standby Force (ASF) will be in Douala in Cameroon following a deal signed last week.<\/p>\n

The training begins at the South African Army Combat Training Centre in Lohatla with an opening ceremony on Monday.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, 5,000 officers from the military and police officer will be in the field where the ASF will have to intervene in a fictitious country.<\/p>\n

The operation, which continues until 5 November, is intended help evaluate how ready the force is to respond to crises and monitor peacekeeping missions.<\/p>\n

The exercise was meant to be carried out in Lesotho in 2014 but was delayed because of security issues in the country.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons the ASF was established was so African countries did not need to rely on countries outside Africa for conflict resolution.<\/p>\n

But BBC Monitoring’s Africa security correspondent Tomi Oladipo says the AU will have to ask donors for money as it said in May that it needs $1bn (\u00a3700m) to make the force operational.<\/p>\n

There are also challenges relating to poor co-ordination and the lack of political will among member states, he says.<\/p>\n

The African Union (AU) has become much more willing to intervene in countries over the 15 years, Hallelujah Lulie, an Ethiopian-based researcher for the Institute of Security Studies, told the BBC’s Newsday Programme.<\/p>\n

Once the force was set up, it would be able go into an AU member country uninvited in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Members of the African Union’s new 25,000-strong multinational standby force are gathering to begin field training for the first time.
\n}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000069767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-20763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000069767,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20763.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000069767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20763"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=20763"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=20763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}