A damaged Amisom vehicle near Afgoye town, some 30 kilometres northwest
of Mogadishu following a suicide attack. PHOTO FILE | AFP
On October 26, 2015, a group of SPLA-in-Opposition soldiers
captured a United Nations convoy on the Juba Corridor near Kaka in South
Sudan’s Upper Nile region. The soldiers accused the UN Mission in South
Sudan (Unmiss) of transporting weapons and ammunition for the
government.
The Unmiss convoy consisting of Bangladeshi
troops was detained and all material on board — resupplies for its
operation — including some 55,000 litres of fuel, 16 assault rifles, two
machine guns and some 3,000 rounds of assorted ammunition were seized.
A
year-and-a-half earlier on April 14, 2014, a riverine convoy was
ambushed near Bor in South Sudan’s Jonglei State, with the assailants
making away with more than 750,000 litres of fuel and lethal equipment —
some 20 assault rifles, two heavy machine guns, mortars, a recoilless
gun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition.
The two incidents
add to the losses in weapons and ammunition by peacekeeping forces,
estimated to be worth millions of dollars. These losses, in at least 20
missions undertaken or supported by the UN, are making it difficult to
end conflicts around the world, experts warn. The theft ends up
endangering the missions and strengthening the firepower of militias.
A recent report by the Small Arms Survey titled Making a Tough Job More Difficult: Loss of Arms and Ammunition in Peace Operations, notes that the materials lost comprise thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition.
South Sudan
For
example, in South Sudan and Sudan, at least 500 weapons and 750,000
rounds of ammunition have been reported lost from African Union and UN
stocks since 2005.
The weapons include assault rifles
and pistols, armoured vehicles and numerous types of light weapons such
as heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, heavy mortars and recoilless
guns.
These weapons are lost through seizures, ambush
of patrols and wholesale looting from arsenals, as was the case last
year when a contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) —
involving Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Burundi troops — was attacked.
The
report by the Small Arms Survey was motivated by an emerging consensus
that the scale of the global loss of lethal material from UN and
regional-led peacekeeping operations is considerably greater than
previously understood — with much of the loss probably preventable, the
group’s director Eric Berman told The EastAfrican.
According
to Mr Berman, the losses are not always preventable because
peacekeepers are sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time, and
some arms depots are breached not because of lax stockpile security, but
because the assailants are determined, better armed and have planned
well.
“The nature of peacekeeping is becoming more
challenging and complex. It is moving from the traditional peacekeeping
where there are peace agreements to areas where there are spoilers while
some countries do not have experience in peacekeeping,” said Mr Berman.
According to Mr Berman, there is a need for peacekeepers to invest in programmes to reduce the losses.
Loss of equipment
The
report further notes that peacekeepers are susceptible to losing
equipment during the course of everyday activities such as patrols and
escort duties, but also during resupply operations, troop rotations or
repatriation.
For example, the survey estimates the
number of rounds of ammunition seized in an attack on African Union
Mission in Darfur (Unamid) near Sindy in February 2014 to be at least
3,500 cartridges.
A former Unamid official informed the
survey that the mission had recorded the ammunition lost in this
incident at over 6,000 rounds.
The report says the
Unmiss has noted that seizures of weapons by the Sudan People’s
Liberation Army were commonplace but mostly go unreported.
But
a former Unmiss peacekeeper underscored that even if the material were
returned, these type of incidents — as well as peacekeepers’ loss and
abandonment of weapons — undermined the credibility of the UN and the
support it needs to fulfil its mandate.
The former
Unmiss official added that the seizure of such material was often
preventable, resulting from poor soldering and not poor planning.
Indeed, the temporal distribution of large-scale incidents identified to
date suggests that losses of weapons occur with regular frequency.
Attacks
Patrols
operating in highly volatile areas are often more likely to be attacked
and, since they are also heavily armed, the types and quantities of
weapons lost are often more substantial than material captured from
peacekeepers operating in more stable areas.
In
January 2016, two Unamid patrols came under attack in North Darfur and
UN investigators later determined that five personal weapons were lost
and presumably between 150 and 450 rounds of ammunition.
The
second attack in the same month happened when peacekeepers charged with
preparing for the visit of the Unamid Deputy Joint Special
Representative Bintou Keita were ambushed 20km south of Anka. The
assailants captured five assault rifles and an estimated 450 rounds of
ammunition.
Somalia
In
June 2015, the Al Shabaab militants attacked an Amisom convoy near
Burhakaba in Somalia’s Bay region, more than 160km from the capital
Mogadishu. The equipment reportedly included 11 assault rifles, three
sniper rifles, three light machine guns, one RPG launcher with two
rounds of ammunition, 33 grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Although
losses in fixed sites are not as frequent as those from patrols, the
seizure of weapons and ammunition from fixed sites can be more sizeable.
It affects headquarters sites, forward operating bases (FOBs),
observation posts and the residences of mission personnel.
These were witnessed in Somalia last year, where Al Shabaab attacked the bases of troop-contributing countries to Amisom.
Al
Shabaab has attacked Amisom bases at least five times: Against the
Burundians in Leego (June, 2015); Ugandans in Janaale (September, 2015);
Kenyans in El Adde (January, 2016); Ethiopians in Halgan (June, 2016);
and Djiboutians in Beledweyne in October, 2016, besides attacks on
Amisom convoys and patrols.
Other
studies show that Amisom is far more hazardous than in any of the UN’s
60-plus peacekeeping operations over the past 70 years. Attacks on bases
have also resulted in the loss of a substantial amount of weapons.
Inventory controls
These
bases are typically staffed by an infantry company of 150–200 or more
uniformed personnel usually comprising three or four infantry platoons
and supporting elements. FOBs should be largely self-sufficient, ideally
for up to three months, given the insecure main supply routes by road.
“The
exact amount of material held at these bases is difficult to determine
because the AU and Amisom understandably withhold data for security
reasons, and because the type and quantity of material are determined by
expected usage, doctrine and financial means, which vary between bases
and among troop-contributing countries,” says the report.
The losses are attributable to human failure, corrupt practices, high-threat environments or unavoidable accidents.
The
report says robust inventory controls are essential for detecting and
deterring the theft of weapons from storage facilities; tracking weapons
issued to individual soldiers; and preventing the excessive
accumulation of surplus, obsolete and expired arms and ammunition.
The
arrest of Amisom troops in June 2016 from Uganda for illegally selling
ammunition, fuel and equipment taken from the mission underscores the
importance of these controls, notes the report.
According
to Mr Berman, the report will assist the AU to develop guidelines on
how to secure and manage recovered arms and ammunition in its peace
operations.
The project will also seek to engage major
troop-contributing countries to learn from their experiences, develop
training modules in their national institutions, and share these lessons
and improve their practices.
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