Paul Nantulya, Africa Center for Strategic Studies
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The modern peace support operations environment is multidimensional, dynamic, and complex, requiring the application of several military and non-military instruments and measures in the context of an integrated and comprehensive approach, a U.S. civil affairs expert said during an Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) presentation.
There is a need to more effectively prepare African military forces to successfully navigate these complexities, given that the majority of troop-contributing countries are from Africa and the majority of U.N. peace missions are on the continent, Christopher Holshek, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former civil affairs officer, advised a gathering of 60 African military and security sector professionals attending the Next Generation of African Security Sector Leaders program hosted by ACSS, October 21 to November 8, 2013.
Mr. Holshek, now a Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Peacebuilding, discussed the challenges of civil-military coordination (CIMIC) in modern African peace operations.
“In the new peacekeeping environment several issues must be dealt with at the same time, which requires a leadership approach and acumen that are quite different from those required in traditional U.N. peacekeeping,” he noted.
“Civil-military coordination (CIMIC) is the nexus that brings together all the complex elements … from protection of civilians, to rule of law, humanitarian action, and security.” Mr. Holshek said. He also discussed the unique problems created by the nature of conflicts that confront professional peacekeepers in the modern peace-support operations environment.
The complexity of African conflicts, he noted, might require the simultaneous application of peace enforcement, peacebuilding, and peacekeeping missions to address different subconflicts within a broader conflict system, such as is the case is the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The key conclusion from the lecture was that military and civilian peacekeepers needed to address multidimensional peace operations challenges from an approach of “applied strategy.” The starting point for this, Mr. Holshek said, is to “articulate the desired end-state to identify the kind of peace that the mission envisions, and then work backward to properly identify the ends, ways, and means, including the application of military and non-military measures such as reconciliation and dialogue.”
