The Director on CSDP and Crisis Response at the European External Action Service (EEAS), Stefano Tomat, and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the Central African Republic (CAR) and Head of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the country (UNMISSA), Mankeur Ndiaye, expressed concern on Wednesday 24 February about the work of the armed forces and gendarmerie in CAR.
“There is a real problem with discipline and a problem with training. This raises the question of security reform”, Mr Ndiaye said. He said that while efforts have been made in the security and defence sector, there is a need to reassess training and correct what is not working in security reform.
Mr Ndiaye explained that armed forces and forces from the interior had been deployed to provide security for the electoral process, but that in some areas the forces had not been able to withstand the onslaught of armed groups and that some had taken refuge in neighbouring countries or had deserted.
According to Mr Tomat, FACA units formed by the EU EUTM-RCA mission have been sent in an urgent and fragmented manner to the field for operations for which they are not trained. Indeed, they were trained to “hold an area and protect it” and not to be sent to the front.
“We have expressed our concerns about this to the Central African authorities, but they have not been heeded”, he explained, adding that the emergency deployment was damaging to the process of rebuilding the army and hindering the work done over several months of training troops.
Mr Tomat felt that one of the lessons learnt from this experience was that an additional component should be introduced into the mandate of the EUTM-RCA mission with the monitoring of trained troops in the future. According to him, this request is part of the latest strategic review of the mission.
The EEAS representative also announced that a joint EU-UN analysis was being drafted on security reform, in particular on armed forces and internal security forces, in order to better understand how to put the lessons learned into practice.
The EU also launched a civilian advisory mission last August to support the reform of the internal security forces. According to Mr Tomat, the mission currently has 30 members on site. “The mission maintains contacts with the police and gendarmerie, but the Central African partners are not available for training at the moment”, he explained. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)