Africa Partnership Station Promotes Security Cooperation

By Donna Miles

American Forces Press Service

STUTTGART, Germany, June 27, 2012 – An ongoing international effort to help African nations improve maritime safety and security in the Gulf of Guinea represents one of U.S. Africa Command’s most successful programs while embodying the command’s core principles, Africom’s director of strategy, plans and programs reported.

Army Maj. Gen. Charles Hooper called Africa Partnership Station – an initiative that has grown over the past five years to include more than 30 African, European and North and South American countries – a model of international and interagency cooperation.

Participants are working together to develop capacity among countries along the Gulf of Guinea so they can control their territorial waters and crack down on illicit trafficking and other criminal activity.

And what happens at sea matters, not just for Africa, but for the entire world that depends on access to the global commons, Hooper said. He noted the direct link between maritime security, development, prosperity, stability and peace.

“In my mind, African Partnership Station embodies everything that is good and unique about Africa Command,” Hooper said. “Why is it so successful? It’s a unique program that allows us to train, teach and mentor, not only the armed forces of those nations in the Gulf of Guinea, but also some of their law enforcement forces.”

That, Hooper said, makes it “the perfect Africom program.”

“It involves the interagency team, engaging in teaching, coaching, mentoring and building the capacity of our African partners to solve their own problems,” he said.

This directly supports President Barack Obama’s Africa policy and the recognition that has guided Africom since its inception in 2008, he noted. “It is our African partners who are best equipped and best pointed to address African challenges,” Hooper said.

This year’s engagement, the largest yet, kicked off with its first port visit in February in Lagos, Nigeria, and continues through September. The guided missile frigate USS Simpson launched this year’s training program in Lagos, with the crew working with sailors and coast guardsmen from 12 African nations in the first leg of training events.

The high-speed vessel Swift began visiting Africa this spring. Later this summer, USS Fort McHenry will join the Africa Partnership Station mission.

Training events throughout the program, both ashore and at sea, are being tailored to help African maritime nations improve their own capabilities while strengthening their relationships with partner nations. This, officials said, promotes regional cooperation to address common threats, such as piracy and illicit trafficking, and in promoting energy and resource security.

“By working together, African navies and coast guards are able to bring maritime safety and security, which will help secure their future,” said Navy Chief Warrant Officer Eve McAnallen, the Africa Partnership Station training officer.

Commodore Andrew Dacosta, director of training for the Nigerian navy who helped to plan this year’s mission, said African Partnership Station underscores the importance of that effort. “APS has helped us realize the needs for collaboration, cooperation for the collective security of the maritime environment,” he said.

Gabonese Chief Petty Officer Pierre Mboulou welcomed the opportunity to participate in this year’s training.

“I really appreciate the APS program, because it helps us improve and meet our potential through different experiences,” he said. “I hope this program can be held every year and keep going to help African militaries.”

(The U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and U.S. 6th Fleet public affairs office contributed to this article.)

Mullen: Public, Private Efforts Must Help Failed States

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2011 – Nations and organizations of all kinds must join together to take on the challenges posed by a growing number of weak and failing states, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said today.

Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at a launch event for the 2011 Failed States Index, hosted by The Fund for Peace and Business Executives for National Security. The fund has published the index since 2005.

“[For] every single entity that exists on this globe, whether it’s public or private [or] nongovernmental,” Mullen said. “ … It’s imperative that we all figure out how we’re going to address these challenges together because … they are coming at us at a speed that is accelerating.”

The index is an annual ranking of 177 nations using 12 social, economic and political indicators of pressure on the state, along with more than 100 sub-indicators. Indicators include issues like uneven development, state legitimacy, group grievance and human rights.

“In today’s world, many challenges to international peace and prosperity come from nontraditional sources,” said Ken Brill, Institute for Peace president.

“This has direct implications for U.S. national security,” Brill added, “which needs to be thought about and acted on in a broader context than ever before.”

The 2011 index is based on data collected throughout 2010, so it does not account for recent events such as Japan’s major earthquake and tsunami and uprisings across the Middle East.

For the fourth consecutive year, the report ranks Somalia as the No. 1 failed state, citing widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, insurgency, crime and pirate attacks against foreign vessels.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Finland, for the first time, displaced Norway from the best position among most stable countries because of slight fluctuations in demographic and economic indicators.

Each indicator used in the ranking is rated on a scale of one to 10 based on the analysis of millions of publicly available documents, other quantitative data and analytic assessments.

A high score indicates high pressure on the state, and therefore a higher risk of instability.

Instability created by failing states threatens the normal function of the international marketplace,” said retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, president and chief executive officer of the Business Executives for National Security.

“Private-sector initiatives and investment,” he added, “can combat state fragility, promote stability and prevent conflict.”

Besides Somalia, the top 10 failed states include, in order from the most troubled states, Chad, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Iraq and Ivory Coast.

“As I look at the failed state index and look at the states that top the list … none of them are surprising,” Mullen said. “What concerns me about that is the need for the global entities that exist to address the challenges.”

Mullen described a principle he said has been with him throughout his career, since he was a young officer deployed to Vietnam in 1969.

“The message that came from the families that I would become familiar with,” Mullen said, was that they were anxious to raise their children to a higher standard of living than they had achieved, and in some semblance of peace and prosperity.

“You need the peace to generate the prosperity to achieve that standard,” he said. “That’s a global standard from my perspective.”

About the positions of Iraq and Afghanistan on the index, Mullen said, “I’ve felt for some time, and I’m not alone in this, that Iraq has resources to generate a thriving economy.

“With the oil resources they have and the appetite the world has for oil,” he added, “I am fairly confident that, over time, Iraq will pull itself out of its place on this index.”

Afghanistan does not have such resources immediately available, the chairman said, but the country can be helped to build its economy enough to improve the lives of its people.

“For both these countries, though, that’s just the economic side,” he said, adding that the index measures governance, security, how the countries’ leaders take care of their people, and other indicators.

For several years, Mullen said, he has worried about Yemen as a potential next place for al Qaida to call home, and the index ranks Yemen as 13th from the top of the most failed states.

While the al Qaida leadership “still resides in the border [area] between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the chairman said, the federated al Qaida group in Yemen is an “incredibly dangerous group” that has taken full advantage of the chaos there.

While military intervention sometimes is necessary to bring stability, it is never the whole answer to fixing a failed state,” Mullen said.

“The military, the security piece, is a necessary condition, but it is insufficient in and of itself,” he added. “And it’s taking us a long time to figure that out.”

Economic engines – the United States, China, India, Brazil, the Middle East and Europe -- will help create the standard of living that most people want for their children, Mullen said.

“How do we make these economic engines work together so the haves and the have-nots are not as far apart?” he said. “It’s my belief that if they continue to separate … then I think there will be more and more failed states.”

“For those of us in leadership positions, we just can’t keep talking about this,” Mullen said. “We have to generate actions on the ground.”

Total force brings aeromedical evacuation training to the Democratic Republic of the Congo

By Air Force Tech. Sgt. Todd Wivell

17th Air Force

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo (4/26/11) - A two week medical exercise, in partnership with the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and U.S. Air Forces Africa, focusing on aeromedical evacuation, kicked off here at the Centre Superior Militaire Academy Monday.

MEDLITE 11 is an exercise that will improve the readiness of both countries' medical personnel and will consist of classroom instruction, an aeromedical evacuation training scenario and is scheduled to conclude with a mass casualty exercise, May 4th.

"Our months of planning are now culminating in this mission and exercise as we build on lessons learned from MEDFLAG 2010," said Air Force Lt. Col. June Oldman, mission director for MEDLITE 11 and a member of the 137th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Oklahoma Air National Guard.

"We look forward to the opportunity to learn from each other," Oldman said. "The more we work together with our partners in Africa, the better we understand each other."

The purpose of this joint exercise is to focus on five key points, said Oldman. Reinforcing the training of the Armed Forces of the DRC Medical Immediate Response Unit, enhancing the capabilities of the U.S. and Armed Forces of the DRC to respond to medical emergencies, sharing our training and experiences with the Medical Rapid Intervention Unit, building a partnership and relationship with the Congolese military and cultivating a professional Armed Forces of the DRC as part of the U.S. government's efforts to support peace and stability in the DRC.

"What an in depth broad relationship we have here with the DRC," said Ambassador James Entwistle, U.S. Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "Not only did we have the DRC and the U.S. forces here today at the opening ceremonies but we were able to get representatives from Rwanda to attend as well.

"We are hoping to increase the capabilities between the Congolese military and the U.S. military and to eventually learn more than we teach," Entwistle said.

About 60 U.S. Air Force active duty, National Guard and Reserve military personnel and 150 Congolese military personnel will participate in MEDLITE 11 from April 25 through May 5.

"I came here to teach aeromedical evacuation to the Congolese," said Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Julie Swearingin, an aeromedical evacuation technician with the 187th AES, Wyoming Air National Guard.

"My hopes are the things I teach them will one day help save lives and provide them a more increased chance of survivability for their military members," Swearingin said.

"A great opportunity presented itself to me with this exercise," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Amber Weaver, an aeromedical evacuation technician, also assigned to the 187th AES.

"I'm hoping to help the Congolese military medical personnel with helping their own wounded, while at the same time learning a great deal from them," Weaver said.

The start of MEDLITE 11 signifies the latest in a series of exercises that were initiated in 1987 as a now U.S. Africa Command-sponsored, bilateral medical exercise to facilitate an exchange of medical information and techniques with militaries in Africa.

"This mission is truly a total force effort," Oldman said.

"It is a key element in a series of military to military activities that demonstrate the strong partnership and cooperation between the U.S. and Congolese militaries."