Exercise Golfinho An Example For Other Continental Brigades

The Southern African Development Community Standby Brigade (SADBRIG) recently held Exercise GOLFINHO, so named at the suggestion of Angola and Mozambique as being the Portuguese for “Dolphin” - an animal known for coming to the rescue when humans are in danger.

Published on 13 October 2009 in ISS Today

Henri Boshoff Programme Head Peace Missions Programme, ISS Pretoria

The Southern African Development Community Standby Brigade (SADBRIG) recently held Exercise GOLFINHO, so named at the suggestion of Angola and Mozambique as being the Portuguese for “Dolphin” - an animal known for coming to the rescue when humans are in danger. The exercise took place at the South African National Defence Force Combat Training Centre in the Northern Cape, Lohatla, and in Walvis Bay over the period 1 to 26 September 2009. The aim of the exercise was to prepare the SADBRIG for multidimensional Peace Support Operations in line with the African Union Standby Force Roadmap.

The exercise’s objectives were to test the interoperability and compatibility of the mission components -- military, police and civilians; to exercise inter-agency liaison between international organisations, governments and NGOs; to practice command and staff liaison in multinational HQs; to test capabilities in information gathering; to exercise the provision of assistance in humanitarian relief operations; to exercise commanders and staff in media handling and to exercise mission sustenance procedures.

The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) roadmap requires regional brigades to be ready to implement Scenario 6 of the Conflict and Missions Scenarios. The six scenarios are as follows:

The roadmap makes further provision for the ASF to build capacity according to a timeline to be able to implement any of the six scenarios, and specifically Scenario 6, by 2010. The road map has set out a phased plan for implementation as follows:

The regional brigades planned and held various exercises during 2009 in anticipation of the AU exercise AMANI AFRICA planned for 2010, which will test the readiness of the five brigades to implement the Conflict and Missions Scenarios. Exercise GOLFINHO was to establish SADBRIG’s readiness for June 2010, but also to be able to participate in exercise AMANI AFRICA. The West African ASF has already completed two exercises and East Africa ASF is in the planning process of hosting one towards the end of 2009, beginning 2010. It is interesting that the East and West African ASF exercises are supported by European and United States funding, equipment and advisors.

Troops from 12 countries participated in the field exercise GOLFINHO. This exercise was preceded by a map exercise in Angola in January 2009 and a command post exercise in Mozambique in April 2009. The SADBRIG exercise can be seen as an example of the direction regional brigades have to take. Exercise GOLFINHO was planned and executed by SADBRIG without any external support. According to the planning staff, GOLFINHO was a totally SADBRIG driven exercise from the writing of the scenarios onwards to the execution of the exercise. It was a deliberate choice by SADBRIG to undertake the exercise on its own and proove that this could be done without outside support. The outcome of the exercise was successful: all the exercise objectives were tested and achieved to a state that lessons were also learned and shortcomings identified.  SADBRIG also tested some very important concepts that could possibly be used by the other regional brigades.

Against the current background of conflict in Somalia, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few, SADBRIG decided to exercise the two most difficult scenarios. They elected Scenario 6, the intervention, a Chapter VII operation as defined under the UN charter, to start the exercise. This was then followed by a Scenario 5 multidimensional peacekeeping operation. SADBRIG made sure that extreme challenges were put to the participants so as not to expose SADBRIG in future operations. It also tested the key challenge of interoperability; strategic lift was overcome by using multiple modes of transport by air, road, train and sea to assemble the force. Also Portuguese, French and Englishspeaking troops were not deployed in isolation, but were spread throughout the battalions, each of which was composed of as many nationalities as possible. The exercise also tested military, police and civilian components together in one exercise.

What the exercise has shown is that SADC has the capability to intervene in a Scenario 6 environment.  SADBRIG stated that it is possible for it to deploy to any place in Africa or even outside to assist, provided strategic lift is available, and that funding and logistical support can be sustained. The last two points are important and are a challenge to the status of at least two other standby brigades. The biggest challenge for APSA is not how to intervene in complex emergencies, but how to equip, fund and sustain such intervention. The AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) again emphasises the need to ensure the readiness of the regional brigades before 2010 to be able to deploy a credible force in a complex emergency.