General African Defense discussion

[Sampanviking]

On May 4th there were a number of reports that the Chinese T96 MBT scored its first combat kill, when a unit sold to the Sudanese destroyed a T-72 of the South Sudanese army.

Interesting if true for various reasons, but has proven impossible to verify. I have seen some photos of a clearly very dead T-72 in Africa but no images of the beast wot dun it!

 

[My2Cents]

On May 4th there were a number of reports that the Chinese T96 MBT scored its first combat kill, when a unit sold to the Sudanese destroyed a T-72 of the South Sudanese army.

Interesting if true for various reasons, but has proven impossible to verify. I have seen some photos of a clearly very dead T-72 in Africa but no images of the beast wot dun it!

Check for rust in the penetration if the detail is good enough. If so it has already been dead for quite a while.

 

[Dodger67]

Looks like a thorough analysis of South Africa's situation & the current weaknesses of its military forces. The organisational changes proposed seem sensible. Reinstatement of the traditional unit structure is a good idea.

The main issue is whether the forces will get enough money to meet the demands politicians place upon them. I presume the minister of defence backs this review - but how much clout does she have in the government?

Not sure how she rates in Cabinet but she is not well liked by the professional soldiers.
That said, the person who really needs to be convinced of the merits of the review's eventual recommendations is the Finance minister Pravin Gordhan.

 

[Dodger67]

Kenyan parliamentary committees urge more defence spending

Two Kenyan parliamentary committees are pressuring the government to approve spending for Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) projects. On 23 May the Defence and Foreign Relations Committee (DFRC) backed the KDF request to the treasury for an additional KES19.2 billion (USD226 million) and asked the government to fund a stalled joint project to upgrade the country's microwave communications network. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Committee (PBC) urged the government to make final payments for a Kenya Navy ship, ordered in 2003

[first posted to Jane's Defence Weekly - Your first line of defence - 25 May 2012]

 

[Dodger67]

Does anyone know what ship the previous post is referring to?

 

[My2Cents]

Does anyone know what ship the previous post is referring to?

Which post? It helps if you use reply to post a quote with a link.

 

[kato]

He's referring to the ship mentioned in the last line.

Which would be KNS Jasiri, an OPV ordered in Spain for which payments were suspended by Kenya in 2005. Problem was that the company building it, Euromarine, and in particular its parent company, Anglo-Leasing Finance, is considered to be engaged in fraud by Kenyan authorities, in particular regarding non-delivery, developing pressure to overprice items etc. It's also connected to Sri Lankan businessman Anura Pereira, who is indicted for corruption in Kenya.

Euromarine has in the past years repeatedly tried to get Kenya to make the final payments and take delivery, while the Kenyan MoD considers the ship itself - docked in Spain at 90% completion, partially rusted and defective - not worthwhile. There's some hints at the current round of trying to pressure them into taking it being backed by corruption too.

 

[Dodger67]

Not sure how she rates in Cabinet but she is not well liked by the professional soldiers.
That said, the person who really needs to be convinced of the merits of the review's eventual recommendations is the Finance minister Pravin Gordhan.

South Africa gets a new MoD.
http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26167&catid=74&Itemid=30

It remains to be seen if the new minister will make any significant changes or if she will have much of an effect on the current Defence Review process.

 

[Dodger67]

US Africom quietly extends its "on the ground" presence in Africa

This article from the Washington Post shows how Africom has established a low-key presence all over the continent.
U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa - The Washington Post
As an African myself I find the he naivete and narrow focus of many of the readers comments interesting and disturbing.
American schools need to very seriously upgrade the quality and extent of geography and world history lessons.

 

[My2Cents]

The whole continent needs development. Africa has enormous potential. The USA and other nations can assist with the process.

Without (relatively) honest government you are just pissing money away. In most countries, unless you have direct control over project construction and operations, officials will steal 60% to 90% of the funding and/or materials. The problem is rooted in a culture that emphasis loyalty based on familial relationship above all else, the classic expression of which is the African proverb:

Me and my country against the world
Me and my clan against my country
Me and my family against my clan
Me and my brother against my family
Me​

Ask any African and they want good government. But when you get into details they just mean ‘my people on the top taking everything, because the others are not entitled to any of it’, if you are lucky. Sometimes it seems that they will not even admit that people from outside of their particular group are actually human, and just want them dead or gone.

To impose an actual solution to the problem would probably involve:

1. A violent takeover of the countries by the 1st world with enough firepower and an ROE to brutally discourage any armed opposition as required. Brutality will be necessary because you absolutely need to supplant the tribal justice system, which means breaking the power structure. Those in power will surrender it grudgingly, and not at all peacefully. If you are not ready to force the issue, then add a couple more generations to the time required to finish.
2. Establish and enforce clean government and the rule of law. Then set up an education system that will teach civics so the succeeding generations will maintain the system.
3. Gradually return the government to the local population in a 2-step-forward-1-step-back fashion, i.e. give back some power, wait for the local powerbrokers to abuse it, then break them with fines and long imprisonments. The likely sequence will be something like:
   • village bureaucracy
   • village government
   • area bureaucracy
   • village courts
   • area government
   • national bureaucracy
   • national government
   • area courts
   • National government
   • limited oversight
   • free
4. Plan on staying there at least 60 to 80 years, until the generations raised in the old way are dead and buried. Those raised in the old way will include any over the age of 12 at the time you finally suppress the old power structure for good, so if you go about it in a the way that it is currently being done, this will more likely be 100 to 140 years, or more.

I don’t think the civilized world has enough manpower to pull this off. And I am sure that there are not enough people you could trust to run it.

So we have to go the slow route, and let societies evolve. Mostly that means helping to establish and maintain a freely elected government with a free press and a fair degree of transparency. It also requires foreign governments to keep out of the country’s politics except to:

1. Keep the elections free and fair
2. Keep the government (or at least the cash flow into and out of the country) transparent to limit the theft.
3. Either maintain a minimum of civil rights or to evacuate to the interveners’ country(s) with full citizenship populations threatened by the local power structure. The current system of temporary refugee camps has evolved in a system of permanent ghettoes and must be ended. To force the neighboring countries where these have been created to absorb the populations will just create bigger problems, including future refugees being violently ejected from neighboring countries or killed in similar future crisis.

Then sit back and let the country make every mistake in leadership that they can come up with. With modern communications the people in power will not be able to conceal their thievery, stupidity, and cupidity, and will eventually be replaced by other groups that have not established a reputation yet. Eventually all the local power groups will be discredited enough that groups that think nationally will rise to power, probably in a couple centuries.

 

[Eeshaan]

Yes but what about the Economy of a completely barren landscape like Somalia and Liberia etc. ?

Places like those have no mineral deposits or natural resources, and whatever land isn't already devastated by warfare and landmines is consumed by famine and draught. How would you go about building the economy of a place with no economic potential whatsoever ?

And more importantly, what reason would any developed nation have to spend millions of dollars and resources and manpower to stabilize a zone like this if there is absolutely no benefit to be had for the nation in the long run ?

And speaking of Liberia :

Charles Taylor sentenced to 50 years in prison for war crimes | World news | The Guardian

It's about time justice was served. Taylor and Foday Sankoh were responsible for some of the biggest atrocities since the Rwandan Genocide.

Edit : I don't think anyone has ever tried to calculate what the cost of an extensive de-mining operation in Africa will be. Those landmines themselves are a large enough deterrent to any sort of progress in the continent IMHO.

 

[Dodger67]

Liberia is far from "barren" and in fact it's mineral wealth has been a motivator for much of it's trouble. Have you ever heard of "blood diamonds"? The term was first used in reference to Liberia.

However - since the Johnson-Sirleaf administration the country's economy is on a turnaround and doing well under the circumstances.
Take a look at the Economy section of https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/li.html

One of the biggest image problems African countries have is the outdated stereotypes the rest of world has about them. Only a handful of countries are really still "basket cases".

 

[Dodger67]

Africa Aerospace and Defence 2012 (Waterkloof AFB, Pretoria, South Africa) looks like it's going to be a good one, although a bit "light" on the civil aviation and airline side.
The list of exhibitors is fairly impressive for a relatively minor event - http://www.aadexpo.co.za/documents/AAD2012_Exhibitors_List.pdf

The move to Waterkloof AFB in Pretoria, a much larger venue than Ysterplaat in Cape Town seems to be largely positive, although the inland location severely limits maritime exhibits.

 

[swerve]

Yes but what about the Economy of a completely barren landscape like Somalia and Liberia etc. ?

Places like those have no mineral deposits or natural resources, and whatever land isn't already devastated by warfare and landmines is consumed by famine and draught. How would you go about building the economy of a place with no economic potential whatsoever ?

And more importantly, what reason would any developed nation have to spend millions of dollars and resources and manpower to stabilize a zone like this if there is absolutely no benefit to be had for the nation in the long run ?...

Edit : I don't think anyone has ever tried to calculate what the cost of an extensive de-mining operation in Africa will be. Those landmines themselves are a large enough deterrent to any sort of progress in the continent IMHO.

Please don't flaunt ignorance.

Africa is a whole continent. Somalia is no more like Liberia (except in recent political instability) than Afghanistan is like Taiwan. Mines are a problem in some parts of a few countries, not everywhere in every country - and aren't the end of the world, in any case: Libya got rich in the 1960s & 1970s despite still being littered with millions of WW2 mines.

Why do you think so many people are willing to fight for patches of Liberia, Congo, et al? Minerals! "Blood diamonds" have already been mentioned, but they're a very small part of Africa's mineral wealth. Why do you think China is now so interested in Africa, & Chinese corporations are trying to buy up vast areas? Oil, copper, diamonds, chromium, nickel, platinum, gold, titanium, zinc, germanium, bauxite, iron, lead, coal, uranium . . . . and huge agricultural potential. Drought? Vast areas of Africa are no more prone to drought than, e.g., Japan is.

 

[Eeshaan]

Please don't flaunt ignorance.

Africa is a whole continent. Somalia is no more like Liberia (except in recent political instability) than Afghanistan is like Taiwan. Mines are a problem in some parts of a few countries, not everywhere in every country - and aren't the end of the world, in any case: Libya got rich in the 1960s & 1970s despite still being littered with millions of WW2 mines.

Why do you think so many people are willing to fight for patches of Liberia, Congo, et al? Minerals! "Blood diamonds" have already been mentioned, but they're a very small part of Africa's mineral wealth. Why do you think China is now so interested in Africa, & Chinese corporations are trying to buy up vast areas? Oil, copper, diamonds, chromium, nickel, platinum, gold, titanium, zinc, germanium, bauxite, iron, lead, coal, uranium . . . . and huge agricultural potential. Drought? Vast areas of Africa are no more prone to drought than, e.g., Japan is.

My apologies, sir. I stand corrected on that issue. I had no intent of bad-mouthing Africa or it's people in any way .

And I was talking about specific places like Liberia and Somalia. I know Africa has vast deposits of mineral wealth.

 

[swerve]

Well, you're probably right about Somalia. It's not only arid but has very modest mineral wealth.

Liberia, on the other hand, has fertile soil, abundant water (it still has the world's largest rubber plantation), & lots of minerals. A few decades ago it was relatively prosperous, exporting large quantities of iron ore, rubber, timber (high value tropical hardwoods) & some lesser cash crops. It was ruined by warfare, & is now slowly rebuilding on the back of its natural wealth, with mines being re-opened & plantations revived.

 

[Blackshoe]

To be one of the only ones to sing the praises of Somalia, there is a lot of thought now (and some hard evidence) that there's oil in Somalia. A lot of oil-a UPI article entitled "Somali war linked to brewing oil dispute" from 3August2012 (sorry, can't link yet) quotes Abdillahi Mohamud, director of the East African Energy Forum, as saying that impoverished Somalia has offshore and onshore oil reserves of 80 billion-100 billion barrels.

"This small nation of 10 million stands to have the fifth largest petroleum reserves in the world, eclipsing heavyweights like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Nigeria," Mohamud noted.

Having access to that much in your EEZ doesn't mean you have the capability to exploit and capitalize on it, of course. But it's something...

 

[Dodger67]

It remains to be seen if the newly elected Somali government is able to take effective control of the country or will the warlords and pirate captains continue "business as usual". If they get the assistance they need I believe they might just have a chance of becoming a normal country again. Kenya has committed a large chunk of resources (their largest foreign deployment ever?) to help but I'm not sure of the rest of the neigbours.

 

[My2Cents]

Nobody will be tempted by that oil until there is some semblance of a central government that can guarantee safety. Everyone, even the Chinese, has learned that you cannot develop resources where a functional government does not exist.

 

[Dodger67]

Just to lift up the mood here, a bit of light news from AAD 2012:

The Blue Angels have Fat Albert - now the Silver Falcons have the Gooney Bird... [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehWzYlyruA0"]Gooney Bird - Silver Falcons - YouTube[/nomedia]