Accra, Nov. 6, GNA - Some 30 military officers from Chad, Nigeria and Ghana have gathered in Accra to undertake a two-week course aimed at improving civil-military coordination at the middle management level of African military and civil authorities. The Civil Military Operations Course, which is being hosted by the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in collaboration with the United States Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR), would inform the officers on the roles of various organisations in providing security and stability to improve the harmonisation between the military and civilian authorities. Ten experts from the US, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Germany would be facilitating the course. Major-General John Attipoe, Commandant of the KAIPTC, who welcomed the participants at the opening of the course, noted that civil/military operation was an area of particular importance to the success of peace support operations.
He said armies and civilian agencies around the world were beginning to recognise that good civil/military operations were vital to achieve humanitarian and development objectives and fulfillment of the mandate in peace operations.
However, very few countries apart from those in Europe and North America were preparing their peacekeepers for civil-military coordination and even fewer still were training specialist civil-military coordination liaison officers, he observed. Brigadier-General Attipoe noted that the interface between peace and security objectives on one hand, and the relief and reconstruction objectives on the other, was crucial for complex peace operations to have a holistic impact on the conflict system it was attempting to transform.
He thus challenged the participants to define the quality and quantity of service in peace support operations, because the programme directly correlated the capacities and capabilities to prevent, manage, and resolve conflicts wherever they were deployed.
