Islam Times - Africa Union trains African Police and civilians to support its military

Islam Times - At the East African standby Force Brigade headquarters in Ethiopia, an imaginary country called Carina has been created .It represents any African state in conflict and in need of help.

On the ground to save this nation are not military forces as expected but policemen and civilians.

These representatives of different regions in Africa are being trained on how to plan practical solutions to solve Carina's problems, which concepts are supposed to give them a firsthand experience of how to save a country in their own continent when time arises.

This is part of exercise "Njiwa" a peace initiative supported by the Canadian government and aimed at building capacity of Africans to be able to plan for missions and to work and operate within the missions themselves.

It was conceived after the first peace exercise in 2010 code named " Amani" proved too militaristic. So far the African Union force which is in Somali, AMISON has suffered a blow after Uganda withdrew its forces ,and the idea of having policemen and civilians join the continental effort is strategic.

The success of police and civilian training exercise will depend entirely on individual member states to first attend the training and second to deploy their police forces and civilians when conflict arises in any part of Africa.

After the idea of deploying policemen to conflict areas was tabled before the African states only Uganda and Nigeria have so far heeded with a total of 340 soldiers all deployed in Mogadishu.

General Samaila Iliyu Director of Exercise "Njiwa"...WE have said that each area should have two units of policemen and we shall build on it from time to time.

The aim of the African Union peace and security commission is to have four units of policemen in Mogadishu but upto now no other African country has volunteered.

Although most countries are attending the training they are not talking of sending policemen to Mogadishu where the African Union needs two more units.