News
EA force to end conflict
Uganda Army Commander Gen Aronda Nyakairima, third from left, congratulates Tanzanian soldiers at a past East Africa armies joint sports meeting at Mandela National Stadium in Kampala. Photo/MORGAN MBABAZI
The EAC’s peace and security initiative is a breakaway from the bloc’s usual menu of issues of economic integration.
The revived EAC has in just 10 years covered two key steps of economic integration — having launched a Customs Union in 2005 and now on the verge of becoming a Common Market. By evolving into a regional military pact, the EAC now combines both economic and military functions.
Its model, the European Union, only became a Common Market in 1992, 35 years after taking its first steps toward integration, and it remains unlikely that the EU will take on military functions.
However, the proposed military brigade is not a silver bullet for instability challenges of the region, an issue that presents more work for the bloc’s Secretariat.
The region’s proximity to the conflict flashpoints of Somalia, the volatile eastern Congo and Southern Sudan also featured high on the list of security concerns that might spill over into the EAC.
On top of this are piracy in the Gulf of Aden and terrorist al Qaeda pockets that once in a while strike at targets in Kenya and Tanzania requiring collective protection of the region’s ocean and airspaces.
In an earlier interview with The EastAfrican, Mr Mwapachu said it remains difficult for the region to maintain peace within its borders when the neighbourhood is conflict ridden, a situation that could prompt the EAC to conscript neighbouring countries into its security initiatives.
“This whole concept of security cannot be homogenised; it cannot just be an EAC thing because we have these geographical interfaces with Democratic Republic of Congo, with Somalia and South Sudan. So we cannot say this peace and security is just for us. We need to work out a concept and institutional framework that looks into peace and security beyond our own immediate region.
“Even if Rwanda and Burundi had not joined the EAC, we would also still be talking about them, but now they are on board, and maybe ultimately some of these other unstable areas will have to be brought on board so that we can stabilise them in the interests of general peace and security. But you don’t know where the geographical instability is going to end. It can be like a moving target. So you could keep expanding the EAC in order to accommodate a larger, stable area,” he said.
