Lohatlha, South Africa: As the sun rose over South Africa's dry and sparsely populated Karoo west of Johannesburg, more than 5,000 multinational troops launched a mock attack heralding a long-awaited African Union strike force for the troubled continent.
Men in fatigues peered through binoculars and crouched over maps, coordinating the movements of soldiers from more than a dozen African countries taking part this week in the first field exercise of the African Standby Force (ASF).
The script called for rapid deployment in response to reports of genocide in a fake country called Carana -- a war game with a bitter touch of reality on a continent that has suffered the bloodshed of Rwanda and Darfur.
First proposed in 1997, the ASF aims to have forces from one of the continent's five regional economic blocs on standby at any time, ready to respond swiftly to crises across Africa, with an overall force size of 25,000.
"Given our experiences, specifically in response to conflict in the past, the AU felt the international community very slow to respond," the African Union's head of peace support operations, Sivuyile Bam, told AFP.
"It takes time between the mandate being passed and the forces arriving on the ground -- the rule of thumb is usually nine months.
"The types of conflicts we are dealing with simply do not allow for the luxury of time."
The ASF aims to be able to move in and take action within 14 days of being mandated by African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, and it was that capacity that was being tested on a Karoo farm six hours west of Johannesburg.
AFP
