XINHUA
ABIDJAN, July 27
The standby force of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is “ready” to be deployed to Mali, Cote d’Ivoire’s army chief general Soumaila Bakayoko has said.
“The ECOWAS Mission to Mali (MICEMA) is ready to execute its mission once it’s deployed to Mali,” Bakayoko said on Thursday in Abidjan after a two-day meeting of the Committee of West African army chiefs. He also pointed out ECOWAS is only awaiting a resolution of the United Nations Security Council.
“We have already identified 3,000 officers and we are only awaiting the UN’s authorization,” he added. He revealed “13 countries out of the 15 ECOWAS member states, will be present in Mali, working alongside their Malian brothers in the armed force.” “The objective of MICEMA is to support the Malian army so that together, we can re-establish the country’s territorial integrity by pushing back the rebels and other armed terrorists who are currently occupying the northern parts of the country,” the Cote d’Ivoire army chief reiterated.
He announced the regional army chiefs will be in Bamako on Aug. 9 for the final meeting to plan on how the ECOWAS force will intervene in Mali.
We Africans can be funny at times. Does ECOWAS think that 3000 men with limited logistics, intelligence and equipment would be able to push out a bunch of battle hardened, die hard mujahedden.
Bros, I wasn’t going to say anything. But you said it. 3000 troops ? The UN security counsel has already said they want no part of it.
The french are offering unspecified and non committal assistance. The US, some insignificant field exercises.
The algerians could provide the necessary air power, but I don’t know how enthused they are about partnering with west africans in this endeavor. Instead, you may see them launch independent operations against selected targets that threaten them.
The francophonies led by ivory coast, burkinafaso and senegal, are talking a good game, but without the sort of US/UN/EU/AU assistance that AMISOM is receiving, they can’t do squat.
So as usual, whenever it comes to practical matters, this leaves nigeria. While nigeria has serious security concerns in northern mali, the nigerian people are in no mood to let our president play any big brother games with nigerian lives and treasure.(note the push back that the african first ladies summit is getting )
Moreover, nigeria’s limited air assets, would allow the terrorists to get up close and personal with any invading ground force.
This means that ecowas casualties would be high. Majority of the al qaeda insurgents in iraq, came from north africa. So, they definitely wouldn’t shy away from a so called jihad in their back yard.
Also, one can expect thousands of boko haram affiliates to fight the nigerian army both in mali and nigeria.
Already, most of the gaddafi trained tuareg fights are now under the jihadist’s command. And these are the weapons, that is at their disposal.
(1) Libyan army trucks, 4×4 technicals, BM-21 multi barrelled rocket launchers, ZSU-22-4 anti aircraft guns. (And this is a conservative estimate)
(2) The malian army also lost about 90 50 cal. GPMG equipped hilux trucks also equipped with the latest sat nav gadgets. This was supplied by the US prior to the tuareg offensive. And all were abandoned behind enemy lines.
All these don’t include the malian army’s own arsenal that was left behind in army bases in the north of the country.
So a conservative estimate of what kind of opposition to expect in any mali expedition, has to be between 10,000 to 15,000 heavily armed and experienced fighters.
Which ecowas intends to rout with 3000 lightly equipped troops plus a questionable malian army.
Main effort for now is secure Bamako, for which 3000 ( a Brigade)should suffice. Once on the ground I’m guessing the Force commander will be submitting a new request. For me the key thing is to get them into Mali as soon as possible.
West Africans are NOT GOOD at deploying first and doing the rest later.
Remember that during the Battle of Freetown II, it fell to Nigeria to fly in 9,000 extra troops from home over a ten day period which was what allowed our men to meet the heavy requirement for boots on the ground in the face of savage hand-to-hand and street-by-street fighting and house clearing in the urban jungle that was Freetown.
Our partners kept on saying that they would send in troop reinforcements. Those who did, sent in platoons and companies. At peak deployment, there were 19,000 Nigerian troops out of a total of about 22,500 ECOMOG troops.
It is best that they firm up these matters now. Knowing our penchant for ‘managing’, we do not want a situation whereby we go in there first before we start making arrangements for optimum provisioning.
If the FG are ready for this, they should have an order for three surplus Mi-24V and three Mi-17s on that cards as we speak. If they cannot dedicate that for combat operations in Mali(given the concurrent requirements for ongoing CTCOIN ops in-country), then they should tarry a while.
The NA have enough artillery with which to attack all the armies of West Africa simultaneously but we are going to see urban warfare where the use of artillery weapons would be ill-advised. So how about truck-mounted M40 106RRs? Have we prepared ‘technicals’ armed with 12.7mm and 14.5mm HMGs for the job? I ask because those Azawad guys do not even touch GPMGs. We had better know what we are getting into and ONLY go in there fully prepared.
You can be sure that our partners would sooner than later cry out about finances and as such would shy away from sending reinforcements. The only countries which I believe would last the distance because of their direct stakes in the security of northern Mali(same way Boko Haram use the place to train and equip against us) are Niger and possibly, Mali’s nextdoor neighbours Senegal and of course, the brave Guineans, who were easily the most tenacious of Nigeria’s partners during the ECOMOG years.
We had better know what we are doing. We like to rush into things without making adequate preparations.
Coincidentally, the son of a foremost Nigerian ECOMOG hero just passed by to pay tribute to the memory of his late dad.
Welcome, Dishi Maxwell-Khobe, son of our unforgettable Brigadier General Maxwell Mitikishe Khobe of blessed memory..an ECOMOG hero of the greatest stature who I always remember with the utmost degree of fondness.
As we prepare to go to war in Mali, let the living remember and avoid the pitfalls of the ECOMOG years
http://beegeagle.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/khobe-the-bravean-ode-to-ecomog-hero-brig-gen-maxwell-khobe/#comment-14226
AMEN.
Since it is mostly going to be about CTCOIN-capable APCs, AFVs and scout cars, we are able to call on quite an array of hardware systems in the medium-term:
72 units of Panhard VBL M11 and 55 units of 30mm cannon-armed Fox scout cars; 60mm mortar-armed AML 60s, Panhard AML 90, Panhard Sagaie 90mm AFV and EE9 Cascavel 90mm AFV(of which they retain 304 units in total); 150 units of 76mm/90mm gun-armed Scorpiom light tanks.
Outside of that pool, the NA also own an assortment of APCs – 24 units of BTR 60s/BTR 70s, 47 units of BTR-3, 140 units of MOWAG Piranha APCs, 18 Panhard M3 APCs, 67 units of tracked MT-LB and 300 units of tracked Steyr 4K-7FA, 12 GILA MRAPs and 5 Urutu APCs.
(613 of 817 APCs – that is, less 204 Otokar Cobra APCs are currently not involved in the ongoing CTCOIN ops in Nigeria)
So let us talk. The desert is the theatre – a no-no for MOWAG APCs. How would you equip our troops given the foregoing pool of assets?
Let us just leave out 590 towed and SP arty, 330 units of 81mm,82mm and 120mm mortars and a few hundred M40 106RRs and ZU/ZSU 23 towed and SP arty, ATGWs, 84mm Carl Gustav, 70mm Astros MRLs, BM-21/APR-21 122mm MBRLs.
I say this because given the chance, one would simply move six Shilka SPAAGs, six 70mm Astros MRLs, six APR 21/BM 21s, twenty 106RRs, twelve 105mm arty, four 122mm arty, four 130mm arty and four 155mm arty into the theatre and right there you have much more firepower than the Malian Army can muster.
Oga beegeagle are you sure, nigeria possess 70mm Astros MRLs?
Oga beegeagle you forgot about air assets, of which Nigeria is seriously lacking. The area we talking about in Northern Mali is almost as large as Nigeria. APCs alone will not cover those huge distances effectively & swiftly. Without helicopter gunships ours troops will be nothing more than the Nigerian Police in face of those Mujaheddin. I doubt if the few Mi 24s NAF possesses are equipped to handle desert conditions. My advice to GEJ leave Malians to tackle their own wahala & focus on beating Boko Haram senseless before negotiating with them
Factually, the said area in northern Mali is equal in size to France. That means, you would have to add to that the combined area of Liberia and Sierra Leone before it can be said to be equal in size to NORTHERN NIGERIA..not Nigeria.
Be that as it may, a breakaway territory which is over half-a-million square kilometre in area is pretty vast and is comparable in size to countries such as Madagascar, France, Thailand or Kenya. It calls for adequate preparation. You are talking of an area equal in size to the combination of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. That just gives a clearer idea to any West African troops who are under any illusions.
That said, I understand what your concerns are. Successive FGs have not been too conscientious about equipping the military. Take a look at Sudan, which only began to export oil in 1999 with a production level which, pre-partition, was one fifth of what we produce today in Nigeria. Yet they were smart enough to key into the glut of surplus but battle-ready hardware, amassing as much as 30+ Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, 33 Mi-17s and 22 MiG 29 jets. How won’t COIN ops be sustained meaningfully then? We earn like giants and provide for our forces like paupers in Nigeria.
WHY would our government place an order for two units of attack helicopters? Three units? What kind of poverty of the mind has overtaken our MoD? Is money spent anywhere else but on this earth? They have been saving for exigencies for a decade. There are many things which we need to get yet all we hear about, is competing demands even as multibillion dollars scams are daily getting unearthed? Why not provide optimally for the forces instead of all this frugal rainy day talk, even while the foundations of our nationhood is daily being affronted by a myriad of threats?
Na wa for una o.
In addition to air assets ECOWAS would need nothing short of 30k troops to not only fight their way through but to also hold territory. Those troops would need excellent intelligence & logistics. I’m wondering if its observer mission ECOWAS are assuming they are embarking upon.
Thank you.
I don’t think our leaders realise the depth of the security challenges which we are faced with.
We just passed out 3,600+ recruits from Depot NA. Well, a small country like Zimbabwe with less than a tenth of Nigeria’s GDP and population but without any ongoing insurgency or armed conflict, has in 2012 alone recruited 4,600 troops.
Howbeit then that Nigeria with three distinct raging or festering conflcts in the Niger Delta, on the Jos Plateau and in the Far North, plus the major asymmetric challenges that are piracy and bunkering in the EEZ, is still taking things casually and in our usual gradualist approach passing out 3,600+ troops in only one intake? At a time when some makeshift training camps ought to have been opened at Obudu, Saki, Kachia and Gwoza to add to the regular output from Depot NA?
Are we going to get serious after the roof finally caves in? Why do we always act like the situation is not yet serious enough to get drastic about it? We have not even churned out the right numbers for internal CTCOIN operations and we are planning to go into a desert enclave spanning an area of over half a million square kilometres as PART of a 13-nation force of a laughable 3,000 troops?
We are heading into the desert. I have not heard as we speak that the Desert Warfare Training Camp at Yusufari is playing host to a 1,000 troops on acclamatization and pre-deployment training.
Are we joking? Have we acquired more Panhard VBLs and Otokar Cobra APCs knowing that we have an expanding requirement which outstrip the numbers in service? Over such a featureless terrain as the Sahara where we shall be need Search and Rascue operations, never mind attack mission, where are the new deliveries of surplus Mi-24V, Mi-17 and Bo-105 helicopters?
We want to stagger in there again after having sacrificed troops through carelessness during the ECOMOG years when the boys only saw flak jackets in the movies while Sani and his posse of high lieutenants were looting billions of dollars at home?
Wetin dey do us sef for dis we kontri?
the Otokars and Panhards will smash the technicals, the technicals will only be effective against dismounted infantry or in ambush positions, if they attempt to fight en masse they will be destroyed by superior firepower and more importantly fire control of the NA. I am assuming the force will have integral artillery plus mortars so they can fight defensively and maybe limited offensive capability but to finish that op they need helicopters, attack and support
Hey guys FYI, in the 90s, the UNITA rebels sans external support, ambushed and decimated a massive angolan army armored column at a town called nhearea.
It was the second to the last of angola’s FAA offensives. Since the time of the cuban and soviet backing, the angolan army always took time , material and conscripts, gearing up for these massive offensives against UNITA territory.
Perviously with the cubans, these assaults were ultimately countered by the SADF in conjunction with UNITA.
In the instance I speak of, the FAA sans the cubans decided to end it all in one blitzkrieg assault. But thanks to unita’s control of angolan diamond fields, and an arms merchant like Victor Bout, with his own air cargo business. Various arms including ZSU-22-4s, BM-21 MBRLs and even BMP-2s were flown directly from ukrainian stores to UNITA air fields.
It was with these BM-21 MBRLs, that unita gave the FAA(angolan army) the shock of there lives. They lunched a pre emptive rocket assault on FAA massed armoured & artillery columns. And the area saturating mbrl, produced near instantaneous devastating results.
So,I draw from the annals of recent african military combat history, to suggest that any massed invading ecowas formations sans adequate air cover, would be similarly vulnerable to the growing numbers of BM-21 MBRLS already shown by various news agencies in the hands of Ansar dine & the tuareg rebels.
Guess what, the FAA adjusted quickly. In preparation for the final offensive of the war, they mortgaged future oil earnings, and went shopping.
This netted them 8 SU-27s, 12 SU-24s and several mi-24 & mi-8/17 replacement helicopters.
T-72 tanks, MBRLS and SPH were also purchased from russia & belarus.
And most important of all, the FAA contracted their former foes in the guise of executive outcomes. This time, the FAA decimated any unita tank, mbrl or bmp-2 acquisitions with devastating air strikes involving napalm & cluster bombs.
Unita capitals of andulo & bailundo soon fell under FAA’s onslaught, and savimbi was on the run.
He was later ambushed and killed by angolan special forces, with some intel assistance from some US asset.
So the lesson nigerian armed forces can draw from the angolans, if they haven’t yet learned from nigeria’s own ecomog experiences, is GO HARD OR GO HOME.
MAN i am behind way behind THE 8 BALL . I am catching up..Incidentally guys these wae an article in the la times yesterday the us is” mulling” going into MALI.
i meant there was
Yeah Tim, I actually posted a photo of one unit being manned by a soldier at the Nigerian Army School of Infantry, elsewhere online in 2010.
It was an online friend, Fregulf, who actually gave me the precise name..suggesting that it is not exactly an unknown item. Photos aside, it is also the case that Nigeria operate Brazilian-made Cascavel and Urutu AFVs/APCs so it is not hard to see where and how those came about.
It might take me a few days but I shall search very hard for that photo. Buried in monumentally large archives.
Thank you sir, will be expecting sir
Tim, the machine on the left is its exact replica. The one which has NASI personnel has completely eluded me now and NASI have pulled down their website! They had a nice action photo of the said MBRL and a MOWAG APC there.
Anyway, see this..
Thanks sir….this will do for now