Helmoed Roemer Heitman: Mali, DRC, CAR and Some Lessons?

The recent events in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, have produced some interesting lessons that Africa's leaders, political and military, should be studying: The 'Early Warning System' either did not provide early warning of impending crisis, or no one paid any attention to it. Not one of those three crises developed suddenly. All were foreseeable, even if timings were not exactly predictable. The rebel forces in Mali and the CAR moved very quickly indeed: In Mali they were able to seize control of two thirds of that very large country in just 11 weeks. In the CAR they seized control of two thirds of the country in just 19 days. In the DRC, the rebellion sputtered along for several months, but then it took the rebels just one day to take the city of Goma. The response was in all three cases too slow, too indecisive and too weak. It is not enough to stop rebels, they must at least be driven back,or preferably disrupted to the point, where a renewed rebellion is unlikely in the near term. In all three cases, the rebel forces proved to be rather better led, trained and armed than had be expected. The French learned this at the cost of a Gazelle shot down in Mali, apparently during a night attack on a rebel column. In the CAR and the DRC, the rebels would seem to have enjoyed at least some measure of foreign support: The main CAR rebel force advanced westwards from the Vakaga province that adjoins Sudan, suspected of providing logistic support for the rebels now and in the past; The CAR rebels reportedly included in their leadership General Mahamat Nouri, a Chadian dissident involved in the two fast moving, long distance attacks from Sudan on N'Djamena in 2006 and 2008, and whose expertise seems to be reflected in the speed with which they moved. In the DRC, there seems little doubt that Rwanda has provided training and logistic support to the M23 rebels. In Mali there is no sign of foreign support, and no likelihood at all of support by a neighboring country, but the rebels had clearly benefited from weapons that became available during the Libyan civil war, and the location of their first attacks equally clearly demonstrated their use of the borderlands of Algeria, Mauritania and Niger for assembly and the approach march.