SA+signs+up+to+train+military+the+US+way

**SA signs up to train military the US way**
=**African peacekeeping force to be mentored by ex-Cuban exile**=


 * The Saturday Star, Johannesburg, September 17, 2005**


 * By MICHAEL SCHMIDT**

South Africa has become a new string in the American "war on terror" bow, having quietly joined the US's controversial African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (Acota) programme.

Last Wednesday US President George Bush told the UN Security Council: "Over the next five years the United States will provide training for more than 40 000 African peacekeepers", with the aim being to "preserve justice and order in Africa".

Acota began life in 1996 as a humanitarian assistance force called the African Response Initiative (Acri) under the aegis of the US European Command - based in Stuttgart, Germany, and covering the African continent.

After the 9/11 attacks it was reorganised as Acota, and given greater reach and more teeth.

On August 11 Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and US Ambassador Jendayi Fraser signed South Africa into Acota membership, making South Africa the 13th African member of the group.

A press release by the US Embassy in Pretoria defines the purpose of Acota as "to increase the capacity of African nations to participate in multinational peace support operations.

The exact nature and extent of training and assistance provided through the programme will be determined through consultations between the US and South Africa."

Acota, "administered by the US Department of State, seeks to develop partnerships with African countries to increase their capacity to participate in international peace operations.

The programme focuses on training and assistance for African peacekeepers, developing exercises for multinational force staffs and providing equipment for trainers and learners from the partner nation's military establishment."

The embassy says that to date Acota "has provided training and non-lethal equipment (including communications packs, uniforms, generators, mine detectors and field medical equipment) to over 20 000 peacekeepers from 12 African nations".

Writer Pierre Abramovici raised questions about Acota in the respected French journal Le Monde Diplomatique in July last year.

Signalling that South Africa was soon to join Acota - despite official denials until last month's signing - Abramovici warned that although Acri, the forerunner of Acota, claimed "to have humanitarian objectives, its programme co-ordinator is Colonel Nestor Pino-Marina, a retired US officer with an impressive record".

"He is a Cuban exile who took part in the failed 1961 US landing in the Bay of Pigs. He is also a former special forces officer who served in Vietnam and Laos.

"During the Reagan era he belonged to the Inter-American Defence Board and, in the 1990s, he took part in clandestine operations against the Sandinistas.

He was accused of involvement in drug trafficking to fund arms sent to Central America."

Today, Pino-Marina sits on the executive of the Cuban-American Military Council, a hawkish exile group that enjoys official status within the US military despite its stated aim of regime change in Cuba - or as the council puts it, the restoration of "democracy".

After Acri's reformation as Acota, Abramovici noted, it began to include "offensive training, particularly for regular infantry units and small units modelled on special forces"and "In Washington, talk is no longer of non-lethal weapons, as it was with Acri: the emphasis is on 'offensive' co-operation' ".

Jendayi Fraser's appointment as ambassador last year was remarkable because of her total lack of diplomatic experience.

Now headed for greater things in the State Department, Fraser once served as a politico-military planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Department of Defence (DoD) and as senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.

According to her brief online biography, she also "worked on African security issues with the State Department's international military education training programmes".

Such programmes include the Next Generation of African Military Leaders course for middle-ranking officers, currently being run by the Washington-based African Centre For Strategic Studies, which falls under the DoD and has "chapters" in various African countries, including a rather inactive chapter in South Africa that counts academics and analysts among its members.

These initiatives are aimed at protecting American strategic interests in the arc of uncontrolled wasteland that cuts across the Sahel.

But Fraser herself has characterised the US's umbrella Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative as "a very small initiative", weighing in at a slight "few million dollars at this point [last month]" - compared to an HIV/Aids-combating programme of $2,4-billion and the $26,6-billion pumped into the continent by the US African Growth and Opportunities Act.

Helmoed-Romer Heitman, Jane's Defence Weekly SA correspondent, took a similar view, saying he did not expect the signing of Acota to have "any dramatic effect".

He said the initiative would probably do more to assist the SADF integrate better with other African military establishments under the African Union's African Standby Force than to further US strategic objectives in Africa.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=131&fArticleId=2880113