SA Team for Cote d'Ivoire is New Call On Depleted Military
A 40-strong Military Advisory and Monitoring Team from the SA National Defence Force is being sent to the Cote d'Ivoire amidst continuing obstacles to the peace process there. But the new deployment is increasing concerns about the pressures being put on a force depleted by HIV.
The team's tasks will include liaison, planning assistance, monitoring and verification tasks and maintaining a presence at 11 disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration sites.
The contingent will add to those in the DR Congo, Burundi, Sudan and elsewhere on the continent.
SA is currently the tenth largest troop contributing country to the UN, with a total of 2,325 SA National Defence Force members serving in three UN peace missions in Africa.
Most recently it has contributed to the African Union mandated African Mission in Sudan with 320 SANDF and 59 South African Police Service members deployed.
The deployments are clearly giving SA more diplomatic clout, but military officials are increasingly acknowledging the pressures this remit has put on the SANDF. Only half of those returning from peace missions are willing or able to return. Of these half have been hit by HIV, say analysts.
Some 23 percent of South Africa's troops are officially acknowledged to be infected with HIV, a similar rate to the adult population at large, according to official statements. The army is now "starting to get stretched" with its peace missions in Burundi and the DR Congo, Brigadier General Pieter Oelofse, director of medicine for the SA Military Health Service told the second national AIDS conference earlier this month. HIV positive troops were not being deployed abroad.
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06 Juillet 2005 à 13:23 dans
- zsandf (anglais)
