What does the Zimbabwe crisis mean for the MOD?

The news from Zimbabwe is that some kind of coup attempt is underway against President Mugabe’s regime. If successful then few will mourn the passing of one of Africas most despotic regimes, which took a country from riches to ruin, and committed huge numbers of human rights abuses and atrocities against its own population.

For the UK, this represents a potential change for the better in what has been a strained relationship for decades. There is a chance to try and reset relations and rebuild good working links to a country that has suffered enormously for too long.  In the short term though events remain unclear, and no one is entirely sure of who is in charge, or where the President is. For the UK there are also a number of implications of this coup for both the MOD, and wider Government.

The value of Defence Attaches

The Defence Attaché network is often maligned and misrepresented, seen by some as a career path to send old and not particularly good officers out to pasture where they can drink gin and do little damage.

In reality the Defence Attaché network is a vital part of UK capability, being able to monitor local events, gain ‘on the ground’ understanding and build relationships with key players. There is a level of cachet and access that comes from being a British Defence Attache – you are viewed as having the ear of Whitehall, and messages can be discretely passed. For the UK, keeping the Defence Section open over the years has almost certainly helped facilitate a strong network of contacts which can be used to provide up to date information on the crisis. In turn, if deemed appropriate then messages can also be passed back to the contacts on HM Governments position.

The DA will also be able to provide professional advice and judgement on the military situation on the ground, offering advice to HM Ambassador, and giving their view on the situation. This will help shape the reports sent to Whitehall, and in turn provide a balanced appraisal on the crisis. In a world where people struggle to tell the difference between tanks and APCs, having an expert immediately to hand makes a big difference.

Finally the DA is able to offer advice on whether if the situation deteriorates, an evacuation operation (NEO) should be conducted for UK entitled persons (UKEP) – essentially UK passport holders (or citizens of other nationalities) who are in country and who need to get out. Again, this is where having credible military expertise to hand plays a vital role – a NEO is a significant escalation and potentially major infringement of sovereignty. They should not be conducted lightly.

 Importance of Strategic Air Transport / Rapid Response Forces

Over the last 25 years the UK has invested heavily in modernising its strategic airlift forces, and today possesses one of the most capable and globally deployable airlift capabilities in the world. If the decision is taken to conduct some form of NEO to get UKEP out of the country, then the Royal Air Force is well placed to respond.

The presence of a range of aircraft types, including the A330 Voyager, the C17, the A400M and the C130J Hercules means that there are a range of assets able to respond quickly to stage to a friendly local airbase in a neighbouring country. The global reach of the RAF and the ability to conduct air to air refuelling means if the decision were taken, assets could be moving extremely quickly to begin the operation.

Underpinning this is the investment in highly mobile ‘light’ forces held at very high readiness to deploy. If a NEO is conducted, then it is possible that some UK forces will be required to help co-ordinate on the ground and in the worst-case scenario, provide force protection. The British Army has a number of units held at very high readiness for exactly this sort of contingency, able to deploy to support any move to get UKEP out of the country.

It is important to remember that such quick reaction forces are not all about heavily armed infantry tooled up for a fight. Much of the reason the UK does so well at this sort of thing is due to the wider investment in logistics, communications, medical and engineering capability. A whole range of capability would need to be deployed to enable effective command and control of the operation and ensure peoples lives are protected. In the 21^st century effective military capability is as much about the logistics of how you get to a place, sustain your operations and ensure that everyone knows what is going on, as it is about getting into a fight.

For this sort of contingency though, it again highlights the value of the wider Defence Attache Network. To get down to southern Africa will require overflight rights, diplomatic clearances, permission to ship all manner of equipment into a country and operate / support it for some time. All of this is really complicated and requires good working relationships with foreign governments and their armed forces to deliver. Having a Defence Attache network in place makes an enormous difference to make this happen smoothly and effectively.

Capacity Building and Engagement

For the UK, there will need to be a decision on whether to engage with and support the Zimbabwean Government that emerges from this situation. There are difficult policy questions on whether it is appropriate to support a Government born from the fires of a coup, or whether to demand ‘free and fair’ elections in a country with no real history of genuine democracy.

Central to this will be the role played by the Army, and whether it chooses to hand over power or take it for itself. For the MOD part of the role it could play is in deploying a training team, similar to the old BMATT which used to exist, and try to help grow a new Army for Zimbabwe.

The training role played by BMATT in the 1980s and 90s was central to helping shape a professional Zimbabwean Army, and generating a cadre of good junior officers and NCOs. Its presence is sorely missed, and there is an opportunity for the UK to consider re-engaging, training the local armed forces not only to be more professional, but also to respect the rule of law and democracy.

Such work is going on across Africa at the moment, with the UK standing up and supporting a number of training teams across the Continent doing exactly that sort of work. There is a real opportunity for the UK to step in and help the next Zimbabwean Government and professionalise the old Zimbabwean Armed Forces at the same time.  

There is a risk to doing this though – there will almost certainly be complaints that the UK is propping up a regime (particularly if elections don’t happen quickly), and that it is supporting an organisation guilty of human rights abuses. A difficult policy decision has to be made as to whether it is more in the UK’s interest to support the ZDF, or stand back and see what happens.

This sort of local training though is something that the UK excels at, and is a real strength of the armed forces. It is perhaps a peculiar irony that at a time when the British Army is determined against all rational reason and cost to try to regenerate a ‘deployable division’, the single most effective tool it possesses in meeting defence and HMG strategic outputs is small training teams of 5-10 people, where tactical instruction can have a strategic effect.

Importance of DFID

It is easy, particularly on Defence related forums to slag off DFID and the work that it does, seeing it as not important to the core business of Defence. In Zimbabwe though, DFID will have an enormous and vital role to play in both the short and long term.

In the short term the DFID programme will be critical in getting food relief and supplies to the population. Any sustained uncertainty could disrupt basic provision of supplies, food and other essentials. DFID aid, appropriately targeted could help keep people alive who would otherwise die.

In the medium to long term DFID can play a key role in funding projects and programmes to help improve good governance in Zimbabwe – building a bottom up culture of democracy and respect for the rule of law. Zimbabwe has long ceased to be anything other than a personal fiefdom for the ZANU-PF elites to plunder as they see fit. As a nation it has  to be rebuilt from the ground up – there is a chance and opportunity here for the UK to provide counsel and assistance to a friend, to help them become a beacon of democracy.

This may sound highly naïve, but DFID funding does make a real and important difference – often it takes years, if not decades to see the results – something that sits poorly with military planners who think in days or weeks. But investment now helps the UK take a long term strategic position that will help support Zimbabwe, building stability in the region, staving off nation state collapse and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe that would follow. A small investment now may well prevent a massive financial cost of a military led intervention to deliver aid or restore order in 10-20 years time.

OSINT

The final key lesson identified from this event is the importance of ‘Open Source Intelligence’ (OSINT) to understanding how a crisis is occurring in real time. The news of the coup broke yesterday via social media channels, which in turn broadcast mobile phone footage taken by people in their car.  It is now possible for the whole world to know tanks are on the streets of Harare within seconds of it happening – whereas in previous years people would have had to wait a day or two for telegrams to come in and reports to be corroborated.

For the UK this is a timely reminder that OSINT operates inside the OODA loop of planners, and is often far faster than getting intelligence products. OSINT produces imagery and information that can shape how planners respond very quickly and which can also provide valuable intelligence material that can shape how the UK will respond.

The challenge is to make the best use of it and not be overwhelmed by it, nor assume it is all correct. Yesterday saw multiple images and film footage streaming on twitter, with people showing footage of army convoys on the road and saying it was the coup. Actually it turned out to have been taken 3 months ago, but it took locals on the ground who knew the weather conditions to say that the film footage wasn’t in line with the weather they were looking at.

Similarly, the BBC was reporting statements about the Coup and reporting them as fact from a twitter account called ‘ZANUPF’ that was broadcasting on the coup. The problem is that it was a spoof account, and nothing to do with the party. Knowing your twitter handles is a key part of the challenge too.

What the coup has shown is that there is a massive amount of information out there that can be shared quickly and which can impact on media reporting and policy makers decisions. It is essential that OSINT is taken seriously as an intelligence discipline and treated as a credible tool by both the intelligence community, and policy makers. Equally essentially is that people learn to analyse and assess OSINT in the same way as other intelligence reporting, to prevent the wrong judgements being made.  In a world where information is broadcast in seconds, knowing how to make the right call on what is going on when you are overwhelmed by information, and don’t have the space or time to consider what it all means is going to be an increasingly critical skill.

Conclusion

We don’t know what the next 48hrs holds for Zimbabwe, let alone the next few weeks. It will be difficult, it will probably be bloody. But the UK is well placed to stand ready to assist Zimbabwe, and there is an opportunity here to show an old friend that regardless of what has happened, the UK is there to help if required.

It will be interesting to see whether other nations, such as China, who are growing in economic influence in the country are also considering similar options, or if it is the UK that not only helps in the short term, but grasps the medium and long term opportunities this brings to help make Zimbabwe a better place.