Quote Originally Posted by Eddie Beaver View Post
Is the US relationship with Rwanda stable and viable enough then for some form of proposed AFRICOM detachment there? I have heard a lot of promising things about their performance in Dar Fur....

Understood about the distance with South Africa, but one wonders about a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe... which I suppose the South Africans may want to handle much as they did Mozambique in the 90's....

Eddie,

I can only relate what had happened there while I was on the ground and what happened in the immediate aftermath. I would also recommend you look at Bob Gribbin's book on Rwanda--he was my 2nd Ambassador and worked with my replacement, then MAJ Rick Orth, a superb officer and now I happy to say a full Colonel who has 3 DATT tours under his belt. Rick has published some papers on Rwanda that you can find via Google.

I do know that we have been planning the Darfur deployment with the Rwandans; I say that because there was an MPRI advertisement four an MDMP instructor to go to Kigali. Frankly I that is much like shipping coal to West Virginia: the Rwandans can plan and execute quite well, thank you very much. At times I despair over our inescapable arrogance when it comes to that sort of thing, as if we are the experts on planning...

What they would really need would be coaching on how to integrate operations with us and international organizations.

best

Tom