By Steve Fortin

KENYA, 15 February 2008 - Whether one supports the current president, Mwai Kibaki, whose claim to victory is contested by his opponents, or the chief of the opposition, Raila Odinga, it’s clear that what started out as a wave of protests has grown into an insurrection movement. Add to that the strong ethnic polarization in each camp, and the stage is set for violence to escalate.

“Although the situation is potentially explosive, things haven’t come to a head yet,” says Major Jason Steeves, chief of the research and development component of the International Peace Support Training Centre, at the Karen campus in Nairobi, Kenya. “The tension is still building, but violence could erupt at any time. We have emergency plans in place and are watching the situation closely.”

Maj Steeves—who started a three-year assignment in Kenya, September, 2007—and Maj Jim Soros, a logistician from Ottawa, teach at the IPSTC, and have a front-row seat to the fallout from the last Kenyan elections. Although the situation is presented as being out of control in the media, the two CF members have been able to continue the training programs as planned.

“Every day, we have to make our way from the Gigiri quarter in the northwest part of the city, where we live and where the majority of Canadians working for the Canadian High Commission in Kenya are located, to the Karen quarter in the southeast part of the city, where the IPSTC is located. So far, the situation has not prevented us from working, and life goes on,” says Maj Steeves.

That’s a good thing, because there is no shortage of work. As part of his duties, Maj Steeves is responsible for the training and development component of the IPSTC, overseeing the planning, design, assessment and validation of training provided by the Kenyan centre to its student clients, most of whom come from contributing east African countries. The research component involves assessing knowledge about peacekeeping in order to make the best use of this knowledge given the situation in this part of the continent. “Not only do we have to keep the peacekeeping training up to date, but we also have to try to predict what the training will look like in three, four or five years.”

The IPSTC, as a regional training centre whose clients are part of the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade, had to update its programs so that they met the operational needs of EASBRIG. “The IPSTC used to concentrate on tactical training, which included pre-deployment training, as well as military observer and civilian police training,” said Maj Steeves. Although tactical training is important, it has become more important to offer operational and strategic training to persons who may be called upon to make important decisions in peacekeeping missions. “To achieve our objectives, my team and I are working on training projects that will make it easier for us to create better tools and grasp the context in which decision-makers have to operate,” says Maj Steeves.

Maj Steeves’ and his team have developed a strategic plan—a document describing the programs offered by the IPSTC every year—which reveals a project that is both innovative and ambitious. The program is made up of a series of seminars on the fundamental components of any peacekeeping mission, complementary to the traditional military sector.

The seminars cover topics such as media relations, children’s rights, the very sensitive matter of AIDS, democracy and self-determination, environmental issues, humanitarian aid and human rights. In order to provide tactical, operational and strategic training, the IPSTC counts on the expertise of its team members. Providing the seminars does have its challenges, however, says Maj Steeves, so experts from outside the IPSTC are also recruited to support the centre’s staff.

The efforts of Canadians assigned to the IPSTC and of their colleagues from other countries, help military and civilian men and women to better understand the issues and the mechanisms of peacekeeping operations in a regional framework like EASBRIG. In the long-term, the work of Maj Steeves and his team could pave the way for peacekeeping operations led by Africans on African soil. After all, if you want something done, isn’t it better to do it yourself?

Source: DVIDS- Digital Video & Imagery Distribution System