South Africa Trains CW Attack Responders

South Africa hosted a chemical weapons emergency response exercise last week, training officials from more than a dozen African nations, the Pretoria News reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2006).

“This is because of the huge amounts of chemicals transported throughout Africa at any given time,” said Col. Ben Steyn, of the South African National Defense Force.  “You have to know what to do long before the incident occurs.”

Participants included personnel from South Africa, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Sengal, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The session was the third of its type South Africa has hosted at the behest of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the institution responsible for administrating the global treaty banning such weapons.

“At this exercise, we were teaching the principles of command and control and the management of a disaster area,” Steyn said.  “In the beginning, the emphasis of the exercise was on the battlefield, but then we moved to the civilian area, which is where terrorists could or would strike” (Graeme Hosken, Pretoria News, May 28).

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