Mozambique: Operation Rachel
At the end of its long conflict, Mozambique was left with
large numbers of weapons, many of which were smuggled into South Africa by
organised syndicates and sold to criminals. In Mozambique, the weapons disrupted
rural safety and were a primary cause of violence.
A crime combating operation was thus agreed between South
Africa and Mozambique, which allowed the police services of the two countries to
undertake joint operations aimed at locating and destroying arms caches within
Mozambique territory.
On 17 December 1999 the Council adopted an implementing
Decision (1999/845/CFSP) of the Joint Action with a view to an EU contribution
to combating the destabilising accumulation and uncontrolled spread of Small Arms
and Light Weapons in Mozambique.
With this decision the EU contributed to the location,
collection and destruction of weapons in Mozambique through the joint
cross-border operations between the South African Police and the Mozambique
Police (Operation Rachel).
The EU provided EUR 200 000 for the support of the South
African Police Service, which was acting as an implementing agency, in the
acquisition of fuel, air support, explosives and accessories as well as ration
packs and daily allowances. The project was successfully completed during the
first half of 2001.
Operation Rachel was intelligence driven, i.e. information gathering
about cache locations is followed by joint police operations, which destroy the
weapons on site. It was initially funded by South Africa but donor funding later
became available.
Since its launch in August 1995 and up to December 2000, 12 operations
were carried out. Initially, these were large-scale annual affairs but in 1999
strategy was changed due to financial constraints, and there was a switch to
small-scale operations.
Operation Rachel is set to continue as long as there are excessive
amounts of arms in Mozambique and there are even ideas of elevating it to a
regional plan of action. The EU decided to support Operation Rachel with EUR 200
000 in 2000 while EU-financed operations started during spring 2001.
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