VICENZA, Italy -- Conventional wisdom states that the African Great Lakes country of Rwanda understands and models combat operational stress control. In the last twenty-five years, the nation has experienced an 800,000 person genocide and two subcontinental wars. When possible, the present U.S. ambassador encourages all arriving U.S. personnel to begin their stay in the country with a dedicatory stop at the Kigali-based Genocide Remembrance Park.
What is not well known is the fact that Rwanda is also experiencing and learning from a decade of multi-global and continental United Nations peacekeeping missions. The Rwandan Defense Force presently has 6,000 peacekeepers deployed throughout the world. They have lost 54 soldiers in these deployments to date, so an appropriate parallel visit could include the military cemetery where these operators rest eternal. With this in mind, the RDF has developed skills to cope and methods to handle the rigors of combat stress.
With this as the background, Chaplain (Col.) David Lile, the U.S. Army Africa command chaplain, and Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Mike Burgess, the USARAF world religions chaplain, participated in a combat operational stress control (COSC) military-to-military engagement with twenty-one Rwandan medical and military personnel. The engagement was held Sept. 13-17, 2017, in Kigali, Rwanda. There were two proposed takeaways. The first was a solid week of shared tactical training points and engagement with the Rwandan military professionals. The second was an in-depth understanding of the Rwandan model for combat operational stress control.
In the contemporary atmosphere of African solutions for African problems, there is a justifiable need for a specific African training package for COSC. The Rwandan model offers instant credibility and specifically African adaptation to the current U.S. and U.N. methodologies. In a nutshell the Rwandan model offers five consistent themes for combat operational stress control. They are careful in screening and selecting troops before, during and after deployments; they have a tight internal structure where soldiers keep watch over each other; they enforce a zero-defect policy concerning ethical conduct; a strict disciplined code of conduct is encapsulated in the RDF Ethical ROE handbook; and a solid military family structure is integrated into the national fabric. It is all one piece of cloth which characterizes this resilient military.
“It is their strong sense of community as families and a nation which has helped their military to be resilient through multiple deployments over the last decade,” Burgess said. “If the continent is seeking a strong COSC model, there is no better place to start than Rwanda.”
