Part 1: Still playing a key role in South Sudan, meet Brigadier Best
Brigadier Best is the Force Chief of Staff deployed to South Sudan in the United Nations Headquarters. He told us about his role and the situation in this north African country
At the beginning of the year, after four years, the UK Task Force in South Sudan returned home UN Peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.
Established nearly ten years ago, the UN Mission in South Sudan works across the nation at all levels to establish peace and stability. In 2016 the British Army deployed a task-force of engineers to support, this deployment was known as Operation TRENTON.
- Building hospitals, bridges and roads: The British Army in South Sudan
- Operation Trenton: 4 things you need to know
Despite the return of the British Army, the UK is still making an impact in the UN mission headquarters in Juba, just one of a few men and women doing this is Brigadier Nigel Best.
Can you introduce yourself for us?
“My name is Brigadier Nigel Best, and I am currently working within the United Nations mission in South Sudan, which is more commonly known as UNMISS.
I deployed out here in July time. I was a member at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, where I was studying for a year where a lot of the work there focuses on strategy, strategy development and strategic leadership, although I find myself very much working at the operational level now. it was a great education and it’s been extremely well used so far.”
Tell us about your previous operational experiences?
“I have had similar operational experiences to many of my peers, with a focus on the places like the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, but I’ve also focused on Africa for some time now. I was at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), where I was the lead operational planner for Africa for a number of years, amongst many other countries .
When I was at PJHQ I was also responsible for the UK’s contribution to South Sudan, so an element of what I find myself doing now. When the UK decided that it would increase its contributions to UN peacekeeping operations — this was around 2015, we pledged to do more in South Sudan and Somalia, and put a sizeable contribution into this country. The contingent included engineers and medics, and we can talk about that a bit more later on. I think it’s a positive legacy for the UK.”
Have you had experience with the United Nations before?
“In terms of peacekeeping operations and working with the UN, again I suppose like my peers I’ve deployed as a Junior Officer with the UN on peacekeeping operations in places like Cyprus.
What does UN peacekeeping mean to you?
“Sure, so without getting too in-depth on the whole thing, I suppose we have to ask ourselves the question; we’ve had the UN now for 75 years — if you didn’t have the UN, then what would you invent in order to do the same job for not only keeping peace and resolving conflict but also conflict prevention?
So, the UN brings the authority of the United Nations Security Council to intervene in conflicts and crisis, and it brings two things really — it brings the troops that are competent and capable enough to intervene into those or hopefully to help prevent that conflict from getting worse so that other types of solutions can be put in place. It brings also a huge humanitarian aspect to these places because often during and following conflict is the effect on the civilians, on the humanitarian side, which requires an enormous amount of experience, expertise and assistance to these people.
For me, my experience of UN operations is they are very complex and they are very difficult. You’re there to try and keep the peace for another solution to be put in place, and because of the people you do it with and the type of forces that you do it with every mission is different. That makes it equally as challenging — it has its own particular challenges which you need to understand and it can be frustrating at times but it’s that sort of diversity of the team and the representation of the Nation’s that makes it [the UN] so effective.”
What is your role out in South Sudan?
“I sit within the Force Headquarters element, the bit that sits on top of the military component, and that’s commanded by an Indian 3-star General, and interestingly his deputy is a Chinese 2-star People’s Liberation Army Officer as the Deputy Commander.
I’m his Chief of Staff and effectively my role is to turn the Force Commanders intent, what he wants to do in theory, into practical operational plans. So I bring a bit of meaning to it, and make it happen on the ground. And to do that, I use our staff within the Headquarters to turn that intent into practical operations.
UNMISS, is an integrated peacekeeping operation, but it’s got a very large military component which sits alongside a police component, and sitting on top of all of that is civilian leadership. So, it’s run by a person called the Special Representative to the Secretary-General, appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonia Gutteres.
So these people are naturally very experienced Diplomats and they are also very experienced humanitarians as well — the Special Representative runs the civilian component of the mission and I sit in the military component that sits below that. It’s called the ‘Military Force’ element of UNMISS, and I suppose it’s broadly equitable to a large UK division if you were to put it into those terms, but one that sort of operates up into a civilian component into the South Sudanese government and the military components, and obviously alongside the police and other elements. So it’s slightly more complex in that regard.”
Have you seen a legacy left from the British Task Force?
“Yeah for sure. There has always been staff support to the UN mission here in South Sudan, and actually, we have pretty much done that I think since the country got its independence in 2011, and we’ve got about eight or nine officers at the moment, and that sort of fluctuates, but that’s been relatively consistent for all that time.
Op TRENTON, as you rightly recognise, and I mentioned earlier in terms of when the UK decided it would do more in UN peacekeeping, we increased in a number of areas. One of them was in South Sudan, and we reinforced the mission with engineer support and medical support as critical capabilities. Those enablers as we call them, are absolutely required in this type of mission and in this type of scenario.
That sort of went on I think from about 2016/17 through up until this year. It was always going to be time-limited, so it was never going to be a permanent contribution to the mission, but we wanted to come in to reinforce it at a critical time to make that impact and then obviously eventually withdraw, and that’s absolutely what has happened and indeed we sought to use our dividend from withdrawing here in order to put into other peacekeeping operations.
“In terms of the legacies, it’s really positive from Op TRENTON, I was up in Bentiu last week, which is one of them, it’s in a place called Unity State — it’s the capital up in that area — where our engineers were based but also where we built the field hospital up there for the UN. We built a level two hospital so it’s a relatively advanced facility. We had UK medics operating out of that for a period of time, and then we handed that over, and it’s probably the best medical facility or probably the best UN medical facility I would say at sector level within the country, so that’s a very strong legacy.
The UK handed it over to a Vietnamese field hospital and I visited them about a week ago, and they were very complimentary about the British. Not only in the fact that the facility up there is fantastic but also the level of training and support that we provided the Vietnamese in order to facilitate them on this peacekeeping operation.
More widely the engineering legacy up there — the engineers were tasked with supporting humanitarian systems to the local population. In terms of construction, they also kept the roads open and the majority, I would say about 98% of the roads here are mud roads, very few of them are metalled roads, and a critical task that happens every dry season is to keep those roads open for the movement of humanitarian aid and movement of the local population, and they clearly did that.
What I certainly got a sense of when I was up there is that, albeit people accept that the British element, the engineers and the medics have withdrawn because they’ve done their work and we seek to rebalance elsewhere, but it’s a legacy, a strong legacy, and they’re sorely missed.”
