SEESAC participates in Viking 14!

Photo credit: Richard Kjaergaard, Swedish Armed Forces

by Emilia Dungel, SEESAC Researcher and Slobodan Boskovic, Project Officer/Advisor

Viking 14 is a joint training exercise for civilians, military, and police deploying to a peace or crisis response mission area. It is the largest recurring civil-military relations exercise in the world, and this time around SEESAC took part in it!

Gazing out over the Belgrade cityscape from our office terrace, we feel relieved to be back from the tumultuous war zone that is Bogaland. As tensions in the country simmered down, as the IDPs settled, the floods withdrew, and the cholera was treated, Bogaland no longer needed us. Our time to leave had come, but we would always remember the region as one of the best teachers we’ve ever had.

Over the course of ten days, we – Slobodan Boskovic, SEESAC Project Advisor and Emilia Dungel, Researcher at SEESAC – participated in the Viking 14 exercise at the Center for Peacekeeping Operations in Belgrade, Serbia – one of Viking 14’s  four global locations.

A Computer Assisted/Command Post Exercise, Viking 14  was the seventh such exercise to take place since they were first initiated in 1999. The exercise is co-chaired by the Swedish Armed Forces and the Folke Bernadotte Academy, with the United States as a strategic partner.

The Viking exercises are built on a scenario of a multinational brigade being deployed on a peacekeeping mission to the war-torn fictitious country Bogaland, divided into East and West Kasuria, and East and West Mida.

This year, Serbia participated for the first time, contributing not only with its forces but by hosting one of the regional offices – the fictional Western East Mida. Other sites were located in Sweden, Ireland, and Georgia, with 2,500 participants from 50 countries and 90 different organizations. Most of these participants were members of the military, but about 15% were civilians.

Viking 14 centered around “Comprehensive Approach” (simulating the interaction of military, political and humanitarian actors on the ground), which was apparent also in the efforts vested in its preparation. The background materials and the scenario were convincing and well-thought out, and the organization, manpower, and technology behind it were impressive. All participants and all remote sites of the exercise were connected in real-time via satellite, internet, and telephone.   

Every day, and throughout the day, commanders and evaluators of the exercise injected new components to the situation. These were meant to confront the participants with the complexities and problems such missions often face during their mandate and test the capabilities of all actors –military, political, and humanitarian – to coordinate their efforts in addressing challenges.

Some of the problems that arose in Western East Mida were influxes of tens of thousands of IDPs, kidnappings of aid workers, violent protests, child soldiers, deteriorating medical and sanitary conditions throughout the country, and just a brief bout of the ebola virus!

Slobodan acted as the Head of UNOCHA in Western East Mida, and Emilia was the Gender and Human Rights Advisor to the Head of Mission for the fictitious UNMIB. Throughout the exercise, we coordinated and worked closely with representatives of UNHCR, UNICEF, UN Police, OSCE, Red Cross Serbia, ICRC, the Local Government of East Mida, the Foreign Police Unit, and the Fourth Multi-National Brigade. The importance of Comprehensive Approach could not be emphasized enough, and all parties worked hard to ensure coordination and cooperation at all times.

Although the local East Mida government representatives were lacking all necessary resources to deal with the challenges at hand, their involvement and leadership were vital as a way of ensuring local ownership of the road towards peace in Bogaland.   

Besides the significance of coordination and local ownership, another lesson we took away was that the gender aspect of addressing a conflict situation is still lacking deserved attention. . For instance, although it has been 14 years since the UNSCR 1325 was passed, Remote Site Serbia had only four women participants out of a total 164 (2.4%!), and not a single woman in the Fourth Multi-National Brigade.

It should be mentioned however, that Serbia does better than this in real life, with 8.7% women in their Armed Forces, as well as 15 peacekeepers in the field internationally, with numbers steadily growing.

On our part, we at SEESAC will not only benefit from these invaluable lessons and try to implement them in our everyday work, but we hope to continue to promote integration of the gender perspective in the security sector, and consequently Viking exercises, through our regional Gender in the Military and Women Police Officers Network projects. We’re looking forward to see the efforts of these projects bear fruit in the coming years! And on that note, we can’t wait to partake in Viking 17!

For more on Viking 14, you can also check out the Swedish Armed Forces’ blog, which was updated throughout Viking 14. There are also photos from the exercise on flickr.