Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 78

Operation Sangaris

Sudan

(March 2014–June 2014)

Reestablish governmental authority in the east
Chad

Cameroon

South
Sudan

Main cities

Congo

French military
presence

Democratic Republic
of Congo

Axis of effort

(Graphic by Simon Fauret, French Institute of International Relations [Ifri])

Figure 3. Operation Sangaris, Third Phase
by Sangaris. In this bridging operation, French forces
had to focus on the “clear” while letting the “hold” and
the “build” be taken up by multinational forces, international organizations, and local government.
The French army was well prepared for adapting to
the tactical challenges of Sangaris. French forces possess
valuable skills and insight gained from operations in
Afghanistan and from Operation Serval in Mali. At the
tactical level, the high commitment level of the French
Armed Forces for more than twenty years makes them a
good fit for a complex operation, as officers and noncommissioned officers nearly all have combat experience.
To maximize effectiveness, small combined-arms
tactical teams known as sous-groupement tactique
interarmes (SGTIAs, about one hundred men) were
spread all over the CAR. Since French forces had been
employing SGTIAs in recent years, the soldiers who
make up these units were fully trained and accustomed
to combined-arms combat. At the beginning of the
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operation, individual SGTIAs were often divided into
two parts that operated autonomously. This raised the
question of how small an independent unit could be
while remaining tactically maneuverable and survivable.
This question was especially pertinent since the enemy
was polymorphic.
One enemy group called the Sélékas usually fights in
thirty-person groups around a 14.5 mm machine gun,
maneuvering almost like a regular army. Another called
the anti-balakas behaves more irrationally; this group
often acts under the influence of drugs and alcohol,
equipped with Kalashnikovs at best. Anti-balakas
prefer guerilla-style hit-and-run action.12 Battlegroups
were forced to continuously review their task organization and to deploy into vast expanses, in a manner
well outside doctrinal norms. For instance, Battlegroup
Panther, operating in western CAR from February to
March 2014, had units deployed over more than three
hundred kilometers, with platoon-level units operating
November-December 2016  MILITARY REVIEW