Last of SDF peacekeepers arrive back from South Sudan

With family members welcoming them back home, the final Japanese troops in the United Nations' peacekeeping operations in South Sudan returned to Japan on May 27, ending the nation's longest such PKO after more than five years.

The return of about 40 members of the engineering unit of the Ground Self-Defense Force to Aomori capped their contentious mission, which began in January 2012 under the government led by the then Democratic Party of Japan.

“We are hoping that our activities contributed to the development of South Sudan,” said Yoshiro Tanaka, commander of about 350 troops of the 11th expedition, the last contingent sent to the young African nation.

A total of 3,900 troops were involved in the mission in South Sudan to make an international contribution through building roads and other infrastructure.

The government will continue with the deployment of SDF officers to the headquarters of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) until the end of February next year.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party announced the decision in March to pull out the Japanese troops, saying the nation achieved the initial purpose of contributing to South Sudan.

But it denied the increasingly precarious security situation in the war-torn country as the reason for the withdrawal.

The deployment in South Sudan has drawn increasing attention since the 2015 controversial security legislation allowed the SDF members to expand their roles under the PKO, including the possible rescue of U.N. staff and other personnel under attack, and of playing a bigger part in protecting the camps of U.N. peacekeepers.

But the Japanese peacekeepers were not put into such a situation.

The basic premise for the deployment to South Sudan was that the country is in a stable condition after warring parties agreed to a ceasefire, one of Japan’s “five principles” for participating in peacekeeping operations.

But the security situation in South Sudan has worsened dramatically since December 2013, a year after Abe took power.

Still, the Abe administration continued with the peacekeeping mission despite mounting public outcry over the soundness of the deployment in light of the five peackeeping operations principles.

When a large number of casualties were counted in Juba in July 2016 due to large-scale fighting, the GSDF reported it using the term “sento” (fighting) in daily reports about their activities.

But the ministry insisted it was "shototsu" (clashes) rather than fighting.

Amid the deteriorating security situation, however, in November 2016, Abe assigned SDF members the mission of rescuing U.N. staff and others under attack for the first time under a PKO, an apparent attempt to generate symbolic results under the security legislation.

It came to light later that the GSDF kept its logs using the term fighting despite the ministry's initial claim that the ministry had discarded the reports.

Senior officials at the Defense Ministry and ranking SDF officers admit that the deployment was clearly in conflict with the principles.

The in-house investigation into the reports is still under way.