A security analyst, Prof Vladimir Antwi-Danso has said that though unfortunate, death incidents are bound to happen in military operations as witnessed in the recent Bawku clashes.

Speaking on The Probe on Sunday, he explained that the military is an entity whose operations differ from what is perceived to be right by citizens.

“It’s unfortunate. No death is justifiable. But if we don’t understand what the military is, and then we believe that oh, we are Mamprusi’s and Kusasi’s, and we believe that these people are coming on behalf of these people and then we are engaging the military, you are engaging an entity which is not part of you. that’s it,” he stressed.

The professor pointed out that per their training and how the military operates if they are encountered by such a threat and in the process of dealing with it, “if in the course of it, people die, it is part of the operation.”

This comes after the Ghana Armed Forces on Wednesday, February 3, revealed that a patrol team was dispatched to assess sporadic firing in the Sabongari General Area in Bawku.

The GAF alleged that, during the assessment, the troops were engaged by some men wearing black T-shirts with black hoodies at Gozesi-Valley side in Sabongari.

It was through this engagement that the military troops claim that they "neutralized" six of the armed men while others took cover in a mud house within the immediate vicinity.

Meanwhile, Prof Antwi-Danso stressed that the military have their own way of addressing issues when it is decided at the strategic level to call upon them to deal with issues like the Bawku incident.

Thus, he explained, the military force operates using military orders, and the military's goal in such cases is to ensure that the problem at hand is solved precisely. 

“At the operational level, everything is set up. At the tactical level, they are going to search and operate like using scissors to operate tactically that way. I mean, just dissecting and knowing what the target is; they finish, they come back.”

He further explained that when operations occur, the military has no other option than to fulfil the mandate required of them — to ensure that the violent clashes cease.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned points the security analyst made, he asserted that he did not believe that the military will deliberately kill the citizens they have been deployed to protect.