The North African Regional Capacity was created to fill a sub-regional vacuum in North Africa. The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) has been dormant since its establishment in 1989. Throughout the last two decades, revitalizing the AMU proved to be very difficult due to political dynamics amongst member states. Thus, there was a need to create a regional mechanism to enable North African countries to contribute to the African Standby Force. This is why in mid 2007 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was drafted to establish NARC.