Africa ponders Somalia mission after 9 years of killing
Initial 6 month deployment to troubled state turns into decade-old mission with no end in sight
By Halima Athumani
KAMPALA, Uganda
In
less than nine months’ time, the African Union’s military mission in
Somalia will have been in the troubled country for a decade.
In
that time, hundreds of soldiers from across Africa have been killed
fighting al-Shabaab militants who sprung out of the country’s civil war
in the 1990s.
Although
concrete figures are hard to come by - largely due to the reluctance of
the troop-contributing nations to publicize military losses - the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute conservatively
estimates that the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) lost more
than 1,100 soldiers between January 2009 and December 2014.
This
level of losses has led many in the countries providing soldiers to
question the mission’s strategy and tactics and ask “Is it worth it?”
Political
analyst Muwanga Kivumbi, who is also an Ugandan lawmaker, said that, as
in warzones around the world where an international force has attempted
to rely heavily on a military solution, the situation in Somalia will
not be solved solely through the use of armed might.
“You
cannot go to a foreign country with your military boots and guns
blazing to sort out a political issue,” he told Anadolu Agency.
Kivumbi’s
country is one of six to have provided troops to help quell the
al-Shabaab insurgency. The others are Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti
and Sierra Leone. Nigeria and Ghana have also sent police officers.
He
points to the international, rather than purely regional, aspect of the
conflict - al-Shabaab, which swore allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012, has
threatened ships in the Indian Ocean and recruited fighters from around
the world, including the West.
The
group has also targeted civilians in large-scale terror attacks both in
Somalia and neighboring countries, notably Kenya and Ethiopia.
“We
only went in to aid the mission of the Europeans,” Kivumbi said. “The
Americans were taught a bitter lesson in 1993, so they don’t want to
risk their soldiers.”
Blackhawk Down
The
incident he referred to was the Blackhawk Down battle in Mogadishu -
later relayed in a Hollywood blockbuster - which saw 18 U.S. soldiers
killed by Somali militiamen and led to the U.S. withdrawal a year later.
It
was this conflict that led to the birth of al-Shabaab in the mid-2000s.
The group grew to control large swathes of the country but has now been
beaten back into a few rural pockets.
“Somalia
is just a station [for al-Shabaab],” Kivumbi said. “They exploited a
decayed and collapsed state but the actors are international in
character.”
When
it was created on Jan. 19, 2007, AMISOM had an initial six-month
mandate. In a remarkable display of “mission creep”, the six
troop-providing states now have more than 22,000 soldiers in Somalia
with no “mission accomplished” date in sight.
Despite
the passage of time and the influx of troops, Burundian soldiers died
in an attack on their base in the village of Lego, 100 kilometers (62
miles) northwest of Mogadishu. In a pattern that has been repeated, a
suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the base entrance and
was followed by heavily armed militants.
Three
months later, an Ugandan base in Janale, Lower Shabelle, was attacked,
resulting in the deaths of an estimated 25 to 50 troops. In a speech
that cannot have done much to boost morale, Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni blamed sleeping commanders for letting their guard down.
In
January, a Kenyan outpost at El-Adde in southwest Somalia was hit.
Al-Shabaab claimed to have killed 160 Kenyans. The Kenyan government has
not released a figure, infuriating soldiers’ families.
Mounting death toll
Arthur
Bainomugisha, a lecturer in peace and conflict studies at Uganda’s
Makerere University, believes the mounting death toll has been
worthwhile, largely because there has been increased stability in
Somalia and the scale of al-Shabaab’s rule has been greatly reduced.
He
pointed to the relocation of the interim government from Kenyan capital
Nairobi to Mogadishu in 2005 and the establishment of the federal
government in August 2012 as signs of progress.
“They
were operating in a hotel in Nairobi for a long time until the UPDF
[Uganda People’s Defense Force] deployed and since then the zones of
peace have been expanded,” Bainomugisha said.
However,
although al-Shabaab has been forced back into pockets of Somalia, they
still pose a serious security threat. “Terrorism can hit any target
anywhere indiscriminately,” Bainomugisha told Anadolu Agency.
“The
resource limitation is stifling, the international community should
move quickly to strengthen AMISOM’s military deployment capabilities by
earmarking resources,” Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman
Tewolde Mulugeta said.
Lack
of basic state structures and civil society organizations in parts of
Somalia liberated from al-Shabaab are challenges for AMISOM. “In the
absence of basic state structures, Somalia may backtrack,” Mulugeta
warned.
Non-African
support has also waned as the conflict has dragged on. In February, a
summit in Djibouti noted the European Union’s decision to cut financial
support by 20 percent at a critical phase of AMISOM operations.
Pirates
This is seen in east Africa as a short-sighted development that threats to allow al-Shabaab to regain a foothold in Somalia.
“There
were pirates and international trade could not take place, which forced
some of them [Western powers] to deploy navy forces but with the
weakening of al-Shabaab on the mainland, even piracy was neutralized,”
Uganda’s Bainomugisha said.
“It’s
as if they want to prolong the problem. What needs to be done is to
ensure that al-Shabaab is decisively defeated so that they have no place
to recruit and recover from their losses and for AMISOM to completely
take over every inch of Somalia.”
Musamali,
the Kenyan security expert, said inadequate funding has seen AMISOM
fail to procure new equipment and soldiers going for almost seven months
without pay. “These troops are getting instructions from their mother
country and therefore not being effective in dealing with the al-Shabaab
problem,” he told Anadolu Agency.
Francisco
Madeira, the African Union’s special representative for Somalia, said
during a recent visit to Mogadishu that the command and control
structures in the country needed to be addressed.
“The
interaction between AMISOM and the Somali national security forces is
the one [thing] that is going to decide whether we win or are not able
to overcome al-Shabaab,” he said. “And if that’s not there, we are
doomed to failure.”
*Magdalene Mukami and Andrew Ross in Kenya and Seleshi Tessema in Ethiopia also contributed to this article.
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