CARAS IYK-OPARAODU 17/sms10/007 PCS 310 ASSIGNMENT Discuss critically and intelligently 3 of the challenges of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) ANSWERS In January 2007, the African Union launched its fourth peacekeeping operation, the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Now approximately two and a half years old, AMISOM’s short life has not been a happy one. It was deployed to Mogadishu essentially in support of the Ethiopian government’s preferred faction in Somalia’s ongoing civil war. Not surprisingly, and like the three UN-authorized peace operations deployed to Somalia during the early 1990s, AMISOM faced serious challenges which severely restricted its ability to operate. In January 2009 the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces, the election of Somalia’s new transitional government led by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and the arrival of Barrack Obama’s administration in the United States renewed the debate over how AMISOM should relate to the new Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and how the mission might be brought to an end. Somalia’s conflict is rooted in and shaped by many historical and contem- porary factors that can be broadly categorized into three group: Historical, Social and Political, but they will be discussed together. All contemporary discussions of peacekeeping in Somalia are colored by the events of October 3-4, 1993, and the images of a violent country awash with arms that they left behind. The deaths of American soldiers not only sparked the Clinton administration’s retreat from UN peacekeeping (codified in Presidential Decision Directive 25) but also acted as a major warning against putting boots on the ground in African war zones. Second, the subsequent U.S. disengagement from Somalia left Ethiopia as the central plank in Washington’s regional policy in the Horn. Third, when U.S. troops did return to the Horn, it was primarily to conduct counter-terrorism operations initially after the 1998 embassy bombings and then in the aftermath of 9/11. U.S. policy thus looked at Somali and regional politics through the narrow and distorting prism of counterterrorism. The Shadow of Ethiopia’s Intervention, established during Ethiopia’s attempt to forcibly install the TFG in Mogadishu, AMISOM was born into a war zone. Ethiopia’s 2006 campaign was the latest in a long series of military incursions aimed at degrading Islamist bases in Somalia, initially focused on al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, and more recently elements within the coalition of local Shari’a courts known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The main sticking point was that the regime Ethiopia was trying to install was deeply unpopular with many Somalis and once installed, made little effort to build its political legitimacy or reach out to its opponents. AMISOM was thus mandated to support a weak, divided, and (in the view of many Somalis) illegitimate government which was widely seen as being one faction in the country’s ongoing civil war. It didn’t help that the TFG was unable to control many of its security forces and demonstrated virtually no capacity to govern effectively. AMISOM was seen in Somalia as being a tool of Western interests because of Washington’s support for Ethiopia’s campaign and because of a strong diplomatic push by the Bush administration to get African states to contribute troops to the mission. Many Somalis were outraged that the United States had openly dismissed the UIC’s achievements during 2006 and acted as if the courts were dominated by terrorists, did not condemn abuses committed by Ethiopian troops against Somali civilians, provided intelligence support to Ethiopia during its operations, and engaged in airstrikes on Somali soil. The African Union’s Lack of Capabilities The AU’s short record of peacekeeping provided little evidence to suggest that it would be able to find, deploy, manage or pay the 8,000 troops authorized to form AMISOM. Sure enough, the AU struggled to secure promises of just over 60 percent of the authorized troops. In practice, approximately 1,600 Ugandan troops were the sum total of AMISOM until December 2007 when a company of 100 Burundian soldiers arrived. By April 2009 AMISOM had around 4,300 troops from Uganda and Burundi. Nor could the AU pay for its own peacekeeping mission. Instead, it relied on funds from the U.S., UN, the European Union and several other states. Deploying them also proved impossible without Western assistance and when they were deployed they lacked crucial pieces of equipment and materiel (after mid-2008 these needs were partly fulfilled by scavenging assets from the defunct UN Mission in Ethiopia Eritrea AMISOM’s final challenge is figuring out how to leave. This became particularly important in early 2009 after the Ethiopian withdrawal and the election of the new transitional President, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Within Somalia opinion has been divided: some see AMISOM playing a necessary role in supporting the new TFG and Sheikh Sharif’s outreach efforts, others, including the new Prime Minister, recommended that AMISOM should depart within 120 days. Within the AU, the weight of opinion was clearly to hand over the mission to the UN; the sooner the better. But in the UN Security Council there were good reasons to be cautious. In November 2007, for instance, Ban Ki-moon had said that deploying UN peacekeepers to Somalia was ‘neither realistic nor viable’. A year later, however, the Bush administration pushed for a UN peacekeeping operation for Somalia. It soon discovered that there was no appetite for such a force among European and African powers. The furthest it got was resolution 1863 (16 January 2009) which expressed the Security Council’s “intent” to establish a UN peacekeeping operation “as a follow-on force to AMISOM, subject to a further decision of the Security Council by June 1, 2009” (para.4). With Barrack Obama’s arrival in the White House, however, the U.S. government began to adopt a more cautious stance. In his April 16, 2009, report on the modalities of such a transition, Ban Ki-Moon set out four options intended to help achieve the UN’s strategic objective in Somalia. The “high-risk” Option A, envisaged replacing AMISOM with a 22,500 strong UN peacekeeping operation with a Chapter VII mandate. The “pragmatic” Option B was for the UN to devise a support package for AMISOM until the Somali National Security Force could secure Mogadishu on its own. The “prudent” Option C was Option B plus a UN Political Office for Somalia and a UN Support Office for AMISOM within Mogadishu. Option D, “Engagement with no international security presence,” was intended to serve as a contingency plan in case of an AMISOM withdrawal (either intentional or forced) Conclusion It is difficult to conclude that AMISOM has made a large contribution to peace and security in Mogadishu during its 30 months. While its personnel did engage in some humanitarian activities and protection of key infrastructure, these have to be balanced against the popular outrage against instances of indiscriminate force, the loss of over 20 peacekeepers, and the obvious limitations in a hot-conflict of an underequipped deployment of some 4,000 troops. When a greater degree of stability did return to Mogadishu in early 2009 this was not because of AMISOM but rather a combination of the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces and the wider diplomatic activity that resulted in Sheikh Ahmed’s election and his subsequent ability to engage a wide range of parties and enact shari’a law. Violence has flared again in recent weeks, and neither Somalis nor the world’s governments should look to the AU forces to quell it.