Somalia: AMISOM troop boost
The UN Security Council on Wednesday boosted by nearly one half an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, seeking to press home a military offensive against Islamist rebels in the Horn of Africa country.
A UN resolution increasing the AMISOM force to 17,731 from 12,000 troops and police passed the council unanimously on Wednesday. Although not a UN force, AMISOM receives authorization and much of its funding from the United Nations.
AMISOM has until now consisted of Ugandan and Burundian troops. The new increase to a large extent is accounted for by bringing under its command Kenyan forces that entered Somalia independently last October to fight the al-Shabaab rebels, blamed by Nairobi for attacks and kidnappings on Kenyan soil.
The force, which first entered Somalia in 2007, has claimed a series of recent successes against al-Shabaab's fighters who had seized much of the east African country's center and south. Last August, AMISOM wrested control of the capital, Mogadishu.
source: Reuters
Feasibility of air strikes on Somali militants
Somalia's prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said on Wednesday he would welcome targeted air strikes against Islamist fighters in his country and predicted the militants could be defeated within a month.
"Targeted air strikes on al-Qaeda is a welcome opportunity. But we have to make sure that we protect the life and the safety and property of the Somali people," he said.
Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday that mounting concern over the threat posed by pirates and al-Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia had led Britain and other European Union countries to consider the feasibility of air strikes against their logistical hubs and training camps.
Al-Qaeda announced this month that al-Shabaab was joining its ranks.
source: Reuters
Concerned by sustained Somali turmoil, African, Arab and Western nations meet on Thursday to coordinate efforts against militants and pirates seen as growing threats to global security. They also hope to solidify measures to end famine and clan violence.
Sceptics say the London conference of 40 countries including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon risks producing fine words but no action: They point to ineffective similar gatherings in the past 20 years involving a corrupt Somali elite skilled in extracting support from Western aid bureaucrats and foreign peacekeepers.
Weak international response
But the British organisers have sought to temper expectations, explaining that the aim of the event is to galvanise policymakers' attention on Somalia to better coordinate a sometimes disjointed international response.
It will not delve far into the details of Somalia's clan-based politics, which play a complex role in everything from business and piracy to the distribution of humanitarian aid.
Nevertheless, Somalis who have known nothing but war, famine and blunder-prone international intervention for decades cannot help but hope for something that will improve their lives.
High Somali expectations
"The expectations that Somalis have are huge," Mogadishu-based civic activist Jabril Ibrahim Abdulle of Somalia's Center for Research and Dialogue think tank told Reuters.
"You have so many external actors driving different agendas that it would be a success to have a unified stance. Above all we need implementation of what's agreed, as disappointed hopes will only bring more radicalisation and hostility."
Commitment sought
Somalia collapsed into feuding between rival warlords, clans and factions after Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Up to a million people have since been killed, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The weak Western-backed interim government, which holds only a few areas, is fighting a revolt by al-Shabaab militants who recently merged with al-Qaeda and harbour dozens of Western volunteers seen as a threat to Western security.
Moses Wetangula, foreign minister of neighbouring Kenya, told Reuters he wanted to see "a renewed and reinvigorated international commitment to Somalia".
"We hope it's not going to be the usual talking shop where we make flowery speeches and get clapped and go away without caring whether it will be followed up or not."
Rebel setbacks
Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) got a boost on the eve of the conference when the UN Security Council voted to boost by nearly half an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, seeking to press home a military offensive against al-Shabaab (see sidebar).
In a further setback for the rebels, Ethiopian and Somali forces on Wednesday captured the stronghold of Baidoa in the south. Ethiopian troops moved into Somalia in November but will not come under AMISOM and are expected to withdraw eventually.
Diplomats say a key concern is ensuring the broadest possible support for Somali constitutional discussions in the run up to the August 20 expiry of the TFG's mandate, by which time it should have enacted a new basic law and held an election.
Stateless
Critics say without elections, the next administration will just be Somalia's 16th transitional government since 1991.
Somalia expert Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council said similar conferences in the past had pretended that "Somalia is still a state when it has long ceased to be one."
"The only result this has produced is to incentivise the rent-seeking behaviour and corruption of so-called officials incapable of restoring a modicum of security and governance ... What is needed is a 'bottom-up' approach."
source: Reuters
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