December 24, 2008
David Montero
Ethiopia confirmed this week that it will pull troops out of the troubled nation, a move that experts worry could allow the country to fall into the hands of Islamist insurgents.
African nations this week failed to act in unison to ensure stability in troubled Somalia. Amid their disagreements, the country risks becoming another Afghanistan for President-elect Barack Obama’s upcoming administration, experts warn, as Islamist militants threaten to topple the government and pirates continue wreak economic havoc.
Since 2006, thousands of Ethiopian troops have maintained a fragile peace in Somalia, staving off a rising Islamic insurgency. In early December, Ethiopia announced it would withdraw its troops from Somalia – a move many feared would allow the country to fall into Islamist hands. Now, despite earlier confusion that Ethiopia might delay that decision, the Ethiopian government has reiterated this week its decision to withdraw, Al Jazeera reports.
Ethiopia has refused to reverse its decision to withdraw its forces from Somalia by the end of the year, despite a plea from the African Union (AU) to delay the move which it fears may result in a security vacuum inside the country.
The government in Addis Ababa said last month that it would pull its troops out by the scheduled time amid fears the war-torn country could descend into further anarchy unless more peacekeepers are sent.
Although Ethiopia has decided to leave, the larger African Union will stay for two months, reports Agence France-Presse.
The decision to extend the mandate of the 3,400-strong force, due to expire at the end of the month, was taken at a meeting of the AU’s peace and security council in the Ethiopian capital.
The peacekeeping force, which deployed in Somalia in March 2007, currently comprises 3,400 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, less than half the hoped-for 8,000 troops.
But the remaining African Union troops will not be enough, warns Angola Press, a news agency based in Angola:
The AU force already in Mogadishu is too small to resist resurgent Islamist and nationalist fighters.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week rejected calls for UN peacekeepers to be sent.
He said the situation in Somalia was too dangerous and there was no peace to keep.”
The gravity of events in Somalia will be a key challenge for Mr. Obama’s administration, explains the Associated Press.
The Bush administration inherited a mess in strategic Somalia and may be leaving President-elect Barack Obama with a worse one.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen singled out Somalia as a danger zone during a recent Pentagon news conference.
“I try to pay a lot of attention to the evolution of potential safe havens” for terrorism, Mullen said. “We need to do all we can to impede the arrival of more safe havens out of which we can be threatened.”
The United States accuses the most powerful Islamic faction, al-Shabab, of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Many of the insurgency’s senior figures are Islamic radicals; some are on the State Department’s list of wanted terrorists.
Yet, even as Somalia has become more of a regional threat, it has also become a point of contention among neighboring African countries, Agence France-Presse explains.
The African political bloc has been fighting an uphill battle to get its members to provide troops for the beleaguered force, a situation made more urgent by the withdrawal of Ethiopia’s contingent, which has been helping a weak transitional government battle Islamist fighters for the last two years.
And as African countries waver in taking the lead in Somalia, so, too, does the international community. As UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban has called for a multinational force to administer security in Somalia, but has received no favorable response, he writes in a recent editorial published in the Business Daily Africa.
I have repeatedly stated that the most appropriate response to the complex security challenges in Somalia is a Multinational Force (MNF), rather than a typical peacekeeping operation. Such a force should have the full military capabilities required to support the cessation of armed confrontation.
I have approached 50 countries and three international organisations to request contributions for a Multinational Force. The response has not been encouraging; no Member State has offered to play the lead nation role.
Analysts warn that Somalia is at a dangerous crossroads, one that demands a new and comprehensive approach, reports the Associated Press.
The Obama team should also ditch the myopic view of Somalia as little more than a hatchery for Islamic terrorism, said J. Anthony Holmes, head of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a former top Africa official at the State Department. He was working there when terrorists trained in what had become a terrorist haven in Afghanistan struck the U.S. on Sept. 11 2001.
“There was a very serious concern that Somalia could be the next Afghanistan, and we’ve been reacting to that possibility ever since, but only in the most short-term respect,” Holmes said. “We’ve been trying to kill terrorists rather than to facilitate the rebuilding of a state that would be inhospitable to terrorists.”
