african union mission in somalia

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For the past two decades many countries including; Afghanistan, Iraq and ... transitional federal government got international recognition and became the federal.
SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

ABDIRAHMAN SAID NUR

AFRICAN UNION MISSION IN SOMALIA

OUTLINE

1. Introduction

1.1 Introducing the Issue 1.2 background Information 1.3 current situation in somalia

2. The role of AMISOM in somalia

2.1 Factors enabling AMISOM’s success 2.2 AMISOM’s key challenges

3. AMISOM’s intervention in Somalia

3.1 poltical Impacts of the Intervention 3.2 social Impacts of the Intervention

4. conclusion

Abstract

Somalia has been under intervention since February 2007, by troops drawn from six African countries (Ethopia, Djabouti, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Sierra Leone) so this interventions has its own implications on the civil society of Somalia. This paper studied the subjects and argues that the intervention has both positive and negative impact in terms of social, economic and political aspects. There are some questions at the beginning of the work to make our work mapping.

Why is AMISOM in Somalia?

Are they doing there job effectively?

Is there any Amisom’s hidden agenda in Somalia?

The purpose of this research is to examine how the AMISOM intervention in Somalia affected the citizens of somalia in social, political and economic respect. In this study i am going to cover some of the military interventions carried out in Somalia after the fall Somalia’s central government in 1991 but the scope and the frame of the study will be specifically limited to the intervention made by AMISOM.

Key Words: AMISOM, Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda

1. Introduction The introduction part contains a brief discussion including the back ground information of the research topic the purpose of the study limitation and research questions.

1.1

Introducing the Issue

As we know civil war is one of the manmade disaster that causes the death and loss of many lives. After the end of the cold war its sighted that major wars became less while regional and domestic conflicts between nations still exist and leeds to the pressure of outside states and external institutions to intervene. In today’s world many countries are going through civil war with different faiths including different political views and religious beliefs. In some parts of the world these civil wars are expanding and initiating the network of terrorism. 1As a result of terrorism and national security became two of the main issues being prioritized by most of the nation states across the globe. To stop these civil wars and prevent the growing rate of terrorism, the

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NYE 2007

international community is using different methods including intervention as a means of solution. For the past two decades many countries including; Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are among the countries that have expreinced intervention by external states. The intervention has influenced the citizens of these countries in different ways. These research is focused on the impact of the intervention made by the AMISOM in Somalia. The following key points are the reasons behind the study of this research; 

Due to the fact that Somalia’s instability is influencing other neighboring states providing a chance to interfere its internal affairs, the security situation in Somalia has became an international issue and has got more attention by the international community.



AMISOM’s Intervention is different from other interventions made in somalia in a way that it’s beleived it helped the government of Somalia to regain major strategic regions previously controlled by the extremist group, Al-Shabaab.



Apart from the success made in the security of the country, people die on a daily bases because of the bombing made the extremist group, Al-Shabaab and the respond made by the AMISOM troops. The rebels resist the intervention in a violent way. Therefore, it is very important to highlights and give a general picture about the overal impact of the intervention to the readers. In other words the importance of this study is that it explores how the Somali people have been positively or negatively affected socially, politically and economically.

1.2

Background information

Somalia is located in the horn of Africa, along the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Occean. it shares borders with the Ethopia in West, Djibouti in North West and Kenya South West. Starting from january 1991 after the fall of the dictatorship regime led by Presedent Mohammed ziyad barre, Somalia has been expereinced a civil war based on ethnic groups. During these years the country had no functationing or central government.

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The country’s civil war had gone through different stages and phases from clan

based conflict to religious based violation led by one of the world’s well known terrorist groups called Al-Shabaab who has a direct link with Al-Qaeda. The lack of central government in Somalia coused a security threat that could destabilize the national security of the neighboring countries and the rest of the world. 3The international community responded and expressed it’s concern about stopping the civil war in Somalia. In 2004 a new transitional parliament was established and elected a new President. In 2012 the transitional federal government got international recognition and became the federal government of Somalia.

Due to the fact that Somalia had been a failed state for a long period of time, for the past two decades the country had gone through different interventions

by different states or

intergovernmental organazitions. According to the

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Wisdom Fund (2001), the country had experienced different

interventions led by different states with different intentions and interests. In dec 1992 the U.S sent 28,000 soldiers to help Somali people who were starving. The mission was carried out under the name of United Nations and was called United Nation Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) The Somali community including men, women and even children leaving in Mogadishu responded and resisted the existence of foriegn troops in Somalia. The mission was going on for ten months and resulted the death of many people.5 As mentioned by Civins (2010), in the years 2006 Ethopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) getting a political support from the U.S entered Somalia. The objective of the mission was to support to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) against Islamic Court Union (ICU). The intervention ended in 2009 with no success but left bad consequences.

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www.infoplease.com, 2014

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Eriksson, 2014

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Wisdom Fund (2001), and civins 2010 UNOSOM

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One of the other interventions occurred in is the intervention that started 2007 and still going on, which is the focus of this paper. 6This intervention is being carried out by African Union named by AMISOM. Amisom is the third mission to be established by the AU. AMISOM is a peacekeeping mission operated by African Union that has got approval from United Nations. This mission was established on 19th january 2007 and was deployed 21th february 2007 by African Union’s peacekeeping council with the initial starting point of six months.

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current situation in somalia

After decades of civl war and the collapse of the central government in 1991, Somalis and international community supporters have renewed efforts and made progress since 2012 in reestablishing state structures and bringing stability to the country. The African Union and United Nation with the U.S assistance, support the Fedaral Government of Somalia in restoring institutions. Improving security and countering Al-Shabaab, a violent extremist group, continue to be first order priorities. At the same time, concensus must be reached about the composition, boundaries, and power of Somal’s constituent states.( www.usip.org 2015) As of mid 2013, AMISOM troops remain in control of Mogadishu, alongside Somali National Security Forces (SNSF), but are frequantly attacked by Al-Shabaab. Attacks mainly take place in the outlying districts, but also occur in other areas

2. The role of AMISOM in somalia In June 2013, 7Cecilia Hull Wiklund in a report titled ‘The Role of African Union Mission ın Somalia; AMISOM peacekeeping success or peacekeeping progress in Regress?’ argues that AMISOM sharing most of other challenges of other AU missions, lack the military resources, capacity and fundings, as well as the institutional capacity to manage it’s operations. She concludes that these factors had prevented AMISOM from fulfilling its mandate and as a result, the mission had done little to contribute to the overall security situation in Somalia, other than securing the Airport, the Presidential Palace and the road between the two.

2.1 Factors enabling AMISOM’s success

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www.amisom-eu.org,2014 Cecilia Hull Wiklund report in 2013

The success of AMISOM is partially dependent on whether centralised structures of government can demonstrate legitimacy among the Somali citizens. One way of demonstraring legitimacy is ensuring the timely and efficiently delivery of the much needed puplic goods and services and providing stability and peace throughout a liberal areas. For this part of study analyzed the most enablers which have influenced AMISOM’s military acheivements, as identified by scholars and other observers. These enablers are divided in to two categories; internal mission enablers and external conditions and circumstances. According to UNPOS the success of AMISOM can attributed to excellent training and overall good leadership. However any success can not be featured in isolation, while AMISOM is still short of some essential resources, a range of factors have contributed to making mission a credible force.

2.2 AMISOM’s key challenges In this section will identfy the challenges that faces AMISOM. First, as part of new relationship with the fedaral government AMISOM will have to evaluate how best to support the restructuring and empowerment of the Somali state’s National Security Forces (NSF). To date international millitary assistances to Somalia has focused on mechanisms to strenghten Amısom and its troops contributing countries, rather than initiatives to support the NSF. While several countries in the region and the some western partners, including the European Union, have conducted training programmes for Somali Security Forces, these were not coordinated and relatively small in scale. A key challenge especially in regards to the military components of AMISOM is the insuffient numbers of troops necessary to guarantee the stablization of areas liberated from Al-Shabaab and to continue with military offensive to root out all insurgency in the country. Indeed, the increase of troop levels from 12,000 to 17,731 through Security Council Resolution 2036 (2012) had significant impact on the military operations. However, this number is still too low to stabilize whole of Somalia given its size and asymmetric nature of threats posed by Al-Sabaab. In latter to the president of UN Security Council sent in October 2013, its noted that there was need to increase the capability of AMISOM to enable it, operating alongside the Somali forces, to liberate and secure territory in Somalia and to

effectively deny Al-Shabaab the oppurtunity to mobilize resources and forcefully recruit and train insurgents to prosecute its asymmetric warfare.8 There is a shortage of skilled and specialized police Trainers in AMISOM. This challenge is further compounded by the fact that the few skilled and specialized police trainers like all other police officers, are deployed on a rotational basis and so, have to leave at the end of their mission cycle. This negatively affects both the internal and external training cells in AMISOM. The training of AU Peace Support Operations remains a significant challenge because of low level of experience and language problems. Particularly since its latest expansion, AMISOM is hampered by a lack of Somali speakers, who could play a crucial role in the understanding of the local population and the National Security Force.

3. AMISOM’s intervention in Somalia

3.1 political Impacts of the Intervention AMISOM is the third peacekeeping operation that has been launched by the AU. It was established in 2007 to replace the Ethiopian troops that had invaded Somalia at the invitation of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in order to defeat the Islamic courts which had taken over large parts of the country. When the TFG was formed in 2004, Somalia had been without a central government since 1991. The period in between was defined by factional conflict and continuous warfare, as rival clans competed for power. A range of peace initiatives had been undertaken in order to address the situation, including major peace conferences supported by the international community. Several peace agreements had produced new governments, but these never managed to establish control outside of Mogadishu because none was able to gain the overall acceptance of the various warring factions. The TFG was established as the outcome of a three-year attempt to negotiate a solution to the conflict by the regional organisation the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD). The TFG was established with an interim five-year mandate to prepare 8

Letter dated 14 October 2013 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council

Somalia for elections to be held in 2009. It was backed by Ethiopia, which had undermined previous attempts at forming a Somali government, but saw the TFG president as an ally who would not renew Somalia’s claim on the disputed Ogaden region.7 The TFG was also supported by the United States, who considered the TFG’s fight against Somali Islamists an important element in its war on terror. AMISOM was launched in Somalia in the context of protecting the TFG, which, at the time, represented an important, but embryonic opportunity for a new government for the whole of Somalia. Among its core activities, AMISOM was tasked with supporting the TFG in its efforts at stabilising Somalia and enabling further dialogue and reconciliation. One of the key problems for AMISOM was that, even though the TFG had been established as the result of a peace process, there really was no peace for AMISOM to keep. The Islamic courts had been defeated, but out of their ashes grew new opposition to the government. The TFG was not based on a legitimate inclusive process involving all relevant stakeholders such as Somaliland, Puntland or organisations like alShabaab. The establishment of AMISOM in order to prop up and defend the TFG was, therefore, considered by some of the key stakeholders as just another foreign

3.2 Social Impacts of the Intervention AMISOM’s social component is what sets it a part from previous AU peacekeeping missions. The AU Representative, as head of the multidimensional peace support operation, has the ability to use his “good office” to further the peace process and play a more active role in the resolution of the conflict. So far, AMISOM’s civilian component has been active in bringing together factions, which formed a unity government and facilitated the withdrawal of the Ethiopians. The civilian component has also offered support in various forms to the TFIs, such as mediation between government officials, building internal cohesion among members and capacity-building for public sector institutions. Although AMISOM’s ambit is limited due to the security situation, it has been active in supporting the local community. To carry out its mission mandate, AMISOM is organised into three interlinked components: military, police and civilian. There are outlined roles and responsibilities for each of the components, in line with present-day multidimensional peace support operations. Thus, AMISOM’s mandate includes humanitarian, security, political and development dimensions and the civilian component’s tasks include political, humanitarian, civil affairs, public information and mission support.

The Civilian Component is mandated to assist in the rebuilding of Somalia’s legitimate and effective political institutions. Its role is fundamental in the process since it is unlikely that AMISOM’s Military-oriented strategy will succeed without an effective and strong civilian component. The civilian component should encourage the launching of civil reconciliation initiatives with a view to seeking political inclusiveness and representativeness. Reconciliation processes can also help to promote loyalty to the Somali state rather than to clan or warlord factions. Among outstanding issues of the previous government was the need to better articulate locally-driven peace initiatives in order to bring together the different Somali groups and clans. Thus a major task for the post-transitional government should be to identify a strategy and the relevant actors that could potentially be involved in local peace processes. In this sense, AMISOM’s support could be helpful in mobilising and bringing actors together (district commissioners, traditional and religious elders as well as civil society leaders). By fostering greater autonomy for Somalia’s regions in undertaking such initiatives, the local dynamics of the process would be better preserved.

4 Conclusion This paper of endeavours to summarize the achievements of the AMISOM and the challenges that it has faced in its drive, together with partners, to secure Somalia. The section also proffers a number of recommendations that can aid the AMISON in this quest. The findings of this study have clearly established that since its debut in Somalia in 2007, AMISOM has made important and substantial contributions towards the improvement of security in Somalia. Key to this success was the defeat and subsequent ejection of the militant al-Shabaab group from the capital city in Mogadishu in 2011 followed by that of the port of Kismayo in October 2012. The liberation of these key areas have been instrumental and today after over 20-years of civil strife, Somalia has a functioning central government and its populace are slowly re-building their shattered lives. AMISOM, working together with the Government of Somalia, continue to liberate and hold more ground previously held by the alShabaab. The study has pointed out that the achievements of AMISOM, the FGS and their partners, was made possible by several factors. These range from the implementation of more robust mandates, conducive political climate and goodwill within and outside Somalia, and

provision of most needed resources by the international community, among other factors. In addition there has been a genuine desire by the Somali population to see the end of the strife and commitment to see the re-birth of their country. Indeed, this has contributed to shift in public opinion that has increasingly seen al- Shabaab losing ground at all levels. On its part, AMISOM steadily continues to “win the battles and not lose the war”. This study has likewise identified various challenges that face AMISOM, and its partners, in their quest to enhance security and enhance peace in Somalia. The challenges are diverse and range from the latent threat of the al-Shabaab manifested in sporadic acts of violence within and out Somalia, the question of legitimacy of the central authority/government, large number of internally displace persons and refugees, emerging new security threat and frontiers of conflict, lack of and uncertainty of guaranteed provision of resources among many other challenges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neus Ramis Seguí PhD Researcher, Institute Security Studies (Addis Abeba, Ethiopia).

http://amisom-au.org/about/frequently-asked-questions/.

AMISOM 2011 Press Release – AMISOM Disciplinary Hearings. Available at: http://

amisom-au.org/2011/09/amisom-disciplinary-hearings/.

AMISOM 2011 Press Release – AMISOM Disciplinary Hearings. Available at: http:// amisom-au.org/2011/09/amisom-disciplinary-hearings/.

Williams, P D 2012 an author puplished a paper the future of the African Union Mission in Somalia.

CECILIA HULL WIKLUND, June 2013 The role of Amisom in Somalia Peacekeeping Success or Peacekeeping in Regres