From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Jul 16 2009 - 15:38:46 EDT
African Union Training Somalis to Counter Insurgency
By Alisha Ryu
Nairobi
16 July 2009
The African Union's special envoy to Somalia says the AU has begun
recruiting and training Somalis to be soldiers and police officers to help
the country's embattled government counter an insurgency led by Islamists
with ties to al-Qaida. He says the pan-African body envisions a Somali
security force of about 16,000 members in a year's time.
The envoy, Nicholas Bwakira, says the ambitious recruiting and training
program for Somalia is a part of the pledge of assistance the United States,
the European Union and other key donors made in April at a meeting in
Brussels.
More than $200 million was pledged at the conference, much of it earmarked
to support Somalia's transitional government's security forces and the
4,300-member African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as
AMISOM.
"We plan to train 6,000 paramilitary forces and 10,000 policemen," Bwakira
said. "This training will be taking place outside Somalia. But some of the
training will be done in Somalia. There are already some trainees, who are
in Djibouti. So, it already has started and it is going to continue in
various countries. We are looking at training time-frame of six to 12
months."
Bwakira says Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and
Uganda are some of the African nations that have volunteered to train Somali
recruits.
Somalia's U.N.-supported transitional federal government is led by an
Islamist, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who once fought against the government because
it was being propped up by Somalia's traditional enemy, Ethiopia. Ethiopia
ended a deeply unpopular, two-year occupation of Somalia in January after
President Sharif and his opposition faction agreed to join the government.
But hardline Islamists, led by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group, have
refused to reconcile with President Sharif and have intensified the
insurgency against the government and AMISOM in recent months. Somali
officials say the government is too weak to fight the insurgents, who are
now being backed by foreign fighters. The government has appealed for
immediate international help.
Western analysts say the African Union and donor countries are under
pressure to come up with a solution that will allow the African Union to
reduce, not increase, the number of peacekeepers in Somalia. But they also
face enormous challenges in trying to mold a Somali security force that will
remain loyal to the government.
There are reports that as many as half of the Somali government's
3,700-member security force - some who had previously received training from
Ethiopia - have quit since the beginning of the year. Some are believed to
have been absorbed into clan-based militias and others are said to have run
away after selling their weapons to insurgents, including al-Shabab
fighters.
A researcher for Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous, warns that any program to
train Somali security forces must also include mechanisms to prevent and to
adequately address charges of human rights abuses, if and when they occur.
"It is absolutely essential that any training that is given to TFG forces,
whether they are paramilitary forces or police forces, should include a very
strong human rights component," Porteous said. "They need to take into
account the security of civilians, not just the security of the TFG. Lack of
regard for human rights, the lack of regard for the rules of the laws of war
in combat operations ultimately is self-defeating."
In 2007, donor countries, through the United Nations Development Program,
trained and paid the salaries of hundreds of Somali policemen. Many of them
were subsequently charged with committing human rights violations against
civilians - charges that were never investigated.
Human Rights Watch says the Somali police and the international community
lost credibility with the Somali people and helped the insurgents gain more
popular support.
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