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From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 21 2010 - 14:59:05 EDT
Uganda: The AU Summit and Choices for Somalia
July 20, 2010 | 2348 GMT
MUSTAFA ABDI/AFP/Getty Images
African Union tanks in Mogadishu in March
Summary
The ongoing peacekeeping mission in Somalia will be a leading topic as
African heads of state meet in Kampala, Uganda, July 25-27. Uganda and
Ethiopia (and Kenya, though not necessarily militarily) are attempting to
garner more support for their fight against al Shabaab after the group’s
July 11 attack in Kampala. STRATFOR examines countries that have a stake in
Somalia and their options for supporting the government.
Analysis
More than 40 African heads of state will hold meetings July 25-27 in the
Ugandan capital, Kampala, as part of the ongoing African Union (AU) summit,
which began July 19. Somalia will be a leading item on the agenda, as the
summit comes just over a week after Somali jihadist group al Shabaab committed
its first transnational
attacks<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100712_uganda_al_shabaabs_first_transnational_strike?fn=3416759460>,
killing 73 civilians in Kampala in two coordinated suicide blasts.
In response to the Kampala attacks, Uganda and Ethiopia — and Kenya, to a
lesser extent — will attempt to use the AU summit to garner support for
increasing the size of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
peacekeeping force fighting al Shabaab in Mogadishu. The countries will also
try to gain support for giving AMISOM an offensive capability, in hopes that
it will enable AMISOM to more effectively contain the threat al Shabaab
poses to Somalia’s Western-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/africa/map/7-20-10-somali_govt_support_800.jpg?fn=6616759490>
In the end, however, most African states see Somalia as a security issue
relegated to East Africa, making it unlikely that countries from outside the
region (such as South Africa or Nigeria, traditional African heavyweights
that are preoccupied with their own regional issues) will be convinced that
it is in their interest to contribute to the AMISOM force. It will therefore
be left to the three main East African powers — Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda
—to find a way to solve the problem of Somalia, a state with a central
government so weak that it does not even control all of its own capital, let
alone the rest of the country.
As the nation most recently attacked by al Shabaab (in retaliation for its
significant support for AMISOM), Uganda naturally has been the most vocal of
the major East African players in attempting to garner support from fellow
AU nations for the peacekeeping force that protects the TFG, which
represents a bulwark against the complete jihadist takeover of Somalia.
Ethiopia and Kenya, however, have equally urgent geopolitical interests in
guarding against an al Shabaab-controlled Somalia, as they actually share a
border with the country. All three are members of an East African regional
sub-grouping known as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development
(IGAD), which will be holding a side meeting during the AU summit. It will
be here that the three main East African states will begin to raise the
topic of how they can work together to solve the Somali problem.
Ethiopia is Somalia’s historic rival and has shown recently that it will not
hesitate to invade its neighbor when Somalia is overrun by Islamist forces.
Indeed, when the predecessor to al Shabaab, the Supreme Islamic Courts
Council (SICC), took control of Mogadishu in 2006, it was a matter of months
before Addis Ababa deployed its military to overthrow the SICC and occupy
the country. The Ethiopians withdrew just over two years later, recognizing
the limits of their unilateral intervention and choosing to leave the task
of combating al Shabaab to AMISOM and the TFG, but Ethiopia likely would
redeploy forces to Somalia if AMISOM and the TFG collapsed, especially if
that collapse permitted the jihadist group to take complete control of the
country. Ethiopia has a large irredentist ethnic Somali population in the
Ogaden Desert, located in southeastern Ethiopia. These Ogadeni rebels have
common ground with al Shabaab, which creates an additional national security
concern for Addis Ababa.
Kenya, like Ethiopia, has a large ethnic Somali population, particularly in
the northeastern region abutting al Shabaab’s main area of control in
southern Somalia. Nairobi has a considerable security presence stationed
along the border in northeastern Kenya. The forces stationed there regularly
engage in skirmishes with al Shabaab fighters. Kenya, however, has long
preferred to avoid sending its troops into Somalia because of the fear that
doing so would unleash retaliatory attacks by al Shabaab in its own capital
city, especially via supporters in the suburb of Eastleigh. Nairobi wants
there to be a foreign presence in Somalia keeping al Shabaab at bay but
would rather someone else handle it. This could change in the near future,
however, as it becomes increasingly clear that Western powers are not
prepared to become directly involved in Somalia, either.
Lately, East African countries that support AMISOM have clamored for the
peacekeeping force, which has an AU mandate, to become an official member of
the family of U.N. peacekeeping missions. This request is likely motivated
by a desire to force someone else to incur the financial costs of ensuring
Somalia’s stability, and there are no signs that the request will be
granted. AMISOM’s two main problems — that it does not have enough soldiers
(those it does have come from only two countries, Uganda and Burundi), and
that its mandate prevents it from acting as an offensive force — will
continue in the short term. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been very
vocal since the Kampala attacks in his intention to address both of these
issues at the summit. Museveni said he would like to see an ultimate force
level of 20,000 troops, and that he wants the rules of engagement altered in
order to change AMISOM from a defensive force that exists only to protect
TFG installations to one that can actually attack al Shabaab.
While the summit itself may not produce a solution to either of these
problems, it will serve as the starting point for the East Africans to
coordinate plans to address regional security issues on their own.
Read more: Uganda: The AU Summit and Choices for Somalia |
STRATFOR<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100720_uganda_au_summit_and_choices_somalia#ixzz0uLPZl1e2>
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