Burundi military opposes Somali withdrawal plan

[Suldaanka]

Burundi military opposes Somali withdrawal plan

"The Burundi army on Sunday said it opposed a request by the African Union that it withdraw 1,000 soldiers serving in an African peacekeeping force in Somalia by February 28."

Burundi army spokesman Colonel Floribert Biyereke said in a statement that the military would ask the government to argue for a proportionate number of troops be withdrawn from each AU member country, rather than solely Burundian soldiers.

Burundi is the second biggest contributor to the 21,500-strong peacekeeping force with 5,400 soldiers, behind Uganda with 6,200 but ahead of Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia.
 

The African Union is gradually scaling back its Amisom force as Somalia’s nascent armed forces are trained and deployed to replace them.

Amisom was first deployed in 2007 to support Somalia’s fragile internationally-backed government and fight Al-Shabaab jihadists blamed for scores of bloody attacks.

The African Union request, made through a diplomatic document called a note verbale, came amid recent tension between Burundi and the AU.

The AU has called on Burundi — criticised abroad for its record on human rights — to ease its hardline stance on dissent and talk with its exiled opposition.

A key consequence of an eventual troop drawdown is financial.

Participation in Amisom is a valuable source of hard currency, and the scaleback is likely to have a big impact on Burundi — every quarter, the AU pays it around $18 million.

That represents a major source of foreign currency for Burundi, which has seen funding from the European Union suspended over human rights issues.

Burundi soldiers also earn much less once they return from serving with Amisom, and an AU official who asked not to be named said they were poorly equipped, and thus logical candidates for the first phase of departures.

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[Xaaji Xunjuf]

It's all about the money this tells you  that Somalia  is under trusteeship pure under au troops.  If they oppose the so called  western backed gov't  in villa Amisom.  Having said that the cheese man has failed to build a securiy apparatus  in almost  2 years. He will leave office and the bombs will continue  to go off.

[Old_Observer]

On 12/24/2018 at 10:52 AM, Oodweyne said:

Aha, the African mercenaries wants to keep on sucking and keep on imbibing-the-milk from the udder of the financial's cow, so long as they can.

And of course, this being the "scam" in which they were involved in from the get-go, the EU (i.e., their pay-masters), are tired of this endless bottom-less pit in which they have been hurling their EU's tax-payers money into it ever since 2007 without having the "reciprocal results" of seeing these African's mercenaries finally defeating the menace of terrorism in Somalia. 

Now this being the reality of these African's peace-keepers, how on earth could anyone ever say (with straight-face, no less) that the "sole motivating reasons" of these hired African's peace-keeping forces are not essentially a "pecuniary motives", and the notion of the actual peace-keeping, or the very idea of defeating the likes of Al-Shabaab, once and for all, is not a distant secondary consideration in so far as they are concern? 

Well, it seems so obvious now. But still I marvel at the "sheer self-deception" of those who says that these forces are going to defeat the likes of Al-Shabaab any minute now, when in fact even the governments who actually have send these forces are basically falling over themselves in "haggling-for-money" without even blushing long enough to show the world how they have defeated (or are in the process of doing it) the likes of Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Given that they been at it ever since 2007 and whilst others, on the other hand, were paying them so handsomely and accordingly since that time.

The astonishing part is saying it with straight face.

Shows you how the political culture has changed. But the Rwanda guy is right the loss should be equally shared and he is being fair in saying proportionately.

 

[Mooge]

it is all about money. We always knew about it niyoow , but these Brundian sanbalaars are so shamelessly open about it. it is laughable.