South Africa: Troop request for Somalia is likely to fall on deaf ears

[Jacaylbaro]

JOHANNESBURG, 19 August 2010 (IRIN) - South Africa is unlikely to deploy soldiers in support of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), as it did "not believe" in the political direction being followed to resolve the conflict, and there was no exit strategy, an analyst said.

 

The South African Cabinet was to make a decision on 18 August as to whether troops would join the peacekeeping mission, which is expected to last more than three years, but an indefinite national strike by public sector workers - with the army on standby to provide essential services - has delayed the decision, Henri Boshoff, head of the Peace Missions Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think-tank, told IRIN.

 

Peacekeeping commitments in Burundi, which ended on 30 June 2009, meant South Africa had previously declined to participate in AMISOM, but on 23 July 2010 AU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping requested South Africa, Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea to send troops to Somalia to bolster AMISOM.

 

Ping's plea for support came shortly after suicide bombers from Al-Shabab, a non-state Somali group, killed 76 people in attacks in Kampala, capital of Uganda, after assaults on Ugandan and Burundian troops by Al-Shabab militia in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

 

The peacekeepers in Somalia were operating under a "limited mandate" and had failed to bring stability to Mogadishu, which had resulted in daily artillery duels and firefights "inflicting thousands of civilian casualties by indiscriminately shelling neighbourhoods", Boshoff said.

 

"Simply increasing AMISOM's size is unlikely to succeed unless accompanied by a political solution. Parallels could be drawn with the Afghanistan situation, where the United States and NATO countries have been involved in fighting the Taliban since 2001," he noted in a 30 July 2010 research note, Somalia: To Intervene or Not.

 

"The recent surge of United States and NATO forces (Coalition Forces) has had perverse results; instead of stabilising the situation and bolstering the legitimacy of the Afghanistan government, attacks on the Coalition Forces and government structures have increased," he commented.

 

In Afghanistan this had led to a strategy to "collaborate" with the Taliban in trying to find a solution, and conflict resolution in Somalia would only be achieved "in talking to the Islamic Courts, Al-Shabab and the warlords", Boshoff told IRIN.

 

"The first reaction by the South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, to the AU's request for South Africa to send troops was that Somalia's is a political problem, and that deploying military forces in isolation will not be the solution."