AMISOM
In 2004, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia was formed
following yearlong negotiations in Addis Ababa, Djibouti and Nairobi. Though
supported by the international community, the TFG lacked the all-important
civilian recognition to establish a functioning state in Somalia.
Only a year later after the TFG’s inception, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was
formed by religious leaders in the capital - Mogadishu. The ICU was able to
accomplish what the U.S.-backed TFG could not, by establishing a centralised
government structure in Mogadishu. However, the ICU’s success was short-lived
as the various warlords and separatist regional governments in Mogadishu were
deterred by the establishment of a caliphate. By 2006, the ICU was branded by
the United States and EU as a terrorist group. This precipitated the way for the
Ethiopian military invasion of Somalia in 2006.
While the United States backed the Ethiopian invasion to combat the ICU,
Ethiopia’s motivations were twofold. One of them was routing out the ICU, said
to be Eritrea’s proxy, and the other is that the ICU was sympathetic to the rebel
groups operating from within Ethiopia under the agenda of a ‘Greater Somalia’.
Greater Somalia refers to the irredentist movement to unify Kenyan, Ethiopian
and Djibouti territories under a unified Somali state.
Ethiopian troops’ incursion into Somalia laid the foundation for a fully-fledged
African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in 2007. AMISOM
was an expansion of the 2005 regional Intergovernmental Authority on
Development Peace Support Mission to Somalia
The occupation of Somalia brought down the ICU, which split into two separate
factions. Moderate elements of the ICU abandoned radicalism and joined the
TFG, while extremists founded the extremist militant group - Al-Shabaab .
In 2012, the TFG’s mandate came to an end and the international community saw
to it that a new national government led by President Mohamud Hassan be
established in it’s stead.
Hassan’s election and the recent stability of Somalia have been largely because of
AMISOM’s presence, which has also brought in its own dynamics.
Uganda’s People’s Defence Force (UPDF) is the largest contingent in AMISOM,
contributing some 6,223 troops of AMISOM’s 22,623. Burundi comes second
with 4,395 soldiers, followed by Ethiopia’s contribution of 4,395 troops and
Kenya’s 3,664 respectively. The remaining 1,850 troops are shared between
Djibouti and Sierra Leone respectively.
Kenyan troops were not in the original AMISOM . However, after a series of
attacks on Kenyan soil by Al-Shabaab, the Kenyan military made an incursion
into Somalia and pressured the AU and the UN into being included in AMISOM
despite protests by the United State. Nairobi succeeded in this and neither Kenya
nor Ethiopia have hidden their preferences on Somali affairs.
Kenya openly supports and designed the quasi-independent Jubaland
administration in Somalia’s south, which acts as a buffer to its border with
Somalia.
Ethiopia’s intentions are concordant to Kenya’s on Somaliland, a self-declared
independent state, as their buffer against a Somali state.
However, Kenya and Ethiopia are not the only stakeholders in Somali. In late
2012, a UN panel of experts was just about to release a report accusing Uganda
and Rwanda of arming the M23 rebels in DR Congo. The response by Uganda’s
President Yoweri Museveni was definitive. Kampala threatened it would
withdraw all its troops from AMISOM. Knowing what was at stake, the UN was
forced to cede its moral high ground and to edit the report in Uganda’s favour.
By 2015, Burundi was the largest contributor to the AMISOM force. With
President Nkurunziza’s fraudulent re-election and extrajudicial killing of
Burundian citizens, the African Union was similarly deterred in sanctioning
Burundi because of her military involvement in Somalia.
