The African Union (AU) is proposing the transformation of Amisom forces in Somalia into a United Nations-financed mission that will comprise both military and non-military components to help rebuild the country.
The proposal, if approved by the United Nations, would allow troops to stay in the Horn country even as Somalia rejected their continued presence.
The proposal was agreed on October 7 by the AU Peace and Security Council (AUPSC), according to a dispatch released on Sunday night by the continental body.
It effectively means that troop contributors for the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) will continue to play a role in the country beyond this year, if the UN Security Council endorses the suggestion.
It also means that the mission could get additional troops and technical personnel from other countries, beyond the current five: Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Burundi.
"...This would ensure predictable and sustainable multi-year financing for the future mission, through UN assessed contributions,” the communique said, referring to proposals by an independent team of experts earlier in June.
AUPSC, the continental organ of 15 member states that addresses emerging security threats, said it wants the proposed new mission “to adopt a holistic and comprehensive multidimensional approach, beyond security and stabilisation.”
“This approach should have balanced military and police components capable of addressing the threat identified in the country, as well as a strengthened civilian component to provide a robust political engagement that can assist the political process and the Somali authorities,” it said after a meeting chaired by October’s chair, Mozambican Permanent Representative to the AU Alfredo Nuvunga.
This proposal, as well as three others, had earlier been rejected by Somalia which said it did not accept the idea of Amisom staying around, even in another shape.
Somalia has argued that it needs to equip its own security forces and rebuild institutions. However, troop-contributing countries say a AU-UN multidimensional force will help build on what Amisom has achieved so far.
Initially, the AU and UN’s plan was for Amisom troops to begin withdrawing gradually and, by December 2021, be out of the country, with the exception of technical personnel. However, the AU slowed down the departure after political stakeholders in Somalia failed to agree on a political calendar to hold indirect elections before February 8 as earlier scheduled.
Amisom, created in 2007 and mandated by the UN Security Council, has technically been operating as an AU peacekeeping force, rather than a UN one, in battling Somalia-based Al-Shabaab.
But as the mandate nears the end this December, debate has ensued over whether Amisom should continue.
In June, an independent panel led by South African military officer, Maj-Gen Xolani Mankayi, proposed four options for Amisom ahead of the end of mandate in December.
One option is to fully transition into an AU-UN multidimensional stabilisation mission deployed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows the UN Security Council to deploy military or other response missions to threats to global peace and security. The team said this will provide a “holistic approach, beyond the security and stabilisation process.”
“The mission will be constituted with the right balance of civilian, police and military capability, including a Rapid Strike Force (RSF), and intervention Brigades tailored to the specific operational requirements of the Somalia environment, established following joint AU-UN strategic assessment, planning as well as collaborative decision making, together with representatives of potential troops and police contributing countries,” panel said in the report.
The second option the team proposed was to reconfigure Amisom into an AU multidimensional support for Somalia, which will end the Mission’s role as a combat force by including a stronger political component led by AU but coordinating with UN. However, this could already face financial problems as there have been no regular sources of funding beyond the UN.
The third choice is for Amisom to turn into a regional standby force, based on AU’s security architecture. Traditionally, such an architecture has taken on standby forces created by regional economic blocs. It means that countries in the region would bear the sole responsibility of mobilising whatever is needed to deploy such a force.
In the absence of all this, the final option was for Amisom to exit Somalia completely, which could take up to six months from December. This, the panel said, could be a result of broken trust between Amisom and Somalia’s Federal Government.
Troop-contributing countries like Kenya favoured option 1, and a joint technical team from the five countries said turning Amisom into a multi-dimensional force will help address gaps witnessed so far, such as failure to rebuild secured regions whenever Amisom forces leave captured ground.
The declaration by the AU Council could open a new door for lobbying as Somalia had preferred none of the options. The AUPSC said it had asked the African members of the UN Security Council (Kenya, Tunisia and Niger) to front a defence for the option “to ensure a favourable outcome”, which would mean guaranteed funding for the mission from the UN.
The UN had earlier resisted commitments to fund Amisom, a 20,000 troop force, fearing it could open a chain of begging bowls by other regional forces. Amisom has been partially run on funding from donors although the UN occasionally compensates for spent equipment.
In the meantime, the UN Security Council will have to decide, immediately, the interim measures to be taken on Somalia, whose elections have been delayed again.
The AU says the security situation in Somalia is now complex and proposed that Amisom continues beyond December as parties discuss its transition. A presidential election initially scheduled for October 12 will not happen as federal states are yet to start elections for Lower House representatives, a pre-cursor to the election that will decide the successor of president Mohamed Farmaajo.
An ongoing tiff between President Farmaajo and his Prime Minister Hussein Roble, has seen the continental body argue that ending Amisom's mandate will have a “a significant impact on ongoing political processes, and causes delays in the conduct of electoral processes, as well as in the discussions between Somalia and the AU and other international partners on the post-2021 AU mission.”
