AU could deliver a portent punch against Al Shabaab fighters

The Amisom is highly unpopular with Al-Shabaab which has openly declared that the AU force’s departure is its priority if it takes power, writes Gitau WarigiAfrican Union summits always have an agenda heavy with the endless crises that are always happening on this or that place. This year is no different, from the standoff between Chad and Sudan to the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Omar Hassan al-Bashir to the persistent unconstitutional order in Mauritania, Guinea and Madagascar.Still, the mess in Somalia was expected to take centre stage.On this issue, two particular proposals were reportedly being pushed by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the eastern Africa grouping.One was for a change of the peackeeping mandate of the weak AU military mission (called AMISOM) into a robust fighting force that can confront the Islamist insurgents. A second proposal was about reversing an earlier ruling that prohibited Somalia’s immediate neighbours, like Kenya and Ethiopia, from contributing troops to AMISOM. The peacekeeping force currently comprises about 4,300 troops from Uganda and Burundi.The peacekeeping mandate is already a major step forward for the AU, which has traditionally avoided getting entangled in internal matters of member states. (There is presently another AU peace-keeping mission in Darfur, Sudan.)Naturally Kenya and Ethiopia, which have threatened to invade Somalia to prop up the Transitional Federal Government, are central to any position IGAD decides to take,“I think IGAD will push the African Union to continue and strengthen its role in terms of political will from the wider body. Now we might be seeing increased political will as the situation aggravates. So Somalia might be one of the areas where we might see something significant coming out of it, particularly because there is this push from IGAD,” Kenneth Mpysi of the Institute of Security Studies in Addis Ababa was quoted by the Voice of America as saying.“The Somalia peacekeeping mission is the AU’s toughest and most dangerous undertaking in Africa today,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. But he cautioned that the AU should ensure against being drawn into cases of abuse.To be fair, AMISOM is not guilty of that. In any case, it is the one on the firing line of the Islamists. Some months back, 13 Burundi peacekeepers lost their lives in a suicide bomb attack...more..http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/AU_could_deliver_a_portent_punch_against_Al_Shabaab_fighters_87532.shtml