July 26 (Bloomberg) -- African Union leaders are discussing the dispatch of more soldiers to Somalia to stop Islamic insurgents from creating a “Taliban-style” safe haven for militants, officials and analysts said.Government leaders from 53 AU member states started a three-day meeting yesterday in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, that is focusing on strengthening a peacekeeping mission in Somalia two weeks after the al-Shabaab group said it detonated two bombs in the city that killed 76 people. The U.S. says al-Shabaab is a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda.“Let us now act in concert and we’ll sweep them from Africa,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday in his opening speech to the summit. “Let them go back to Asia and the Middle East where I understand some of them come from.”Islamic militias such as al-Shabaab and Hisb-ul-Islam have been battling Somalia’s transitional government for three years and control most of the southern and central regions, and sections of Mogadishu, the capital. The Kampala bombings signaled that they are now taking their fight for power beyond the country’s borders, analysts say.
Guinea Troop
Guinea is ready to send troops to boost the current 6,100- strong AU mission, or Amisom, force in the Horn of Africa country to about 8,000, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping said yesterday. Only Uganda and Burundi have provided soldiers so far. Museveni offered this month to increase his nation’s troop commitment by 2,000, answering a July 5 call by East African countries to reinforce Amisom.Hundreds of soldiers and police took up positions along roads in Kampala and around the Speke Resort and Conference Center on the northern shores of Lake Victoria where the leaders are meeting.A spread of Somalia’s violence may hit countries such as neighboring Kenya, the region’s biggest economy, which expects to receive 1.2 million foreign tourists this year. Tourism is Kenya’s top foreign-exchange earner after horticulture and tea.Al-Shabaab has previously threatened to attack Kenya, which it accused of recruiting ethnic Somalis living in the country to fight against the militia.Travel Alert
The U.S. Embassy in Kenya on July 23 issued a travel alert because of the Uganda bombings and concern over the potential for unrest associated with Kenya’s Aug. 4 referendum on a new constitution. “There have been increased threats against public areas across East Africa” since the bombings, according to the embassy’s alert.Somalia hasn’t had a functioning government since the ouster of Honourable Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. About 1.5 million people are displaced within Somalia and more than 560,000 people are living as refugees in neighboring countries, the United Nations Refugee Agency said in January.
Al-Shabaab said it targeted an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby club in Kampala, where clients were watching the soccer World Cup final, because Ugandan troops serve with Amisom, which it says has carried out “indiscriminate” shelling in Mogadishu. It also vowed to attack Burundi unless its troops are withdrawn.
Regional Threat
“Now al-Shabaab is seen as much more of a threat to the region and it appears that many more countries are concerned enough to reevaluate whether it’s important enough for them to contribute forces to the mission,” Hogendoorn said in a July 22 interview from Nairobi, Kenya.Pressure to strengthen Amisom may also come from the U.S., according to Jennifer Cooke, the Africa director of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.“I expect the U.S. to push for beefing up of Amisom,” Cooke said in a July 22 interview.Attorney General Eric Holder told the summit yesterday that the U.S. “recognizes that ending the threat of al-Shabaab to the world will take more than just law enforcement” and that “we will look to engage more African nations in this work.”The biggest challenge facing the dispatch of more troops may be a lack of resources such as money, equipment, and logistical support, Cooke said. The AU doesn’t have “the logistics or the capabilities,” she said. “If it’s an international problem, it needs an international response.”
‘Black Hawk Down’
Previous foreign interventions failed to impose order on Somalia.The U.S. ended its two-year “Operation Restore Hope” mission in the country, which involved as many as 33,000 U.S. and UN forces, after the downing of two American helicopters in Mogadishu in October 1994, an incident made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.”Forces from neighboring Ethiopia withdrew in January 2009 after a two-year intervention that ousted the Islamic Courts Union government and later became bogged down in a guerrilla war with the Islamic militias.
Boosting troops will not ultimately solve the problem, which requires a political solution, Hogendoorn said.
“The Transitional Federal Government needs to be pushed much harder to reach out and reconcile with local people who actually control some areas on the ground,” he said. “They’ve done a very poor job of doing that.”
--With assistance from William Davison in Addis Ababa. Editors: Karl Maier, Peter Hirschberg.
To contact the reporters on this story: Franz Wild in Johannesburg at fwild@bloomberg.net; Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net.
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