The Horn Of Africa States: There Is No Need For AUSSOM – OpEd
A seventeen-year-old operation which has not achieved its goal can only be considered a total failure, which by all standards and common sense, must be discontinued, unless the original goal was not as defined as it is and it is doing a project that is hidden and covert, and it looks likely this is probably the case. It is being renewed under a different name, the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). It is clear that it will not stabilize nor support Somalia but would be doing some other undisclosed mandate. This is the AMISOM project – an African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, renamed some two years ago as the African Transition Mission in Somalia and whose mandate is ending on December 31st, 2024. It is the same mission under a different cover.
All missions have been authorized by the United Nations Security Council, under again, different UN names. It started as UNSOA in 2009, standing for the United nations Organization Office for AMISOM and was established pursuant to Security Council resolution 1863 (2009) to provide logistics support to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which was changed to UNSOS or the United nations Support office for Somalia, following the adoption of resolution 2628 (2022) on 31 March 2022, which brought in ATMIS in the place of AMISOM.
Somalia can only be supported and stabilized by its own people and citizens but this will happen only when the malignant interventions of other countries stop, and when the Somali citizen realizes that it is time to reconcile and close the old painful pages and move on. Civil wars happen and happened in many countries. They are still happening in other countries at the time of this writing. Neighboring Ethiopia is but a great example. It appears to be going the way of Somalia over the next several decades, anyway.
The current mandate of UNSOS as elaborated in the Security Council resolution 2748 (2024), will only add to the continuation of the miseries of the Somali people, whose politicians all vie to be the receiving party of the aid coming from other nations, the main culprit at the center of the problems of Somalia – the aid and grants from donor countries. Many of the local politicians have stopped working for the nation long ago and vie and compete for being the Somali parties receiving the assistance on behalf of the Somali people and pocketing it along with the UN and AU missions in the country, while the resources of the country are being exploited by others or being prepared for others to take.
It is why such names as support systems and stabilization programs for Somalia do not hold any such meaning for Somalis. They know that such support has not been given to them and will not reach them anyway. So why do donor countries pay these monies to NGOs including the world’s large organizations such as the United Nations and the African Union? It is known that both organizations only fatten their administrations and have not achieved their mandates anywhere, except perhaps in the very beginning of each organization when sentimental issues were driving their creation.
That they were not able to build a functioning Somali government with its policing forces, its military forces and its functioning administration throughout the country is unbelievable and unworthy of further discussion through a span of some seventeen years (17). The irony is that they still repeat that they support and stabilize Somalia, which is simply a ploy to receive donor monies and fatten their administrations and the salaries of their large staff at the expense of the Somali people.
The UNSOS was to help create a Somali National Army (SNA) of some10,900 soldiers in 2013. This was expanded to be some 20,900 Somali soldiers including police forces at both the federal and state levels. But apparently this has not happened. If they have done their job, there would not have been any need for extensions or change of missions involving foreign soldiers.
The terror element and terrorists in the country have increased since the entry of international forces into the country. There were no terror groups before IGADSOM, which was replaced by AMISOM and was further replaced by ATMIS and is now being replaced by AUSSOM. The terror activities only increase when the mandates of these missions are coming to an end. Is the terror and terrorism in the country a function of the presence of foreign forces in the country? It could probably and possibly be so, and if so, then there is no need to renew the mandates of these missions. There would no terror or terrorism in the country and Somalis would live with what they have.
Some ask themselves how different AUSSOM could be from its predecessors? This is an irrelevant question for they would not be different. ATMIS was not different from AMISOM and AMISOM was not different from IGADSOM. UNSOS is not different from UNSOA. These are all same forces with fancy names doing the same jobs. At the end of the new forces mandate, we may still be hearing the same arguments. The argument would be the same. Somalia will need to be supported and the UN and the AU along with whatever administration is in the country at that time, will all agree to have a new force to replace AUSSOM. Another fancy name with a new abbreviation would be brought on to the table and perhaps would be approved.
Why are these unworkable programs being rehashed and reshaped? It must have to do with money, which makes the world turn and spin, when it comes into the picture. The African soldiers in Somalia earn much more in Somalia than in their countries and much, much more than a Somali soldier in his own country. This is, indeed so, because they are endangering themselves on behalf of Somalis and putting their countries on the goodwill of the world’s multilateral organizations – the UN and the AU and the European Union, which pays for most missions. This is far from the truth for they do not help Somalia and Somalis and are exposed less than a poor Somali soldier who is not paid enough to feed his family and is asked to do most of the fighting in the country. The UN and the AU and the Somali government all know this!
Should there have not been the presence of these foreign soldiers, there would probably be no terrorism. The terror groups use the presence of these foreign soldiers, most of them from neighboring countries, which have still many issues to grind with Somalia, as the raison d’etre for their existence. Perhaps, this should be taken seriously unless the terror groups themselves represent, as they seem to be, another face of the foreign intervention in the country, to exploit the resources of the country.
In either case, there seems to be no need for AUSSOM or for that matter, any such force in Somalia. The UN and the AU both failed Somalia. They failed other countries too. The DR Congo mission is coming to an end and the Malians put an end to the UN mission there. What makes the UN believe that they can succeed in Somalia? They will not and the AU will not. Somalia and Somalis should be left alone to their wiles. They will find their way to stabilize themselves and live together as they always used to do in the leopard-colored country of theirs, in the very Horn of Africa States region.
The previous missions failed for if they succeeded there would be no need for the creation of a new mission. Things would have been settled long ago and Somalia should have been standing on its feet taking into considerations the billions of United States Dollars that are claimed to have been spent on the country, which did not happen.
The terror groups are still present in the country and have increased their terror activities since we are getting closer to the end of the ATMIS mandate. The international community, if it is genuinely supporting Somalia, should not approve the presence of foreign forces in the country. Somalia should be working to govern itself and make bilateral arrangements with other countries which can really help it to stand on its feet but should not seek any UN and African Union help and support. These are toothless and corrupt bureaucrats who cannot change one iota of any country.
A discontinuation of the AU mission of Somalia will also put an end to the disputes between Ethiopia and Somalia and between Kenya and Somalia with respect to territorial and other claims. Each country will have to stay in its turf as per international law. Neighboring countries should never have been allowed to participate in peacemaking operations in countries with which they have a lot to grind. Kenya and Ethiopia are such countries when it comes to Somalia. It was a mistake as Kofi Annan, the Ex-UN Secretary General warned Kenya in 2011 not go into Somalia. He further noted that it is always better in peacekeeping not to use the soldiers of neighboring countries but soldiers from further afield.
Kenya’s operation “Operation Lindi Nchi" or Protect the Nation of 2011 was not in line with the United Nations charter, which prohibits the use of force in international relations. Perhaps this is what Ethiopia, another neighboring country of Somalia, is currently thinking, to invade Somalia as soon as the ATMIS mandate ends to supposedly protect its country from the terror groups which itself appears to have armed and weaponized against their own government.
The AUSSOM operation to start on the first day of 2025 and last until the end of 2028, will make the AU mission in Somalia last from 2007 to 2028, a long period of failures and corruption at the very highest levels of international governance in the world. Why would a mission last that long unless there is corruption at the very highest levels?