Stung by their inability to end 15 years of conflict in Somalia, African Union leaders prepare to confront the issue with no clear solution except to recite old appeals and re-emphasise the pressing need for stability for the Horn of African nation.
Analysts say the rise of hardline Islamic courts union controlling a large part of southern Somalia, including the capital, further damages the 53-member AU’s ambition of pacifying trouble spots on the continent.
Despite growing fears of the Somali developments, the leaders meeting at a weekend summit appear unlikely to endorse any new proposal to try to halt the unrest that has plagued the impoverished country of 10-million since the 1991 toppling of the government of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
At the two-day summit in Gambia, African presidents, heads of government and other state representatives are expected to renew calls — which have already been rejected — for a UN arms embargo on Somalia to be relaxed.
That move, they argue, would allow the deployment of peacekeepers from East Africa.
But with its current peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region already hamstrung by dwindling finances, the prospects for AU making good on a pledge to send troops to Somalia appear remote.
The seven-nation, East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) says its plan to send troops to Somalia have stumbled on the arms embargo, but some observers say the real reason for the delay lies in the states’ unwillingness to set foot in Somalia.
”The progress of the Somalia issue does not depend on the summit because the decision to deploy troops has already been made,” an AU official said on condition of anonymity.
Yet despite that decision — which received new backing by Igad’s foreign ministers meeting in Nairobi recently — and a call for Sudan and Uganda to mobilise their troops, a full-scale military venture is far from reality.
”Some countries argue that the embargo is the obstacle to a deployment, but this is not really the case as it wouldn’t apply to national armed forces,” said an Addis Ababa-based diplomat.
”The problem is that no country really wants to go to Somalia,” said a Western diplomat. ”Certainly not Sudan and Uganda, which have numerous internal problems. So it is better to say that ‘We will go’, and not go.”
In addition, analysts say the AU fears getting sucked in the Somali vortex, marked by a botched military intervention in 1993 that claimed the lives of 18 US marines and several UN peacekeepers and scuppered ambitions to bring order to the chaotic nation.
”How does the AU, with some 2 000 men it might finally deploy, hope to resolve a 15-year-old civil war?” said one diplomat here.
Since the Islamic courts clinched their hold on power on July 5 with the capture of Mogadishu, opposition to the troop deployment has risen, with repeated protests and bellicose warnings to the interim Ethiopia-backed government, a virtually powerless entity based in the south-central town of Baidoa.
Unfazed, Ethiopia continues to press for the deployment of troops, sparking a standoff between the Islamists.
On Tuesday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned the Islamic militia against acts of provocations, insisting that Addis Ababa had a right to self-defence.
The AU still hopes that the June 15 mutual recognition pact brokered by the Arab League between the Islamists and the Somali government will hold.
”All rests with the Khartoum agreement,” said a Western diplomat. ”If they agree to talk to each other … we can envisage an end to this crisis without external intervention.” – Sapa-AFP