The Security Council on Monday asked the United Nations chief to begin contingency planning to send UN peacekeepers back to Somalia for the first time since 1995.
Battles between insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government troops in Somalia’s capital over the past month have killed more than 1 000 people and driven nearly 400 000 from their homes, according to humanitarian groups.
The fighting, which the Red Cross has called the worst in Somalia in 15 years, began when Somali and Ethiopian troops launched a major military operation in Mogadishu in late March to crush the remnants of an Islamic insurgency. The city’s streets have been calm in recent days, prompting some residents to return to their homes.
In its statement on Monday, the 15-member Security Council asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to issue a report by mid-June on the contingency planning for a possible UN peacekeeping mission.
However, such a mission is unlikely to deploy any time soon.
”Let’s be clear, the Security Council report sets out the conditionality for deploying a force … and there [first] should be sufficient peace to keep. At the moment, those conditions are not met,” said Britain’s UN ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, whose term as the rotating council president ended on Monday.
”Our hope is that the situation in Mogadishu is stabilising and the violence there will come to an end, and that you can provide within the next months a degree of stability and political outreach in the country,” he said. ”If the situation continues to improve sufficiently, the UN would then be prepared to consider whether or not it should deploy.”
In Eritrea, however, a top Islamic leader and Somalia’s former parliamentary speaker warned on Monday that the fighting against Ethiopian troops will continue until they are driven from the country. They both urged Somalis to rise up against the foreign forces.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the poverty-stricken Horn of Africa nation into chaos.
The UN sent in peacekeepers in the 1990s, leading to clashes between foreign troops and Somali fighters, including the notorious downing of two United States Black Hawk helicopters in 1993 — which was followed by a firefight that killed about 300 Somalis in 12 hours.
The US withdrew from Somalia in 1994, followed by the departure of UN forces a year later. A UN-backed transitional government that was set up in 2004 has yet to assert much authority outside a single western town.
The Security Council authorised an 8 000-strong African Union force to help stabilise Somalia in February, but the organisation has only received pledges for about half the troops and just two battalions from Uganda have been deployed at the Mogadishu airport.
In its statement, the Security Council also appealed to African countries to contribute more troops to the AU force. — Sapa-AP