Africa does what the UN could not - pulls Somalia back from the brink

[mota bhai 2,675]

On June 3, the United Nations mission in Somalia celebrates a milestone, by moving -- to Somalia. For the last 18 years, the U.N. Political Office in Somalia (UNPOS) has had to operate from Nairobi, Kenya, since the Somali government, when it existed at all, controlled only a few spots in Mogadishu, the capital city, and virtually nothing beyond that. But in the summer of 2011, an African Union force finally pushed the Islamic militants known as al-Shabab out of the capital, and since then both people and money have poured in. On May 2, the U.N. Security Council voted to replace UNPOS with the U.N. Assistance Mission in Somalia, and actually put it in Somalia. If you've held the top spot in FP's Failed States Index five years running, that's a real achievement.

Somalia is still, of course, the failed state nonpareil, with no functioning government or military and an insurgency still capable of mounting audacious attacks in the heart of the capital. In mid April, al-Shabab suicide bombers killed 35 people at the Supreme Court complex, the highest death toll since they fled Mogadishu en masse. Nevertheless, conditions are now present for Somalia -- with an immense amount of outside help -- to begin healing itself.

...

Al-Shabab, which overran Mogadishu in the summer of 2006, managed to frighten, first, Somalia's neighbors, and then the West, sparking the kind of determined military response which ordinary fratricidal countries -- Rwanda, for example -- never got. Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian nation spooked by the presence of Islamic extremists on its doorstep, invaded in late 2006, and was replaced by an African Union (AU) force led by Ugandan troops. Mahiga explained Uganda's willingness to put soldiers in harm's way by noting that Yoweri Museveni, the country's megalomaniac (my word) president, aspired to assert Pan-African leadership, and was eager to replace Ethiopia and rescue a helpless neighbor.

The Ugandans, along with troops from Kenya and Burundi, began to arrive in 2007. When al-Shabab retook Mogadishu in 2009, the AU troops had to literally fight their way out of the airport. At least 3,000 AU soldiers have died, which equals or surpasses the total number of U.N. peacekeepers who have died in all operations, ever. It is safe to say that if Somalia had been forced to depend on U.N. peacekeepers -- as, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo has had to -- al-Shabab would still be in the ascendant.

But the AU couldn't have succeeded by itself, either: the soldiers who arrived were half starving and woefully under-equipped. During this period, however, al-Shabab began to spout the rhetoric of al Qaeda, to which it ultimately declared formal allegiance -- in retrospect, probably not a very wise decision. In 2008, the U.S. State Department designated the group a foreign terrorist orgnization. Suddenly, Somalia looked like the latest lawless frontier to be exploited by America's mortal enemies. The West took notice. Starting in 2010, the Security Council agreed to pay for food, logistics, medicine, and the like; the European Union paid the salaries of the AU troops at the U.N. scale; and the United States and Britain paid for military equipment. Since 2007, Washington has spent more than $500 million on the AU force.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/31/from_blackhawk_down_to_standing_up

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Somalia is the size of Texas. Methinks the similarities do not end there.

[Darnell 8,478]

That's right! Lots of battles between Christians (of all kinds) and Muslims (of most kinds) for land and right-of-ways.