Somalia: Extending AMISOM’s Mandate

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has played a decisive role in the Somali government’s reconquest of territory in the southern part of the country from the rebel group Al Shabab.

AMISOM was created in January 2007. The United Nations Security Council authorized the African Union to deploy troops in Somalia in February 2007, and has periodically renewed that mandate. The most recent renewal came in November 2012, when “the council extended the AMISOM peacekeeping mission for four months, instead of the usual 12, to allow for a review of operations, including consideration of the request to lift the arms embargo and a call for permission to resume the export of stocks of charcoal.” The request to lift the embargo, which has been in place since 1992, comes from AMISOM. Introductory commentary on the charcoal issue can be found here.

The new mandate will expire around March 7, and regional leaders have begun calling for its extension. In December, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud released a joint statement calling for the mandate’s renewal. This week, Uganda’s Chief of Land Forces General Katumba Wamala (bio here) added his voice:

“Somalia is like a baby that is still suckling. She needs all the support from the rest of the world,” Katumba said recently in Somalia, where he is currently on the on-spot assesment of the peace operations. Uganda is the leading contributor to the military and police components of the mission.

The AMISOM mission is supported by mainly the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union. “The capacity for Somalia to stand on its own and survive as a country are not yet in place, irrespective of the efforts the world has been putting in,” Katumba said. He explained that in the last few years, tremendous steps have been taken in trying to revive the country, but more support is still needed.

I would be very surprised to see AMISOM leave Somalia in March. It will be interesting, though, to see what happens with the arms embargo issue and the charcoal issue.

Steps Toward External Military Intervention in Mali: A Timeline

Yesterday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon formally “recommended that the Security Council approve an African Union peace enforcement mission be deployed to combat Islamist extremists in northern Mali, but did not offer financial support from the world body.” Some observers expect that the Security Council will, as Ban urges, provide a mandate for an intervention in Mali led by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Paul Melly is an Associate Fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London. He says that, because the recovery of territorial integrity is at stake, the UN is expected to hand down a fairly robust mandate, endorsing the ECOWAS intervention.

“The UN mandate will be more one of providing UN support and political authority for this intervention. So it’s not quite like a UN peacekeeping mission with a specific mandate laying down what forces can or cannot do, as you would have, for example, with the MONUSCO force in Congo,” he said.

I imagine we will be discussing and debating the merits and prospects of intervention in the months to come, but in this post I simply want to review the steps that the intervention’s architects have taken in recent months. ECOWAS, of course, has been deeply concerned by the crises in Mali since the conflict in the north began in January, and especially since the March 22 coup in Bamako. But non-African partners, through the spring and summer, expressed some doubts about ECOWAS’ intervention plans. The US and others have worried that the plans lack specificity, both in terms of means and ends. The current process is in large part an effort to address those concerns and secure international support.

Here are some steps taken so far:

1. On October 12, the UNSC “called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to provide, at once, military and security planners to [ECOWAS], the African Union (AU) and other partners to help frame a response to a request by Mali’s transitional authorities for such a force, and to report back within 45 days.”
2. In early November, international military experts met in Bamako to draft a plan to retake northern Mali. They submitted the plan to ECOWAS on November 6.
3. On November 11, heads of state from ECOWAS approved the plan at a summit in Abuja, Nigeria.
4. On November 13, the AU approved the plan.
5. On November 15, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal Poland, and Spain signaled their willingness to provide training for Malian forces. (Statement here, .pdf.)

Events still to come:

1. On December 7, international envoys will meet in Rome “to coordinate strategy on Mali…focus[ing] on coordinating positions against terrorism, humanitarian issues, encouraging dialogue, and reinforcing political structures so that elections could eventually be held.”
2. I assume that the ECOWAS/AU plan was formally presented to the UNSC by the deadline of November 26, but I have not seen a date for when the UNSC is expected to make a decision on approving an intervention. From what I have read the decision is expected soon, though.

What do you think will happen? Will the UNSC approve the force? Will external actors insist that Mali hold elections before attempting to reconquer the north? Will this ultimately be settling at the negotiating table – with Ansar al Din, perhaps? Many questions – we’ll see soon how ECOWAS, AU, and the UN attempt to resolve them.

Africa News Roundup: Sudan-South Sudan Talks, Al Shabab, the UNSC and Mali, and More

First in the roundup, there’s a lot of news coming out of Sudan and South Sudan now:

• President Omar al Bashir of Sudan and President Salva Kiir of South Sudan are set to meet tomorrow in Addis Ababa.
• Reuters: “Former civil war foes Sudan and South Sudan have told mediators that they are ready to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts this weekend, but behind the diplomacy their relationship is one of enduring mistrust and enmity. With an army of advisors and experts pressuring both sides, the leaders of the neighboring nations may feel compelled to reach a limited agreement in Addis Ababa to end hostilities, for now, after coming close to war in April.”
• The African Union is applying pressure on the two sides to reach an agreement, and the US, the UK, and Norway have issued a joint statement also calling for an agreement.
• Sudanese authorities denied protesters permission to stage another demonstration over an anti-Islamic film yesterday.

The Atlantic: “How Al Shabab Lost Control of Somalia”

The UN Security Council issued a press release yesterday on the situation in Mali.

The members of the Security Council take note of the Interim Malian Government’s request for assistance to ECOWAS.  They further take note of the ongoing strategic planning efforts of ECOWAS and stress the need for ECOWAS to coordinate with the Interim Government of Mali, the African Union, other Sahel countries, bilateral partners and international organizations, including the European Union, with the support of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in order to prepare detailed options regarding the objectives, means and modalities of the deployment of a regional force in Mali.  They express their readiness to consider a feasible and actionable proposal from ECOWAS addressing such a request from the Interim Malian Government.

In Nigeria, state governors are taking the Federal Government to court over the country’s sovereign wealth fund. “The operation of the fund by the federal government violates a constitutional provision that all government revenue must be shared among that states and the center, the governors said in a joint statement.”

Reuters on Niger’s 2013 budget.

What else is happening?

The UNSC and the AU Move to Settle the Sudans’ Conflict

After months of basically fruitless negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan following the latter’s independence from the former last July, the countries have recently been flirting with a return to war. South Sudan’s seizure of the Heglig oil field from Sudan (now under Sudanese control once more, production at Heglig has apparently resumed) and Sudan’s bombing campaigns inside South Sudanese territory have caused worldwide concern. This week, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the African Union (AU), working in tandem, moved to settle the conflict, the UN by means of threats and the AU with a plan for peace.

Bloomberg on the UNSC:

The United Nations Security Council warned Sudan and South Sudan to halt fighting and settle their differences on splitting revenue from South Sudan’s oil reserves within three months or face possible sanctions.

The 15-member council unanimously passed a resolution today calling for withdrawal of all forces from disputed territories, an end to air raids by the north and a negotiated solution to the issue of payments by South Sudan for shipping oil to Port Sudan in the north.

The resolution reinforces a peace plan outlined by the African Union and comes two weeks after troops from the South withdrew from the disputed oil-producing Heglig region. Support for the resolution came from China, a major buyer of Sudan’s oil, and Russia, which both generally oppose sanctions.

That the UNSC’s resolution applies to South Sudan as well as to Sudan symbolizes for me how much international sympathy South Sudan has lost during the present conflict, although when South Sudan occupied Heglig, the international community’s reaction was complex.

Read the text of the UNSC resolution here.

VOA on the AU:

The African Union says Sudan has accepted an AU roadmap for halting violence and resolving issues with neighboring South Sudan.
[…]
The roadmap gives the two countries 90 days to settle their issues or face binding international arbitration. The AU said South Sudan accepted the plan earlier this week.

Now we will see how threats and plans from the outside affect the reality on the ground. That the UNSC and the AU are working together improves the odds of peace, it seems to me, as does the fact that the AU has been able to get buy-in, at least in speech, from both sides.