“Annual Trauma”
Violence in Somalia is increasing, UN still withdraws troops
By Simone Schlindwein, Kampala
06/28/2023, 6:00 p.m
The combat capability of the brutal al-Shabaab militia in Somalia is increasing. Nevertheless, the United Nations are planning to withdraw the peacekeeping forces. People fear an increase in violence.
It’s like a bloody ritual: every June, armed fighters from the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab from Somalia penetrate across the border into small villages in Kenya and massacre people there. So also last Sunday evening. Photos from the crime scenes in the villages of Juhudi and Salama in Lamu district bear witness to an extremely brutal crackdown: Five male bodies, tied up, lie on the grass. Their heads were apparently cut off with blunt knives.
The first massacre in this coastal region happened on June 16, 2014, almost exactly nine years ago, reports Monica Wangui. The 26-year-old Kenyan works in the local district administration of Lamu. At that time, armed men from the al-Shabaab militia killed at least 60 people. Schools, police stations and residents’ homes were burned down. “Every year in June, when we commemorate the dead of 2014, we are attacked again,” she says. “It’s like an annual trauma.”
The conflict in Somalia, which has been going on for 30 years, does not leave the people of East Africa and the Horn of Africa in peace, on the contrary. The latest attack in Lamu is evidence that the notorious al-Shabaab militia has regained the capacity to strike beyond Somalia’s borders. Parts of the Somali al-Shabaab have recently subordinated themselves to the international command structure of the Islamic State. From Somalia, they are now coordinating IS operations throughout East and Central Africa. A UN investigative report earlier this week provided evidence that al-Shabaab has sufficient financial resources at its disposal: within just one year, its commanders transferred $400,000 from Somalia to its allied brother militia ADF, the “United Democratic Forces”. of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the latest UN report on the situation in Congo.
The Somali army is supposed to provide security alone
So far, experts have assumed that the militia’s clout must have been significantly weakened by the military operations against them. International soldiers have been fighting al-Shabaab since 2007 as part of AMISOM, a peacekeeping mission set up by the African Union (AU) and authorized by the UN Security Council. The troops were initially provided by Uganda and Burundi, later Kenyan and Ethiopian soldiers were added. However, last year the AU decided to initiate a transition phase and gradually hand over military sovereignty to the regular Somali army. These combat units, which were once disintegrated in the civil war, have been made fit in recent years by international trainers, including German officers.
In order to be able to defend his own country again, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud demanded in the UN Security Council last week that the international arms embargo imposed on his country in 1992 be completely lifted. “This will enable us to assert our sovereignty, fight terrorism effectively and build a peaceful and prosperous future for our nation,” he said.
Complete withdrawal by the end of 2024
According to the plan, all regional troops are to be withdrawn in stages by the end of 2024 and Somalia’s military will then be responsible for security alone. The AMISOM mission once comprised almost 20,000 soldiers, but from the end of June only 2,000 soldiers will remain as part of the ATMIS (African Union Transition Mission in Somalia) mission. By the end of 2024, these should also be finally withdrawn.
The troop-contributing countries like Uganda and Burundi are looking forward to this withdrawal. In recent years in Somalia you have repeatedly had to accept bloody casualties. In early June, al-Shabaab raided a Ugandan army base and killed 54 Ugandan soldiers with a bomb hidden in a vehicle. Opposition figures in Uganda then demanded an immediate withdrawal of troops.
The UN Security Council discussed the withdrawal in New York last week. In order to significantly weaken Al-Shabaab again, ATMIS boss Mohamed Souef told the UN Security Council that he was in the process of restructuring the military mission. Numerous military bases would be handed over to the Somali army. This creates capacities for the AU peacekeeping forces, including above all Kenyan and Ethiopian units, to take targeted action again in small special units in the next military offensive against Al-Shabaab.
struggles and climate change
At the same UN session, Catriona Laing, UN Special Envoy for Somalia and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia UNSOM (United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia), warned of the challenges of a withdrawal. She calls on all international partners to “participate and give people additional support”. This also includes humanitarian aid. Almost half of the Somali population suffers from hunger due to the advancing climate change and the catastrophic security situation because they hardly grow anything themselves. The rainy season in the Horn of Africa failed again from March to June, reports the UN World Food Program (WFP) and warns: “Immediate action is required to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.”
In her report to the UN Security Council, UN Special Envoy Laing also referred to the increasing escalation of violence in the regions of Somaliland and Puntland. The two regions declared their independence from Somalia in 1998 in the wake of the civil war. So far, things have mostly been more peaceful in the two quasi-autonomous republics than in Somalia itself. Now there are also political conflicts that are being carried out violently. Just last week, eight people were killed in clashes between security forces and armed opposition militias in front of Parliament. Puntland is now to hold its own presidential elections.
All of these developments are worrying Kenyan Monica Wangui in Lamu. Just last week, Kenya’s interior ministry reopened the Lamu border crossing to Somalia to get cross-border trade going again after 12 years of border closure for security reasons. “We are now also seeing our Kenyan soldiers returning via these open borders,” reports Wangui. “People here are very angry with our government because it cannot protect us.”