Regardless of the recent defeats of Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, senior African Union Mission in Somalia commanders privately admit that the next phase of military operations is fraught with potential difficulties. Since forcing Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu in August, five years after Amisom first came to Somalia, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force’s 5,500-strong contingent is slowly moving out to assume control of new territory beyond the capital. Any bolder moves to occupy territory further afield, however, depend on leaving currently-occupied zones to Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers and police, whose competence and reliability are in some doubt. Amisom commanders also worry because communications are scant and coordination absent with the Ethiopian forces to the south. Now that the Kenyan forces have been re-hatted as Amisom, links with them should improve.
Lack of trust in the TFG forces who have to take over the Ugandan and Burundian positions when Amisom moves out of Mogadishu is making Amisom tread...
The work of a former government accountant again exposes financial confusion and crime on a grand scale
While February’s London Conference on Somalia sought ways out of the military and political quagmire, a former civil servant in the Transitional Federal Government was documenting how its...
Privately, diplomats in Mogadishu agree that the reports by Abdirizak Jama ‘Fartaag’ are the best source of financial information about the Mogadishu government.
Vol 53 No 5 |
- SOMALIA
- BRITAIN
Whispers of possible negotiations with Al Shabaab were drowned out by the drums of war
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) may have been hosting the London Conference on Somalia but there was no doubting that Downing Street was in the driving seat.
Vol 53 No 4 |
- SOMALIA
- BRITAIN
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough
After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many approach the London Conference on Somalia on 23 February...
In Africa Confidential Vol 53 No 1, we wrote that Al Qaida commander Fazul Abdullah Mohamed had been killed by a United States drone in June 2011 (‘The...
Intervention by Kenya and Ethiopia will drive Al Shabaab from its strongholds but won’t produce a viable government
Military successes by African forces against the Islamist militia Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen have changed the dynamics of the conflict. However, they are far from tackling...
Somaliland has launched an aggressive effort to attract oil companies. At the African Oil Week conference in Cape Town last month, the Minister of Mining, Energy and Water...
Vol 52 No 24 |
- KENYA
- SOMALIA
The war in Somalia gives President Mwai Kibaki’s government a leading role for which it looks ill-prepared
Six weeks into the fighting, unintended consequences haunt Kenya’s invasion of Somalia: rising xenophobia, terrorist attacks in Nairobi and other local insecurity, and changes in East Africa’s security...
Vol 52 No 24 |
- ETHIOPIA
- SOMALIA
Ethiopian troops have gone into Somalia to support the Kenyan deployment, although Prime Minister Meles Zenawi remains sceptical about the operation. Ethiopia wants to maintain its regional role...