IGAD champions integration of Somali forces

Somali Police Force during the crowd control training conducted by AMISOM

Sunday, January 11, 2015

advertisements

The integration of all Somali forces has emerged as one of the recommendations of the council of ministers’ meeting of the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Mogadishu.

A final resolution from the 53rd extraordinary Council of Ministers meeting in Mogadishu on Saturday urged the federal government of Somalia to rapidly develop a roadmap and engage with federal states and interim administrations to agree the modalities and timelines for the integration of forces and the establishment of regional police units to monitor the country’s land and maritime borders.

The Somali Police force which disintegrated after the outbreak of the civil war in the early 1990s, was reconstituted in the early years of the new millennium and has since then received material support from the United States.

It has been working closely with the Somali armed forces to ensure security in Mogadishu and other parts of the country under the federal government.

Meanwhile IGAD has called on the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to expand their operations in other parts of the country still under Shabaab control.

A final resolution from Saturday’s meeting vowed to fight the insurgents until lasting peace was restored to the whole of war-torn Somalia.

To this end it demanded that territories out of AMISOM’s hands be captured from the militants who still hold sway in large swathes of southern and central Somalia.

Opening the meeting, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud reminded delegates that his country is still undergoing a fragile transition from a failed state to a stable and progressive nation in the making.

The meeting at Mogadishu’s Syl Hotel chaired by Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr Tedros Adhanom in his capacity as IGAD chairman was the first IGAD council of ministers’ meeting to be held in Somalia since her collapse into a bitter civil strife beginning in the early 1990s.

It was attended by ministers and ambassadors from Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Somalia and representatives from the European Union, a key backer of the African Union peacekeeping force in the country.

Home
Email

Hiiraan Online