By Mohamed Olad Hassan
Sunday November 10, 2024
FILE
- Somalia's Defense Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur speaks at a press
conference in Mogadishu on Dec. 21, 2022 after the arrival of the first
group of Somali soldiers trained in Eritrea.
A
senior Somali official insisted Saturday that Ethiopia will not
participate in a new African Union peacekeeping mission starting in
January.
The two nations remain deadlocked over a Memorandum of
Understanding that Ethiopia signed with the breakaway region,
Somaliland, earlier this year.
“I can say that Ethiopia
is the only government we know of so far that will not participate in
the new AU mission because it has violated our sovereignty and national
unity," Somalia Defense Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur said Saturday in
a government-run television interview.
African Union troops from
several countries have been operating in Somalia since 2007. They
started with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) before
changing the mission and its name on April 1, 2022, to the African Union
Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). Its mandate ends at the end of
this year.
For 17 years, the African Union mission helped Somalia
combat al-Shabab, a violent extremist organization that threatened to
overthrow the government and impose a strict interpretation of Islamic
law.
The aim of past and upcoming missions is to hand over security responsibility to the Somali National Forces.
The
nation is preparing for a third peace support operation, set to begin
January 1, 2025, when a new mission, the African Union Support Mission
in Somalia (AUSSOM), replaces ATMIS.
According to a United
Nations report in August, ATMIS has been drawing down troops from about
20,000 to less than 13,000. The new mission is expected to number at
least 12,000. AUSSOM is scheduled to operate until the end of 2028.
It is not the first time Somalia has rejected the involvement of Ethiopian troops in a peacekeeping mission in the country.
In
August, Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said Ethiopian forces
would only join AUSSOM once Addis Ababa withdraws from the MoU with
Somaliland.
Mogadishu, which sees Somaliland as a part of
Somalia, has described the agreement as an assault on its sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
Analysts say Somalia’s repeated
demands that Ethiopia withdraw from the MoU have fallen on deaf ears,
which further alienates Somalia.
Professor Sonkor Geyre, a former
director of the defense ministry, said Somalia has a right to choose
the countries it wants and rejects others.
“Somalia has national
sovereign rights to exclude Ethiopia from the upcoming AU mission
because it sees Ethiopia’s actions, including its MoU with Somaliland,
as a national threat,” Geyre told VOA Somali.
Last month, the
leaders of Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt signed a security cooperation
deal seen as an anti-Ethiopia front, and Mogadishu has also boosted its
military ties with Cairo, which has offered troops for the new AU
mission.
“There is an ongoing procedure that we will share and
announce when the time comes regarding the new governments that will
join and the previous ones who will not be part of the new mission,"
Nur, the defense minister, said.
Under the current AU mission, at
least 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers officially operate as part of an African
Union peacekeeping mission fighting al-Shabab. Another 5,000 to 7,000
Ethiopian soldiers are stationed in several regions under a bilateral
agreement.
Other countries contributing to the current AU forces in Somalia include Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, and Uganda.