New York Times:
More Troops for Somalia, but No Peace to Keep
NAIROBI, Kenya — If there is one place on the African continent that could benefit from new thinking, it is Somalia, a country that has been mired in mutating forms of civil war for nearly 20 years. But that is apparently not, what Africa’s leaders are prepared to give it. Instead, the various presidents across the continent said goodbye to one another on Tuesday at the close of their annual summit meeting by agreeing on a remedy that has never solved Somalia’s problems: more Troops to the battle ground known as Mogadishu.
The approach goes against the grain of what recent history has taught about Somalia, analysts point out — that no amount of outside firepower has brought the country to heel. Not thousands of American Marines in the early 1990s. Not the enormous United Nations mission that followed. Not the Ethiopian Army storming into Somalia in 2006. Not the current African Union peacekeepers, who are steadily wearing out their welcome.
Many, if not most, of the analysts who follow Somalia believe that the African peacekeeping mission, no matter how many troops are part of it, is going to fail.
“I cannot think of a worse decision than to not merely continue the strategically bankrupt policy of sending more ‘peacekeepers’ to Somalia, when there is no peace for them to keep, but to compound that mistake by sending more troops to protect a regime that has no hope of ever governing southern and central Somalia, much less the entire country,” said J. Peter Pham, a senior vice president at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
There are currently 6,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Mogadishu.
Somalia’s transitional government is doing worse. Feckless and divided, it is holed up in a hilltop palace in Mogadishu, unable to deliver services, mobilize the people or provide a coherent alternative to the insurgents, who chop off hands, ban music, soccer and bras, and hold much of Somalia in a grip of fear.
The African Union wants to add 2,000 troops now; some African leaders have even mused about another 14,000. The American government is also supportive of adding troops, offering in the past week to increase the peacekeeping money it contributes. (The United States has already provided close to $200 million.)
American officials say they are aware of the risks of injecting more force and more guns into Somalia. But they, along with many others, are unnerved by the prospects of the Shabab taking over the entire country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world ... malia.html
