JidbaaleSomalia reaffirmed Saturday that Ethiopia would not be part of a new African Union peacekeeping force, as the two states remain entrenched in a disagreement that has sent chills across the Horn of Africa.
African Union soldiers have been involved in the war against Al-Shabaab Islamists in Somalia since 2007, with the intention of ultimately passing over security responsibilities to national forces.
The existing AU force in Somalia, known as ATMIS, which comprises around 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers, is expected to finish up at the end of the year, to be replaced by a restructured operation named AUSSOM.
“Ethiopia is the only government we know of so far that will not participate in the new mission because it has violated our sovereignty and unity,” Somalia’s Defense Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur said in a televised interview.
The two countries have been at loggerheads since landlocked. Ethiopia in January made an agreement with the breakaway Somali territory of Somaliland to lease a section of coastline for a port and military facility.
Mogadishu, which has never recognized Somaliland’s 1991 proclamation of independence, has dubbed the pact an attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Last month, Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt signed a security cooperation arrangement viewed as an anti-Ethiopia front, and Mogadishu has also expanded military relations with Cairo, which has offered soldiers for the new AU mission.
ATMIS has been steadily reducing down soldiers from approximately 20,000 to around 13,000 today, while the new mission is projected to number fewer than 12,000, according to a UN report in August.
As well as Ethiopia, which also has soldiers in Somalia working under separate bilateral agreements, other nations that contribute to the AU force include Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, and Uganda.
Nur said Somalia will be initiating a process to ask states to take part in AUSSOM, which is planned to function until the end of 2028.
Eventually, we will announce the new governments that will join and the old ones that will not join the new mission.
He claimed there would be a “major difference” between AUSSOM and its predecessor, including substantially decreased force levels and deployments in restricted regions.
The Somali government in 2022 initiated an “all-out” assault against Al-Shabaab supported by the AU troops, but the Islamist terrorists continue to conduct attacks against civilian, political, and military objectives.
Source: AFP
