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The Prospect of a UN Peace Support Mission in Somalia
Solomon A Dersso
Finally some good news about the conflict in Somalia. At a UN-brokered meeting held in Djibouti on 18August 2008, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and an opposition alliance called the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed a peace agreement, following negotiations that started in June of this year. This latest deal addresses different aspects of the peace process. Among others, it calls upon the United Nations (UN) ‘to authorize and deploy an international stabilization force from countries that are friends of Somalia, excluding neighboring countries.’
Although this deal is believed to carry some hope to bring peace to the troubled Horn of Africa country, the question on everyone’s mind is whether and how the deal would hold. There is also the related question of the prospect of the deployment of successful United Nations (UN) peace support mission as part of the deal. Like in other conflict situations, there is no easy and direct answer to these questions and more so in the case of Somalia. There are however factors that favour the implementation of this peace deal.
Unlike other previous deals, the Djibouti peace deal recognizes the role of all sectors of society. The African Union (AU), the UNand the European Union (EU) welcomed the deal and affirmed their commitment to support the efforts of the Somali parties to bring about lasting peace. Related to this is also the decision of the UN Security Council to renew the authorization of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for a further period of six months. In this resolution, the Security Council has authorized AMISOM ‘to take all the necessary measures as appropriate to provide security for key infrastructure and to contribute … to the creation of the necessary security conditions for the provision of humanitarian assistance.’ It also requested the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to work with the AU to strengthen UN logistical, political and technical support to help bring AMISOM up to UN standards. This gives an incentive to the Somali parties to implement the peace deal and possibly for those that failed to sign the deal to accept the deal or come to the negotiating table.
The factors that militate against the prospect for the success of the deal and for the deployment of an effective peace support mission seem however enormous. In the first place, like previous other deals not all parties to the current Somalia conflict signed the Djibouti peace deal. Hardliner oppositions and the Al-Shabab insurgent group have rejected the deal. Moreover, despite the peace deal, the fighting between the insurgents on the one hand and the TFG and the highly controversial Ethiopian forces on the other has continued unabated. Moreover, although the UN acknowledged the call for the deployment of peacekeeping operation in Somalia, it only managed to say that it will consider, at an appropriate time, a peacekeeping operation to take over from AMISOM but ‘subject to progress in the political process and improvement in the security situation on the ground.’
Clearly sufficient progress has to be made in terms of implementing the Djibouti peace deal before the UN deploys a peacekeeping force. For this to happen, numerous challenges should be overcome. The first of this is securing the support of opposition hardliners to the Djibouti peace deal. Related to this is the need on the part of the Somali parties to end their infighting and achieve cohesion. This also includes the formidable task of controlling or reducing the ongoing clashes and of galvanizing the support of other Somali actors. There is also the Ethiopian military presence, regarded by many as a serious stumbling block for the peace process. If the recent anouncement of Ethiopia’s premier Meles Zenawi is anything to go by, this may however end soon, although the impact of such withdrawal remains to be seen. AMISOM’s lack of sufficient troops, logistics and necessary resources places further limits on its ability to support the implementation of the peace deal and create the conditions for the deployment of UN forces. The resolutions of these issues depend on extraordinary concerted effort and constructive action from all the Somali parties, the UN, the AU and members of the international community in general. Without such efforts and actions to resolve these issues, the current peace process stands to face the unfortunate fate of other previous efforts. With the peace process failing to make progress, there is little prospect for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission unless it takes the form of a Chapter VII enforcement force, which apears to be the only legally necessary - if not politically attainable - way out.
Solomon A. Dersso is a Senior Researcher in the Training for Peace Programme at the Institute for Security Studies Pretoria Office