South Africa will launch a bid this month to head off “impending humanitarian catastrophe” in Somalia, where NGOs and aid agencies say one million people have been displaced, 20,000 new refugees are being created each month, and escalating Islamist, militia and clan fighting, attacks on aid workers, looting and drought have left two million people in need of basic humanitarian assistance.
Using its monthlong presidency of the UN Security Council, South Africa is planning a series of meetings on conflicts in Sudan, Chad and Congo, and more broadly on the role of regional organizations such as the African Union (AU) in peacekeeping and conflict resolution. President Thabo Mbeki will chair a special session on April 17 with Sudan’s leader, Omar Al-Bashir, and other heads of state.
But after NGOs briefed council members on Monday, expectations are growing of a big push on Somalia, including a new resolution to staunch the bleeding. The Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Somalia in 1992 following the fall of Siad Barre’s regime and the country’s descent into lawlessness and warlordism. But little else was done in the years that followed to nurture political and economic rehabilitation and conditions steadily deteriorated, aggravated by climatic change.
A Washington-based agency, Refugees International, warned this week that intermittent, often inaccurate US “war on terror” air strikes, launched offshore at supposed Al-Qaeda targets inside Somalia, were radicalizing local opinion and undermining humanitarian work.
Similar criticisms, vehemently denied, about disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in civilian areas have been leveled at the Ethiopian Army, which toppled an Islamist regime in Mogadishu in late 2006 with post-facto US support. Ethiopia has since reduced its troop presence and is battling to hold the line. The AU’s supposedly multinational Amisom mission is not much help: So far it only has troops from Uganda and Burundi.
More effective international intervention would enable Ethiopia to disengage. “In the next six months we want the Amisom force to become a UN one. But one way or another, the issue has to be addressed. Either provide resources for the AU to do the job properly or have the UN take it over.”
Therein lies the rub. The UN secretary-general’s latest report on Somalia, published this month, speaks of a “window of opportunity” to end the conflict. But Ban Ki-moon was extremely cautious on the question of deploying a UN force that officials say would need to be 27,000-strong — similar in size to the still severely under-strength UN force in Darfur.
Ban’s prior conditions for any deployment included improved security and a more credible political dialogue — a catch-22 scenario if ever there was one, given the anarchy that is present-day Somalia. UN-led efforts to broker negotiations between the TFG and the moderate Islamist opposition alliance took tentative steps forward in Nairobi this week. But there is no timetable or venue and a viable peace process is so far wholly lacking.
This is the mountainous task South Africa’s diplomats have set themselves. Somalia, meanwhile, continues to set new lows for misery. One example: Approximately one in seven children under five are acutely malnourished. According to UNICEF, that makes Somalia the worst place in the world for kids.
