UN urged to send more soldiers to Somalia

United Nations troop contributors are being asked to consider sending thousands of soldiers to Somalia in spite of renewed warnings that peacekeeping operations worldwide are already overstretched.

As battles raged this week in Mogadishu, the Somali capital that 700,000 civilians fled in the last year, the UN’s envoy to the country echoed African demands for a greater commitment by the international community to stem the violence.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah told the Security Council on Thursday: “I am not asking outside countries to become active for moral or altruistic reasons. They have a clearly mandated responsibility to become involved in a country where there are widespread violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”

Although western states support a transitional government that has begun reaching out to Somali opposition groups, they are reluctant to become directly involved on the ground in spite of evidence that the conflict is a breeding ground for movements linked to al-Qaeda.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, has acknowledged a greater international deployment would have to be linked to greater stability in the east African state where the lawlessness is characterised by kidnappings, piracy and the widespread displacement of civilians.

In a report to the Security Council, however, he said troops contributors should be ready to send an 8,000-strong force if a broad-based political settlement were reached, rising to 27,000 if security were assured. At present the peacekeeping presence is limited to a 2,600 African Union force.

A bigger deployment would allow the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces that entered Somalia more than a year ago to support the transitional government in its war against Islamists.

Kofi Annan, Mr Ban’s predecessor, this week added his voice to those who say international peacekeepers are already overwhelmed by the extent of crises they are being asked to deal with, telling reporters in New York that the UN must “make it clear that there are clear limits to our capacities”.

He said once the number of peacekeepers in the field went above 100,000, the system became overstretched in the absence of adequate resources from member states. “I don’t think the UN will get the resources to go and play a major and active role in Somalia,” he said.

The UN and African Union have already fallen behind in deploying a 26,000 force in Darfur, partly for lack of crucial supplies, such as helicopters, from UN member states. In Somalia, meanwhile, the AU has asked for more than $800m to boost its own peacekeeping operations.

Somalia has been in almost constant turmoil since President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. US peacekeepers withdrew in 1993 after militias shot down two Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 US personnel.

The State Department this week placed the allegedly al-Qaeda linked military wing of Somalia’s Council of Islamic Courts on the US list of foreign terrorist organisations. A spokesman for the faction most closely associated with al-Qaeda told Associated Press the group welcomed the designation and accused the US of targeting it because it was “fighting against Ethiopia, a Christian nation that had invaded our country”.