Foreign troops could jeopardise peace process, ICG warns

A decision by African regional organisations to send peacekeepers to Somalia risks destabilising fragile transitional institutions there, a Brussels-based think-tank has warned.

"Having Somalia’s neighbours lead and constitute such a force, [...] would be unnecessarily inflammatory and could jeopardise the entire peace process," Suliman Baldo, director of the Africa programme of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Wednesday in a press statement.

At an African Union (AU) summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in late January, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU pledged to deploy peace support missions to Somalia to facilitate the peaceful relocation of the government.

An emergency session of the AU peace and security council and IGAD, held in Addis Ababa last week, agreed to send 7,500 troops in response to a request from Somalia’s interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.

"By forcing this issue at this critical stage, IGAD’s members risk crossing the ‘Mogadishu line’ where peacekeepers become party to a conflict, as they did during the US-led intervention of the early 1990s," Matt Bryden, the director of ICG’s Horn of Africa project, said.

According to the ICG, the Somali transitional government was divided over the issue, and parliament had not yet approved any foreign military deployment. It noted that various Somali leaders and groups had threatened to oppose such an intervention by force.

"The AU and the Arab League should jointly take responsibility for mustering international support behind a broad-based peace support operation," Bryden said. "Donor governments should encourage such an initiative, and offer to cover the costs of an IGAD deployment."

He added that "no foreign troops should set foot in Somalia unless the transitional parliament first endorses the plan."

Since its appointment late last year, Somalia's transitional federal government, which includes several faction leaders, has remained in Nairobi, Kenya, citing insecurity in Somalia. However, it has come under increasing pressure from the Kenyan government and western diplomats to move to Mogadishu.

On Tuesday, interim Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi said the government planned to start relocating to Mogadishu on 21 February. He confirmed that Mogadishu would continue be the Somali capital and seat of government once the relocation was complete.

A team of parliamentarians is in Mogadishu to assess the situation.