Somalia - AMISOM under fire

"The African Union is not in Somalia to fight or to be drawn into any conflict we are not part of. We are there as an impartial and neutral peacekeeping force."

So said Nicholas Bwakira, the AU's special envoy to Somalia, in condemning recent attacks by insurgents on Ugandan soldiers deployed in Mogadishu as members of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

Unfortunately this is not true.

The decision to establish AMISOM was made by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union on 19 January 2007, three weeks after the Ethiopian Army had invaded Somalia and routed the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU) from Mogadishu.

Referring to the Ethiopian action, the communique of the council reiterates

its conviction that, following the recent developments that have enabled the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to take over Mogadishu and take control of the country, there exists today a unique and unprecedented opportunity to restore structures of governance in Somalia ...

and decides

to provide, as appropriate, protection to the Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) and their key infrastructure, to enable them to carry out their functions.

If AMISOM had been established and deployed in 2005 things might have been different, but by the beginning of 2007 the TFG had already lost most of the little credibility it ever had, and it was wishful thinking that the ICU would simply disappear. 

 AMISOM is now stuck with protecting what increasingly appears to be the losing side in a civil war. The sooner it can withdraw the better.