By Bruh Yihunbelay

Kampala, Uganda

African countries have failed to support Uganda and Burundi forces in the peacekeeping mission in Somalia due to inadequate resources. At a press conference held last Tuesday at the 15th AU summit at Munyonyo (Speke Resort), the venue of the conference in Kampala, Uganda, the African Union (AU) Commission deputy chairperson, Erastus Mwencha, said that accusations of lack of commitment and indecision on sending a full-strength peacekeeping force to Somalia were groundless.

Many countries, he explained, could have sent soldiers to volatile Somalia but the international community had been too slow in appropriating resources. He added that national dynamics could delay such a decision.

“Sending our people in harm’s way is not a decision that our heads of state and government can easily make. It takes courage, commitment and resources. There is commitment, the problem is capacity,” Mwencha said.

“If someone was to provide us with resources today, we would send up to 20,000 troops to Somalia immediately,” Mwencha stated saying that the reason for the negligence of the international community may be related to the fact that the international community had not felt the scanty amount yet.

“It’s after piracy that they got interested,” he said.

He said the United Nations, which should also have sent troops to Somalia, according to Mwencha, replied, “What peace is there to keep?”
“Peace in Somalia will not only benefit Africa but also the whole world by stopping terrorism. We are not doing ourselves a favour. It is an obligation,” Mwencha said.



He said the AU’s mission was to promote a peaceful, prosperous and integrated continent and, as such, had a dyed-in-the-wool 2010 as a year of peace.
“We hope to see guns falling silent and allowing peace to be the order of the day,” he added.

The AU official explained that gathering troops for the peacekeeping mission was not a matter of walking to different countries and making a soldier board a chopper. He said it involved pre-deployment training, imparting doctrine, lessons on securing civilians and identifying the enemy.

Such a scenario necessitated a standby force for Africa. He said that the commanders of the East Africa Standby Force were meeting in Addis Ababa in the wake of the July 11 bombings in Kampala to discuss the mandate of the forces in Somalia. They will present their resolutions to heads of state for debate during the AU summit later in the week.

Mwencha cautioned that the African Union would not allow members to use nuclear energy for reasons other than peaceful means. “We want Africa to be a nuclear-free zone,” he said.

During the summit, also on the menu is establishing institutions in the continent and focusing on capacity building. Another area of focus of the commission is the establishment of the Program of Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) which is also part of the summit. Having the architecture in regional communities and development partners hold the key to infrastructure in which transport and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are included.