“Some forces are being paid today and then it will take them four or five months to get another salary,” he said. “You cannot expect those forces to be loyal and defend the country when they’re not getting … what they’re entitled to.”
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But the insurgents aren’t the only ones who have changed their tactics. The peacekeepers now have 70 bases dotted throughout the city, and are expanding at a rapid rate, pulling troops from positions they consider more secure to move closer to insurgent positions.
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International donors are trying to find a way of paying soldiers directly to stop commanders from stealing their wages.
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“I have talked to them and asked them to come back,” Ondoga said. “They have their own problems … when the commander is injured, they will leave.”
Some of the problems were political as well, he said. The commander in chief of the army has recently been replaced, and the president and prime minister are publicly feuding. The prime minister faces a vote of no confidence on Saturday. Somali armed forces are basically militias loyal to a single individual; if his political fortunes take a downturn, they will often simply go home.
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This is one of those deals where you read the articles and the situation on the ground, and it just screams some very obvious solutions. For one, if international donors do not want Somali soldiers to leave the post as soldiers, then make sure they get paid their salaries. If leaders are stealing from the troops, then sidestep the leaders and pay them with mobile cash. Try it, because it just might work.
If these soldiers depend upon the international donors directly, then they won’t have to depend upon the power and influence of their specific warlord/politician. They could actually keep fighting, and not worry about their next pay check. It would also force leaders to find new ways of winning over the attention of their troops, other than holding their pay checks over their heads.
The other one that makes sense is to protect these key leaders. Actually assign PSD teams to protect these folks, if in fact they are so important to the Somali soldiers. If they are hard to kill, then maybe this might provide a little more stability to the whole thing. Those leaders might be able to focus more on managing a country, and less on protecting themselves.
Finally, it looks to me like the AU is in a prime position to follow in the same footsteps as the Marines and Army in Iraq back before the surge. All they need is some guidance and possibly a little technological and strategic help. A leadership team from AFRICOM or a PMC could do such a thing. Because these bases could easily be called COPS, and these AU forces should be mimicking the same COIN strategies:
The standing operating procedure (SOP) for the unit typically focused on: (1) Planning and establishing the COP; (2) Ensuring route security so each outpost could be kept resupplied; (3) Clearing operations after the COP had been stood up to clear IEDs and find weapons caches; and (4) Census patrols to follow after the clearing operations to consolidate the position and gradually work its way into the human terrain of the area – the real target of MacFarland’s campaign.
I won’t even attempt to discuss the AU’s dire need of manpower, and given the rush job that they are doing right now, it sounds like they are in a dire need of strategy. Yet again, there are plenty of PMC’s who could stand up a security force to support this operation, or the US military or one of it’s partners could send some professional forces. If this is truly important to the west, and we do not want islamic extremists to win in Somalia, then the time is now to do something about it. Or we could watch as the AU struggles with what little resources it has against a ruthless enemy? –Matt
PM: Somalia to open 2nd front against insurgents
AU peacekeepers expand bases in Somali capital
Somalia: Suicide Bomber Attacks at Presidential Gates
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PM: Somalia to open 2nd front against insurgents
KATHARINE HOURELD
Sep 17, 2010
Several thousand Somali forces trained in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya will open a second front against Islamist insurgents by year-end in Somalia’s south and central regions, the prime minister said Sunday.
The forces will try to capture key towns including the port of Kismayo, which is believed to generate a substantial amount of revenue for the insurgency, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told reporters in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
Kenya has a force of 2,000 Somali refugees stationed in northern Kenya, and Ethiopia trained a force of 1,000 fighters under a German-funded program.
“Those forces have now completed their training and we are expecting them to come back and really now open a different front,” Sharmarke said. “Unless you open different fronts you’re not going to end this war.”
The prime minister’s comments follow a month of intense fighting between Somali government forces and the insurgents, some of whom have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida.
Government soldiers who had gone for months without pay abandoned key positions in Mogadishu, many of which African Union peacekeepers had to fight to regain. The prime minister was unable to say whether the new forces would be consistently paid.
“Some forces are being paid today and then it will take them four or five months to get another salary,” he said. “You cannot expect those forces to be loyal and defend the country when they’re not getting … what they’re entitled to.”
An allied militia in the central region also was expected to help with the new front, he said, although representatives of the militia alliance earlier told The Associated Press that relations between them and the government were strained.
Sharmarke said that the government would “definitely” deploy the foreign-trained troops by the end of the year because they wanted to strike while the Islamist insurgents were weakened.
A nurse at Deynile hospital, located in an insurgent-held neighborhood, said that around 20 fighters had come seeking treatment a day over the past few weeks instead of the usual two or three. The Associated Press withheld her name to protect her from possible reprisals.
Somalia has not had a functioning government for nearly 20 years. The current administration is protected by 7,100 African Union peacekeepers, who are gradually expanding their bases throughout the capital in an effort to recapture territory from Islamist insurgents.
Story here.
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AU peacekeepers expand bases in Somali capital
KATHARINE HOURELD
Sep 17, 2010
African Union peacekeepers said they have worked frantically to establish new bases across Somalia’s chaotic capital, in what officials said is a new strategic turn after Somali soldiers ditched more than a dozen key positions during a month of bloody clashes.
The force of some 7,100 Ugandans and Burundians has dashed across the seaside capital, setting up seven bases in the last month in the wake of bloodshed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
During that time, officers said, peacekeepers have scrambled to fill the gaps left by deserting Somali soldiers. In one recently won position, snipers knelt on floors still smeared with blood from a confrontation a week earlier.
“Capture, consolidate, advance,” said Maj. Barigye Bahoku, the force’s spokesman, as he described their new tactics on Friday. But he said the pace of expansion has been threatened by a lack of badly needed troops and funding delays from donor countries.
“We need the troops yesterday, not tomorrow,” he told journalists in Mogadishu as he crouched behind a bank of sandbags to avoid sniper fire. The AU is waiting for donor countries to volunteer money for transporting and equipping more fighters, he said.
The peacekeepers are fighting a bloody battle against an alliance of Islamist insurgents, some of whom have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida.
Among their ranks are estimated to be hundreds of foreign fighters. They are mostly African or returned Somalis but some come from further afield, raising fears the failed state could be used as a training ground for terrorists to launch attacks on the West.
“If we kill the foreigners and they can’t retrieve the bodies, they will destroy their faces with a rock,” said Lt. Col. Francis Chemo, the Ugandan commander at Uhruba Hotel. The beautiful arched windows of the tall building overlook Mogadishu’s sun-drenched harbor; the inside has been smashed to rubble by constant pounding from mortars and bullets.
The hotel used to be a Somali police post, but they abandoned it three weeks ago and insurgents moved in. The peacekeepers recaptured it last week. There’s graffiti scrawled all over the pockmarked walls and blackened blood stains that paint a trail of a body dragged down a hallway. The insurgents left behind two dead with mangled faces, said Chemo; he thinks they must have been foreign.
Three peacekeepers were also wounded in the two-hour battle, which began when the AU used an armored bulldozer to fill in tank traps – 21 foot (7 meter) deep tunnels dug under the surface of the road and designed to collapse under the weight of an AU armored vehicle.
But the insurgents aren’t the only ones who have changed their tactics. The peacekeepers now have 70 bases dotted throughout the city, and are expanding at a rapid rate, pulling troops from positions they consider more secure to move closer to insurgent positions.
At an area named after a defunct Coca-Cola factory, a Ugandan soldier led an Associated Press reporter through a network of holes punched into compound walls, connecting neighboring houses to each other. The so-called “mouseholes,” first used three weeks ago, let troops occupy entire blocks without exposing themselves to enemy fire. In alleys behind the houses, sweating soldiers shoveled sand into black plastic sacks in preparation for another advance.
Many of the new bases were only established to plug holes left when the Somali government and their allies deserted them, said Col. Michael Ondoga. From a new base in the old Parliament building, he pointed to several such positions. Sometimes the peacekeepers only found out the soldiers had left their positions when they saw them abandoned in the morning.
“I have talked to them and asked them to come back,” Ondoga said. “They have their own problems … when the commander is injured, they will leave.”
Some of the problems were political as well, he said. The commander in chief of the army has recently been replaced, and the president and prime minister are publicly feuding. The prime minister faces a vote of no confidence on Saturday. Somali armed forces are basically militias loyal to a single individual; if his political fortunes take a downturn, they will often simply go home.
Ondoga said some government forces had come back, and he was negotiating with more commanders for their return. The AU offers government troops medical support, ammunition, food, mentoring and supporting firepower, he said. As he spoke, the constant crack of rifles was occasionally interrupted by the whoosh of a rocket propelled grenade.
Ondoga could not say how long it would take before the Somali army was ready to stand by itself. International donors are trying to find a way of paying soldiers directly to stop commanders from stealing their wages.
But reforming the army is only the first step in rebuilding Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for 20 years. The A.U.’s official mission is to support the Somali government and help it rebuild. But no one is willing to guess how long it will take.
Story here.
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Somalia: Suicide Bomber Attacks at Presidential Gates
September 20, 2010
A suicide bomber linked to Al Qaeda blew himself up and wounded two soldiers at the gates of the presidential palace in Mogadishu on Monday, the police said. The bomber, armed with an automatic rifle, tried to jump onto an armored vehicle in a convoy of African Union peacekeepers driving onto the palace grounds, a police spokesman said. When the African Union troops fired at the bomber, he threw a grenade at them and detonated his explosive device. The attacker was later identified as a former Interior Ministry security guard who had defected to the Shabab, an Islamist rebel group linked to Al Qaeda.
Story here.