Kenyan Troops in Somalia to Join United Nation Forces in Country

Bloomberg
Saturday, February 25, 2012

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Kenyan troops deployed in Somalia will join the United Nations backed African Union military force operating in the country, a spokesman for Kenya’s armed forces said.

“Kenya Defence Forces have formally received United Nations endorsement to join AMISON troops in Somalia,” Colonel Cyrus Oguna, an armed forces spokesman, told reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, today. AMISON is the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The Kenyan forces, which entered Somalia in mid-October, will join African Union troops from Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti. The foreign troops are deployed in Somalia alongside government soldiers and Ethiopian forces, which separately entered Somalia in December, in pursuit of the Islamist al- Shabaab militia that the U.S. says has links to al-Qaeda.

“The approval from the United Nations will enlarge the AMISON from the current 12,000 troops to 17,000 troops,” Antony Safari, an official at the Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters in Nairobi. “This effectively means Kenya will no longer bear the cost of keeping its troops in Somalia but will be supported by the United Nations kitty.”

Al-Shabaab has been battling Somalia’s western-backed government led by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed for five years and controls most of the southern and central regions. Somalia has had no effective central government since the downfall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre two decades ago.

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