Thursday, October 31, 2013
United Nations leaders called on Wednesday for a surge in
African Union troop deployments in Somalia, warning that the AU's
military campaign against al-Shabaab has "ground to a halt."
In
a report to the Security Council, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
recommended an increase of 6235 uniformed support workers assigned to
the AU mission in Somalia (Amisom).
That would bring the total number of troops and Amisom administrative personnel to nearly 24,000.
Mr
Ban also asked UN member-states to act "urgently" to supply Amisom with
helicopters and other weapons presently unavailable to the Kenyan,
Ugandan, Burundian and Sierra Leonean troops that make up the current
force.
Reporting on his recent visit to Somalia, UN
Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson told the Security Council that
"after 18 months of successful operations that uprooted al-Shabaab from
major cities, the campaign by Amisom and Somali forces has, in recent
months, ground to a halt."
Amisom lacks the capacity to
expand areas of stability in Somalia, Mr Eliasson said he was told by
the force's commander. Amisom's hold on territory it now controls will
become "tenuous" if the status quo continues, the UN's second-highest
official added.
Citing the slaughter at the Westgate
Mall in Nairobi, Secretary-General Ban warned that "the lull in the
offensive has allowed al-Shabaab space to prepare more ambitious complex
attacks."
The UN leaders both noted that considerable
progress has been made in Somalia in the recent past. In remarks to
reporters following his briefing to the council, Mr Eliasson said that a
few years ago Somalia had been "the closest you could get to hell on
earth."
He added that it is "absolutely unacceptable"
for Amisom soldiers to sell weapons on the black market or to facilitate
exports of charcoal from Kismayo.
About 40 Ugandan
troops assigned to Amisom were charged earlier this week with having
stolen from the AU's stockpile of arms and petrol.
A UN
monitoring group reported earlier this year that Kenyan soldiers in
Kismayo flouted a UN ban on charcoal exports from Kismayo that
financially benefit al-Shabaab.
The Kenyan military rejected that accusation.