SOMALIA: Amisom Vs Peace Mentality
Troves of wisdom obtained from famous international wars show that winning a major war is always easy, especially if you are a superpower country like the US or the former Soviet Union. But what history shows clearly is that although winning a major war could be easy, keeping the peace or winning the peace is not always that easy but it entails a lot of hard work and it usually produces unexpected challenges and hardships.
In this context, winning the war in Somalia against insurgent groups, whether they are religious radicals or clan fanatics, by the Somali National Army (SNA) and the African Peacekeeping Force known as AMISOM, could be easy in the short term, but in the long term, challenges and shortcomings could be lying down the road, if SNA and AMISOM forces don’t win the heart and minds of the Somali people with excellent, measurable, working strategies.
In fact, the recent military success against Al Shabab is laudable but if things, both predictable or unpredictable, are not taken into consideration, then that means a lack of vision and prudence towards the future of Somalia.And if that happens, the whole mission against terror and clan cancer entities in Somalia could fall into jeopardy.
What might carry some degree of truth is the recent utterances by AMISOM soldier who, when interviewed by the media, made it clear that AMISOM is not honesty about completely destroying the Somali terror group of Al Shabab. If the AMISOM soldier of the Burundian nationality is telling the truth, then the future peace and stability of Somalia is in the dark and it will be hard to pinpoint how the situation of Somalia will crop up in foreseeable dimensions.
After the intervention in Somalia in 1990s, spearheaded by the US, the world grew weary of Somalia’s constant war and chaos. However, in recent years, after the establishment of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) , the world reversed its attitude towards Somalia. Now, the world seems to be directing its attention towards Somalia. And the world pays most of the bill of SNA, FGS and AMISOM. They should do the job properly, otherwise they will blow it!
Ahmed Said, (Abwaan-kuluc) is a Somali American blogger based in Minnesota, USA. He can be reached at abdinassirsomalia@gmail.com