Page 74 - Vol 32 Issue 33 2121

oil politics

Is the scent of oil a solution for

Somalia?

By Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant

home from what must be the deadliest thousand unhappy and restless soldiers
peacekeeping mission on the planet. But no longer earning US dollars may get
no, he called for a special summit of the funny ideas.
five AMISOM troop-contributing countries Stephanie Wolters, senior research fellow
to review the decision and threatened to at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS)
withdraw all 5 432 of his troops if he was in Pretoria, says the same problem came
forced to withdraw 1 000. to a head a few years ago when the
European Union wanted to circumvent
the Burundian government and pay its
The peculiarly Nkurunzizian AMISOM soldiers directly. ‘That did not
go down well with Nkurunziza, the AU
logic of this is that cash- or other countries contributing troops to
strapped Burundi earns $18 AMISOM,’ she says.
million from the AU every Somalia, meanwhile, stands on the
quarter as payment for possible threshold of a major offshore
its troops. To Nkurunziza, oil and gas find which could eventually
Somalia therefore, they are forex solve its financial and other problems.
President Mohamed fodder, not people. Seismic probes have indicated not only
Abdullahi Mohamed rich reserves of gas, but also of oil below
the seabed in Somalia’s waters.
omalia has enough problems as it Also the return of those soldiers from As the Norwegian seismic company
is. Now the resource curse, so fatal Somalia represents a considerable Spectrum Geo has reported, the East
Sto many other African countries, threat to Nkurunziza’s own security. One
appears to be raising its ugly head. On the
military front, Mogadishu isn’t winning
the war against al-Shabaab. And now the
African Union (AU) has reluctantly decided
to downsize the AU Mission in Somalia, its
force that has prevented al-Shabaab from
overrunning the country.
Last year the AU ordered 1 000 of
Burundi’s AMISOM contingent of 5 432
troops out of the country by the end of
February 2019. This is part of an overall
reduction in AMISOM, to be completely
withdrawn by 2020.
One might have thought that was bad
news only for Somalia, and indeed
President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed
(Farmajo) decried the Burundi withdrawal
after meeting Burundian President Pierre
Nkurunziza on 19 February. Farmajo said
Somalia still needed all the help it could
get to fight al-Shabaab.
Nkurunziza surely should have been
delighted to bring young Burundians

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