Ugandan soldiers serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia have not been paid for months. Some have even gone for years without pay.

The African Union Mission in Somalia, often abbreviated as Amisom, is Africa’s continental politico-military intervention to ensure durable peace and security in the four-clan Horn of Africa country. The multinational peacekeeping force is underwritten by the European Union with the backing of the United Nations Security Council.

Amisom – renamed the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (Atmis) as troop contributing countries prepare to end their tour of duty – was the successor to US efforts at pacifying Somalia after the fall of General Maximed Siad Barre from power in 1991.

Maximed Siad Barre came to power in October of 1969 through a coup d’état against the elected government of President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke who was assassinated in the process. Barre ruled over Somalia with an iron-fist when he was overthrown by militias, leading the country into a bloody civil war, to which the US responded with heavy military hardware.

The primary US objective in Somalia was to minimise the ability of al-Shabab and other violent groups to destabilise Somalia or its neighbours and harm the United States or its allies. The US also ostensibly wanted to prevent the use of Somalia as a refugee for international terrorists.

However, we should also remember that Somalia is rich in natural resources that a superpower, which the US is, would be happy to access, even in situations of chaos, which are often exploited by capitalism. Somalia produces small quantities of gemstones and salt. The country also has deposits of feldspar, gypsum, iron ore, copper, gold, kaolin limestone, natural gas quartz silica, sand tantalum, tin and uranium. These are natural resources any industrial country would be interested in.

The superpower lost 18 men in the aftermath chaos in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, that immediately followed the overthrow of Siad Barre. It was the most significant loss of US troops since the Vietnam War in 1975. Seventy-three US soldiers were wounded. At the same time, Malaysian forces suffered one death and nine wounded, and Pakistani forces three injuries. From then on, the US preferred to involve itself in the military hotspots in Africa by proxy.

It worked through the AU and UN to set up Amisom. The contributions of soldiers were called contingents and they included Ugandan, Burundi, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Djibouti and Sierra Leone contingents.

The Ugandan contingent remains the largest contingent in Amisom with well over 6,000 troops based in Sector 1 that comprises of Banadir (Mogadishu), Middle and Lower Shabelle regions. The contingent is drawn from the 46,000 strong Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) army.

In December 2021 Brigadier General Keith Katungi formally took up the new contingent commander of Ugandan troops serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom).

According to Wikipedia, Amisom replaced and subsumed the Igad Peace Support Mission in Somalia (IGASOM), which was a proposed Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), Protection and Training Mission approved by the African Union on September 14, 2006. IGASOM was also approved by the United Nations Security Council on December 6, 2006.

IGASOM was originally proposed for immediate implementation in March 2005 to provide peacekeeping forces for the latest phase of the Somali Civil War. On February 21, 2007, the United Nations Security Council authorised the African Union to deploy a peacekeeping mission with a mandate of six months.

In March 2007, Ugandan military officials were the first to arrive on the ground in Somalia. It should be remembered that President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni dispatched the soldiers without formal approval by the Parliament of Uganda, perhaps using the power and authority given to him by the Constitution of Uganda, which states that the president is above the law.

On August 20, 2007, the United Nations Security Council extended the African Union’s authorisation to continue deploying Amisom for a further six months and requested the Secretary-General to explore the option of replacing Amisom with a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation to Somalia.

However, the African Union, United Nations and Somali government decided that on April 1, 2022, Amisom would be replaced by the AU Transition Mission in Somalia (Atmis) to operate until the end of 2024, after which all responsibilities would be handed to the Somali Security Forces.

Indeed, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2628 authorized the African Union Peace and Security Council to reconfigure Amisom and replace it with the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (Atmis), with effect from April 1, 2022.

Initially, Somalia rejected reconfigured hybrid Amisom mandate change proposal. It said it had proposed and agreed with the joint technical team for a Concept of Operations (Conops) that would gradually place primary responsibility of the country’s security in the hands of local security agencies.

It argued the arrangement was to be in place from January 2022 until after 2023 when Mogadishu hoped its local forces would be strong enough to take over the country’s entire security. The arrangement was to be in place from January next year until after 2023 when Mogadishu hoped its local forces would be strong enough to take over the country’s entire security.

Mogadishu said the move did not meet the country’s strategic vision. A statement issued by Somalia’s Federal Ministry of Defence accused the AU organ of disregarding the country’s views, including a joint technical team created to assess the best option for the country.

The federal government expressed grave concern at the AUPSC continued disregard of Somalia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence by repeatedly pursuing an agenda that undermines the agenda of the AUPSC and violates the basic rights of a member state, Somalia.

It added, “The federal government of Somalia regrets that the developed joint draft Conops was neither acknowledged nor endorsed by the AUPS…the AUPSC must recognise that any future AU transitional mission will be dependent on the consent of the country. Mogadishu argues it doesn’t need a vacuum but wants an arrangement that supports its local security agencies to take over responsibilities.

According to BRILL of October 25, 2022, figures demonstrate that Somalia has received over $1 billion in international financial assistance and military training since 2012. Nonetheless, the federal government of Somalia and in some cases, the fms depend on Amisom to maintain some level of territorial control.

Somali’s institutional security structures are besieged by interagency rivalries, disorganisation, under-resourced capacity, where the institutions function as commodities and an extension of people’s interests underpinned by the threat of violence with shifting social and political processes.

In its article of February 6, 2023 headlined, “Who is hoarding for Somalia peacekeepers?”, the Daily Monitor reported the soldiers who returned from Somalia on December 31, 2022, did not receive any payment for all the 12 months they spent in the Horn of Africa country, while the one it replaced in November 2021 was also not paid for nine months.

The independent newspaper reported that Uganda’s military deployed for peacekeeping operations in Somalia have gone for 27 months, spread across five years, without pay, despite the European Union – the mission’s biggest funder – regularly disbursing funds to cover allowances for at least 5,000 peacekeepers serving in war-scarred Somalia.

According to the Daily Monitor report cited above, the EU confirmed that the first payment of support to the military component of Atmis in 2022 has been made to the African Union Commission, in line with the February 17, 2022 EU-AU Summit Declaration, which makes continued support to African-led Peace Support Operations (PSO) a priority.

This is evidenced by the adoption of two assistance measures totalling €730 million ($792.2 million) for African-led PSOs through the AU under the European Peace Facility (EPF) for the period 2021-2024. As a result, the EU Council on July 6, 2022, approved an additional €120 million ($130 million) to the resources previously mobilised for Amisom/Atmis in 2021.

The EU explains that Atmis funds flow from the European Commission to the AU Commission, which is responsible for channelling them to the troop-contributing countries. This means that the payment of the allowances to the soldiers is not responsibility of the EU, but of the EU’s African partners involved in Somalia, namely: Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Burundi.

At least in Uganda, the issue of vanishing funds for soldiers reached parliament.

Legislator Ronald Balimwezo raised the issue of vanishing allowances for Atmis soldiers, citing a contingent dubbed the Uganda Battle Group (Ugabag) 34 deployed in November 2021. They had not been paid for the 12 months they served yet they returned on December 31, 2022.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former lecturer of political science, Makerere University, Uganda
•