East African Nations Want 2,000 More Peacekeepers in Somalia

July 6 (CakaaraNews) -- A group of East African countries called for the African Union Mission in Somalia to deploy an additional 2,000 troops to help the transitional government battle “extremist and terrorist groups.”

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, at a meeting yesterday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, ordered the chiefs of defense of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Djibouti to submit a deployment plan to Amisom, according to a statement posted on its website.

It didn’t say which countries would send peacekeepers. Uganda and Burundi currently have 6,100 troops in Somalia. The five nations in IGAD, which border Somalia, aren’t allowed to send forces to Somalia, according to a resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council in 2006.

Insurgents of the two main Islamic groups, al-Shabaab and Hisbul Islam, control most of southern and central parts of Somalia following a three-year battle to overthrow the government of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Somalia is in its 19th year of civil war and hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the ouster of Mohamed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1991. The conflict has sent thousands of refugees across the border into Kenya and Ethiopia.

IGAD said it wanted Amisom and the UN Security Council to raise 20,000 peacekeepers for the Horn of African nation, which it said is suffering a “deteriorating situation.”

“The conflict is not a conflict among Somalis but between the people of Somalia and international terrorist groups,” IGAD said.

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