The Somalia Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Essa Awad, repudiates rampant rumours purporting that Somalia, on the behest of its military and economy financiers – Turkey and Qatar – is sending troops to Libya to ‘return peace to the country’.
Mr Awad, in an interview with the BBC Somali Service, Wednesday, denied that neither Somali army officers presently being trained by Doha nor select units from the Somalia army in the country were to be sent over to Libya to support the Turkey/Qatar-backed Libyan government routed out form places such as Tirsit.
He said Somalia has been approached by neither Turkey nor Qatar nor both to send troops to Libya to support the beleaguered government there.
‘Somalia troops are not mercenaries the same as other rumoured troops in that country. We do not have mercenaries (to send over),” he said.
By uttering these words, Mr Awad, also, inadvertently revealed what he thought of paid troops sent to other countries including his to help return peace to that country: Mercenaries. Awad conveniently forgot that since Somalia troops could not keep peace in their own country or fight off Islamist militias on their own, the AU, Turkey, the US and Ethiopia are underwriting the expenses and weaponry of over 22 000 troops helping keep peace in present-day Somalia, services that include ensuring the safety of top leaders.
The AMISOM peacekeeping troops since their first tentative arrival in 2007 have lost a countless number of lives fighting Al Shabaab in Somalia (not to be confused with the Republic of Somaliland to the north). To date, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have a presence of military troops in Somalia maintaining constant engagement with the Islamist fighters while, on a parallel tangent, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia have, in addition, contributed policing contingents.
AMISOM was created by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council on 19th January 2007 and was later endorsed on different occasions by the United Nation’s Security Council in September 2006, February 2007 and October 2014.
Turkey, besides, maintains the largest military base in Africa in Mogadishu churning out batch after batch of trained military troops and officers on a regular basis.
A visit of the Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar to Qatar, and the reception Prince Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani in the capital, Doha, upon the Minister’s arrival on earlier during the week ‘raised several questions about the visit’s goals at a sensitive time passing through the Middle East’, according to the Middle East Monitor.
Both Turkey and Qatar have a vice grip on Somalia leadership as both bankroll more than a dozen programmes each in the country including training and intelligence.
Minister Awad’s retort comes at a time when the world is warning countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Qatar not to turn Libya to ‘new Somalia‘.
