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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Somalia and its backers sign security pact to beef up army

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LONDON: Somalia’s government and its foreign backers on Thursday signed a security pact which they presented as a road map towards building a functional national army capable of taking on the fight against Al Shabaab militants.


The Al Qaeda-linked militant group has lost much of the territory it once controlled in Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, but its deadly attacks remain one of the main obstacles to stability in the chaotic Horn of Africa country.


A London conference on Somalia also heard that the United Nations was increasing its appeal for the country by $900 million to a total of $1.5 billion to allow aid agencies to cope with a severe drought that is causing a humanitarian crisis.


UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the extra funding was needed because more than 6 million Somalis — about half the country’s population — were in need of assistance.


He said 275,000 malnourished children were at risk of starvation.


The conference tackled a wide range of issues, from Somalia’s requests for debt relief to calls for easier access to the international banking system, but British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the security pact was the main achievement.


The pact, a 17-page document released at the end of the conference follows a detailed agreement reached in April between Somalia’s fledgling federal government and its member states on how to unify their disparate forces into a national army and police force. “What the international community want to do now is to back that security architecture, and the stronger and more robust it is... then the more the international community will be able to come in with support,” Johnson told reporters.


As things stand, an African Union force made up of soldiers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti is doing most of the fighting against Al Shabaab insurgents, but it wants to start withdrawing from Somalia in 2018.


The AU force has clawed back control of most of Somalia’s main towns and cities since the militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2007, but it is over-stretched and funding is a constant challenge.


Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who took office in February after a complex electoral process, called for a lifting of the arms embargo on Somalia to give his armed forces an advantage over Al Shabaab fighters.


“Al Shabaab has AK-47s and the Somali national forces has the same equipment, the same weapons, and that’s why this war has been lingering for 10 years. — Reuters


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