‘Somalia needs more peacekeepers’

The international community worries that Somalia, without functioning government since 1993, is turning into a hot bed for extremism. The al Shabaab, an alleged al Qaeda affiliate, reportedly recruits troops of Sheikh Sharif’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) trained by Uganda with European Union funding. Worse, TFG’s mandate lapses in just ten months. Sunday Monitor’s Tabu Butagira asked Somalia’s Information Minister, Mr Abdirahman Omar Osman, why the Horn of Africa nation is constantly blazing:-




I understand some of the European Union-sponsored Somali police and military officers trained in Uganda, upon return in Mogadishu, defect to Al Shabaab. How is this affecting the fight against the radicals?

Yes, we had very few of our soldiers defecting to join al-Shabaab in the past due to multiple factors. Such included lack of resources for the Somali government to maintain regular payments to its soldiers and al-Shabaab’s propaganda, in particular how they portray the image of Islam. Read More