Fighting for Peace in Somalia - A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007-2017

Fighting for Peace in Somalia provides the first comprehensive analysis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a peace operation deployed in 2007 to stabilize the country and defend its fledgling government from one of the world's deadliest militant organizations, Harakat al-Shabaab.

Fighting for Peace in Somalia provides the first comprehensive analysis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an operation deployed in 2007 to stabilize the country and defend its fledgling government from one of the world's deadliest militant organizations, Harakat al-Shabaab.

The book's two parts provide a history of the mission from its genesis in an earlier, failed regional initiative in 2005 up to mid-2017, as well as an analysis of the mission's six most important challenges, namely, logistics, security sector reform, civilian protection, strategic communications, stabilization, and developing a successful exit strategy. These issues are all central to the broader debates about how to design effective peace operations in Africa and beyond.

AMISOM was remarkable in several respects: it would become the African Union's (AU) largest peace operation by a considerable margin deploying over 22,000 soldiers; it became the longest running mission under AU c ommand and control, outlasting the nearest contender by over seven years; it also became the AU's most expensive operation, at its peak costing approximately US$1 billion per year; and, sadly, AMISOM became the AU's deadliest mission. Although often referred to as a peacekeeping operation, AMISOM's troops were given a range of daunting tasks that went well beyond the realm of peacekeeping, including VIP protection, war-fighting, counterinsurgency, stabilization, and state-building as well as supporting electoral processes and facilitating humanitarian assistance.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Introduction
Part 1: History
1: Genesis: October 2004 - March 2007
2: Entry: March 2007 - January 2009
3: Stalemate: January 2009 - August 2010
4: Offensive: September 2010 - October 2011
5: Expansion: October 2011 - September 2012
6: Consolidation: September 2012 - December 2013
7: Surge: January 2014 - May 2017
Part 2: Challenges
8: Logistics
9: Security Sector Reform
10: Civilian Protection
11: Strategic Communications
12: Stabilization
13: Exit
Conclusion
Appendix A: A note on major Somali non-state armed groups
Appendix B: AMISOM's senior leadership, March 2007-August 2017
Appendix C: A note on AMISOM fatality estimates

Rezension:

Paul Williams ... has given us a comprehensive, richly-documented, and reliably sober account of the first ten years of the African Union's mission to the troubled country of Somalia. Lee Cassanelli, Journal of African Military History