UN: The UN Security Council on Friday gave the green light to a new African Union force in Somalia that is meant to take on the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab, with the soldiers due to deploy in January.
The resolution was adopted by 14 of the Council’s 15 member states, while the United States abstained due to reservations about funding.
It provides for the replacement of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), whose mandate ends on December 31, by the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM).
Somalia is one of the world’s poorest countries, enduring decades of civil war, a bloody insurgency by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, and frequent climate disasters.
Representatives from Somalia and its western neighbor Ethiopia were invited to participate in the council’s meeting, although they were not allowed to vote.
“We emphasize that the current AUSSOM troops allocations are completed through bilateral agreements,” said the Somali representative, adding 11,000 troops were currently pledged.
On Monday, Egypt’s foreign minister announced his country would take part in the new force.
Tensions flared in the Horn of Africa after Ethiopia signed a maritime deal in January with the breakaway region of Somaliland, pushing Mogadishu closer to Addis Ababa’s regional rival Cairo.
This month, Turkiye brokered a deal to end the nearly year-long bitter dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia, although Ethiopian troops would not be involved in the new AU force.
Burundi will not be taking part in the new force either, a Burundian military source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The text adopted by the UN Security Council provides for the possibility of using a mechanism that it created last year, under which an African force deployed with the green light of the UN can be up to 75 percent financed by the UN.
“In our view, the conditions have not been met for immediate transition to application of” that measure, US representative Dorothy Shea said, justifying her country’s abstention.
UN approves new African Union force to take on Al-Shabab in Somalia
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UN approves new African Union force to take on Al-Shabab in Somalia
Unprecedented gagging order over Afghan data breach should have been avoided, former secretary says
- Ben Wallace tells MPs that he had ordered time-limited injunction to protect lives of Afghan veterans
- Sensitive details of thousands was leaked via email mistake because ‘someone didn’t do their job’
LONDON: The former UK defense secretary has said he would not have proposed a secret gagging order to conceal the catastrophic data breach that threatened the lives of thousands of Afghans.
Ben Wallace told MPs on Tuesday that he had ordered a time-limited injunction to protect the news of the data leak, The Independent reported.
At the time, in mid-2023, the Ministry of Defence had scrambled the learn the source of the leak, which took place when an official accidentally emailed a sensitive spreadsheet containing Afghans’ contact details outside of the ministry.
It led to the publication of the identities of thousands of Afghans who had served alongside British forces during the war against the Taliban, placing them at risk of reprisal.
They were secretly relocated to the UK, and the leak was only revealed to the British public when a High Court judge lifted a superinjunction last year.
It followed a longtime lobbying effort by The Independent and other news organizations to have the details of the leak released.
Wallace told MPs: “We are not covering up our mistakes. The priority is to protect the people in Afghanistan and then open it up to the public. We need to say a certain amount are out of danger.”
On the indefinite injunction, he added: “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do; I didn’t think it was necessary.
“I said, ‘we’re not doing that.’ The only thing we’re going to do, is we need to basically hold off in public until we get to the bottom of the threat these people are under. I said we won’t cover up our mistakes; we’ll talk about them.”
The rules surrounding a superinjunction forbid even mentioning its existence.
Wallace said: “You can have an injunction, I think, without reporting the contents … a superinjunction; my understanding is you can’t even say there’s an injunction. I think I would never have been in that space. Public bodies are accountable. If necessary you could even ring up the journalist and say ‘please hold off, people are at risk.’ Most journalists don’t want to put people at risk.”
The superinjunction was applied by a judge shortly after Wallace had left government.
It came after the MoD applied to the High Court for a regular injunction.
Grant Shapps, the subsequent defense secretary, then maintained the gagging order until the 2024 general election, when the Labour opposition took government.
Wallace blamed the 2022 breach on negligence, adding: “Someone didn’t do their job.”
The former defense secretary had implemented new checking procedures in the ministry after another Afghan data breach, but that “that clearly didn’t happen on this occasion; someone clearly didn’t do their job,” he told MPs.
Wallace said that military and defense spending is not a priority for voters, “partly because they don’t know” the true nature of the threat facing Britain.
