Despite continued violence, the EU’s investment in Somalia’s stability is slowly paying off.
Somalia remains a priority for the EU in Africa. The EU anti-piracy mission off the country’s cost – part of a wider array of naval forces protecting shipping – had a successful year. Only two pirate attacks had been reported by the start of December, down from almost 200 three years ago. The EU has decided to extend the mission for another two years. As of late December, the flotilla consisted of three vessels from Germany, Italy, and Spain.
On land, African Union peacekeepers and the Somali army undertook a series of offensives against the al-Shabaab Islamist group through the course of the year, capturing a series of towns and cities. EU military trainers, who had previously been working with Somali troops in Uganda, were deployed to Mogadishu to run in-country training for the first time in February. The security situation in the capital remains volatile, however, with continuing attacks on international targets throughout the year. While weakened, al-Shabaab was still able to conduct a massacre in eastern Kenya in December. The AU force’s reputation was also harmed by a report in late 2014 itemising numerous cases of sexual abuse by its troops against Somali women.
In the last quarter of the year, the UN highlighted mounting food and water shortages. Efforts led by the UN to establish a stable political system in Mogadishu have inevitably been rocky. Nonetheless, Somalia’s overall progress is still a success both for the European governments, notably the UK, that have championed the country and for the EU institutions that have invested heavily in it in recent years. It remains to be seen whether the threat from al-Shabaab can be contained or extinguished effectively enough for the EU and its allies to shift their focus from stabilising Somalia to long-term state-building and development work.
