The Somali government’s military forces are ineffective and corrupt despite international assistance and it remains dependent on foreign troops for survival, UN experts concluded in a report.
The Monitoring Group on Somalia also said in its report to be presented to the UN Security Council this week that Eritrea continued to support armed Islamist groups fighting the Somali government in violation of an arms embargo.
“Despite infusions of foreign training and assistance, government security forces remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt,” the report said.
Somalia’s internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government has been boxed into a tiny perimeter in the capital Mogadishu by an insurgency launched last May by the al Qaeda-inspired Shebab group and its more political Hezb al-Islam ally.
The Shebab now control most of the center and south of the Horn of Africa country, which has been embroiled in a virtually non-stop civil war since 1991.
The UN group said “the military stalemate is less a reflection of opposition strength than of the weakness of the Transitional Federal Government.”
The report also concluded that last year “the government of Eritrea has continued to provide political, diplomatic, financial and — allegedly — military assistance to armed opposition groups in Somalia.”
The support violated a 2008 UN Security Council resolution that tightened an arms embargo and other bans on armed groups in Somalia.
“By late last year, possibly in response to international pressure, the scale and nature of Eritrean support had either diminished or become less visible, but had not altogether ceased,” it said.
In related news, private security guards aboard a Spanish tuna fishing vessel repelled an attack from pirates in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, the boat’s captain said.
Captain Santi Gamboa described on Spanish national radio how the crew of the boat, the Txori Argi, had seen several skiffs heading toward them from a mother ship.
“We fired several warning shots and they turned around,” he said.
The boat had four private security guards onboard, he said.
“We are fine,” he said of the crew of 30.
The incident was off the coast of the Seychelles, part of an area of the Indian Ocean that has seen dozens of attacks on passing ships.
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