Fragmented Peacekeeping: The African Union in Somalia

From uncertain beginnings, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has grown, over almost ten years, into the African Union ’s largest and most complex peace-support operation. Supported by a multilayered mission architecture through which the UN and bilateral donors provide logistical and technical assistance, as well as financial and in-kind support, it has achieved successive gains in direct war-fighting against the jihadi Islamist organisation Al-Shabaab. The apparent viability of these partnerships has been one of the main takeaways from the mission, supporting views of AMISOM as a successful model of collaboration between regional and international structures. Peter Albrecht and Cathy Haenlein problematise these suggestions by examining the less-studied characteristic of structural fragmentation, both in terms of how the mission is supported and how the national interests of neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia in particular are able to play out, to the mission’s detriment.