Publication: Cape Argus Issued: Date: 2008-11-21 Reporter:

Will SA Send Corvettes to Somalia?

 

Publication 

Cape Argus
Date

2008-11-21

Web Link

www.capeargus.co.za



After several weeks of deliberation, the SA government has still not decided whether it will send navy ships to join the growing international fleet protecting vessels from pirates off Somalia.

Xolisa Mabhongo, chief director for the United Nations in the Department of Foreign Affairs, on Thursday said SA fully supported the anti-piracy patrols. But his department was still consulting with the departments of defence and transport, and others, about whether to participate.

"So no decision has been taken," he said at a media briefing in Pretoria, pointing out that a recent United Nations resolution had encouraged all countries which could do so to contribute to the fleet protecting shipping in the Gulf of Aden and off the East African coast.

On Thursday, researcher Len le Roux of the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies warned that there was no reason why the piracy could not spread even further, into South African waters.

As the only African country which had the ships, he suggested that SA should join the international effort, noting that if it did not, this would raise questions about the purpose of the expensive corvettes and submarines which SA had bought as part of the controversial arms deal *1.

Mabhongo said that if SA did decide to participate in the anti-piracy effort, it would have to decide whether to join the ships protecting commercial vessels from pirates off northern Somalia, or those escorting ships carrying humanitarian aid from Mombasa, Kenya, to Somalia through the country's southern waters.

Mabhongo said the SA government condemned the piracy, which was threatening international trade and aggravating the security situation around Somalia.

But it was SA's "considered view" that the piracy and general lawlessness in Somalia were symptoms of a bigger political problem. The international community must intervene to resolve the security problem so that a political solution could be found, he said.

The government urged all parties to stick to their commitments under various peace agreements.

The Somali crisis is rooted in a conflict between the country's very fragile transitional government - which is being propped up by the Ethiopian military - and Islamist opponents.

Mabhongo said the United Nations Security Council would today discuss a resolution to bolster the small African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia with a larger "stabilising" UN force.

This would be a first step towards an eventual full UN peacekeeping force.

The AU force had been intended only as a stop-gap measure for six months, before the UN force went in, but had already been in Somalia for more than two years, Mabhongo noted.

Related Articles

With acknowledgements to Cape Argus.


*1       One of the problems and probably the most serious is that the SA Navy has no money for these types of extra-territorial adventures.

The SA Navy does not even have enough money to field all of its four corvettes, nor even enough money to properly support any of them.

The SA Navy currently does not even have enough money or the rest of the wherewithal to buy certain critical spares for its corvettes *2.

The second problem, maybe equally serious, is that the SA Navy's corvettes do not have the capabilities to protect themselves in littoral waters.

These are the reasons why, after several weeks of deliberation, the SA government has still not decided whether it will send navy ships to join the growing international fleet protecting vessels from pirates off Somalia.

Otherwise, with a bit of task training and a hard review of the rules of engagement, this would be a bit of a cinch.


*2      The cruel reality has starkly shown that the corvettes were acquired for operational use.