Fragmented Peacekeeping: The African Union in Somalia

Abstract

From uncertain beginnings, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has grown, over almost ten years, into the regional organisation's largest peace-support operation. Bolstered by a multilayered mission architecture through which the UN and bilateral donors provide financial, logistical and technical support, it has achieved important gains against the jihadi Islamist organisation Al-Shabaab. The apparent viability of these partnerships has seen AMISOM hailed as a successful model of collaboration between regional and international structures. Peter Albrecht and Cathy Haenlein examine a less-studied dimension of this model, namely the intersection of these arrangements with the structural fragmentation that has increasingly come to define the mission.