The Conversation — To understand why states provide peacekeepers to multilateral operations I recently analysed what motivated states to join the African Union Mission in Somalia. The mission was deployed to Mogadishu in March 2007 and has been fighting al-Shabaab militants for more than 10 years. It has become the African Union’s longest running, largest, most costly, and most deadly operation.

The mission and its partners are currently debating how to transfer its security responsibilities to local Somali forces.

Of the AU’s 54 members in 2007, only six contributed troops to the mission. They are Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti (2011), Kenya (2012), Sierra Leone (2013) and Ethiopia (2014). Thirteen others reportedly considered deploying troops but decided against it.

Research conducted as part of a project that analyses the effectiveness of peace operations suggests the decisions about deployment were based on the interplay between five sets of factors: political, security, economic, institutional and moral.

The decision was political when countries sought to enhance their prestige, reputation, and influence or in response to pressure or persuasion by external actors. Security concerns were behind the decision to act if national, regional or global threats are at play. Economic factors included financial benefits or losses to government. And countries might also have deployed peacekeepers to boost their security sectors. The intended benefits included improved reputation, operational experience and assistance packages.
Finally, countries might act to meet ethical commitments to promote peace or assist people caught up in war.

To establish why the six countries deployed troops to Somalia I examined the story behind each government’s decision. My conclusion is that there was no single or uniform explanation. And that there was often a mismatch between the most common public justifications and what I suspect were the main drivers of the deployments.

Mismatch between official positions and reality
The official justifications for joining the mission were usually that events in Somalia posed a direct security threat. Moral commitments to African solidarity to help fellow Africans in distress were also invoked. But these justifications were often less important than other unacknowledged or downplayed factors.

These included that the mission delivered a number of benefits to countries that contributed troops. For example, their armed forces were strengthened. Or there were political advantages relating to international prestige and external partnerships. There was also economic support for the domestic security sector.

These factors all played a role in the decisions taken by Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia to join the AU mission.

Of course, the mission helped alleviate some regional security concerns. But the tangible benefits for the troop-contributing governments and their militaries were often more important.

Overall, the most important motive was institutional. The next was enhancing national reputation and key political relationships. Third were the economic benefits. In the initial decision these factors were consistently more important than dealing with direct threats to national security and commitments to restoring peace or solidarity.

Gaining access to external sources of finance was also a crucial part of explaining why the countries contributed troops. This includes Kenya and Ethiopia. They initially conducted unilateral interventions into Somalia, mainly for reasons of national security. But they then joined the AU mission largely because of financial concerns.

It also points to a limitation of AU peace operations. That they require financial support from donors can make them a less attractive option than providing peacekeepers to UN missions. UN missions come with a reliable system of financing for personnel and contingent owned equipment.

Political risks
In sum, joining the mission brought important material benefits for the governments and their armed forces. But there were other benefits too. For Burundi and Sierra Leone, the deployments were a crucial part of professionalising and forging new identities for their post-civil war militaries.

Politically, the decision to join also helped countries strengthen relationships with key external donors, especially the US, UK and European Union.

But, because they couldn’t control the military forces receiving the money, the donors faced a number of risks. These included operational risks – that the peacekeepers may under-perform as well as the economic risk that resources might have been used more effectively. There were also inherent political risks to the donor’s reputation if the peacekeepers behaved badly while on mission. Or if troops were involved in oppression in their home countries.

The political risks did in fact materialise. AU peacekeepers were accused of misconduct. This included indiscriminate use of force against civilians, illicit commerce and sexual exploitation and abuse. There were also political tensions between donors and Uganda and Burundi when soldiers were involved in oppression back home. Nevertheless, joining the Somalia mission sometimes helped authoritarian regimes deflect more severe criticism.

USA TODAY — Smartphones helped terror organizations grow and communicate. Now the devices are contributing to their downfall.

In a nondescript, highly secured building in this Washington suburb, a group of U.S. government technicians and linguists are downloading massive amounts of data from phones, hard drives, CDs and other devices, providing a huge boost to the U.S. intelligence community as it hunts terrorists.

Many of the devices have been captured from battlefields in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has lost virtually all the territory it captured in 2014.
“This is the future,” Kolleen Yacoub, director of the National Media Exploitation Center, told USA TODAY in a rare interview at the center’s headquarters.

It was the first time the center, which also supports law enforcement and other agencies, has allowed a journalist into the facility, providing insight into a critical but little known part of the intelligence community.

The center grew from a handful of employees when it was established in 2003 to about 700 today, including offices overseas. It has about 100 linguists.

“The ability to exploit captured electronic hardware is a great capability that we have adopted and expanded and improved tremendously over the past 15 years,” said Jim Howcroft, a retired Marine intelligence officer and director of the terrorism program at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

The center in Maryland, managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, reviews paper documents as well as electronic items.

But it is the proliferation of laptops and cellphones that has fueled the growth in this type of intelligence gathering.

Smartphones hold massive amounts of information critical to intelligence analysts, including photos, telephone numbers, GPS data and Internet searches.

Users generally assume the device won’t be compromised and don’t take precautions to protect the data, Yacoub said.

“What they’re saving on their devices is ground truth,” Yacoub said. “We tend to treat our digital devices, our mobile devices … as personal items and we don’t lie to them.”

“The adversaries don’t lie to them either,” she said.

The data include videos and photos that help identify militants and their leaders.

Even when a device is damaged or information is deleted, the center’s technicians recover 60% to 80% of the data. “Deleted does not mean lost” is one of the center’s mottoes.

The amount of data coming into the center has skyrocketed in the past two years, Yacoub said, mainly because of the campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS.

The data analysis has been particularly helpful in giving intelligence analysts an unprecedented look at how the radical group operated in Iraq and Syria because of the ubiquity of smartphones and the meticulous way ISIS kept records in areas it controlled.

The data include tens of thousands of personnel records on foreign fighters and their families with dates of birth, aliases, phone numbers, jobs and other valuable intelligence.

“They have their own central government in a sense,” Yacoub said.

ISIS had departments that developed drone technology, chemical weapons, finance and propaganda operations. It also kept detailed records on the bureaucracy it created to provide services in areas it controlled.

Some of the terror leaders have been captured fleeing the battlefield with reams of information in the hopes that they can use it to keep the group active or to regroup after the loss of territory.

“If you’re committed to sustaining this organization and you’re going to take your show on the road … then you’re taking everything you can with you,” Marine Brig. Gen. James Glynn, deputy commanding general of the Special Operations Joint Task Force, said in an interview from Baghdad.

The intelligence is helping analysts map out how the Islamic State may try to evolve.

“If you don’t have a clear understanding of how ISIS is operating today, I don’t think you can really understand where they are going to next,” said Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threat Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are not going to disappear.”

Northeastern residents believe the wall being constructed by the government along the Kenya – Somalia boarder is a waste of time and money and will not help block al Shabaab militia.

Some are unhappy because they expected a concrete wall and not the barbed wire fence being put up.

Others however believe the 440km wall launched in March 2015 is ultimate solution to end the constant attacks by the terror group.

The government had not estimated the cost, but one unofficial estimate places the cost at Sh20 billion, another at Sh203 million a kilometre. The wall is supposed to stretch from Border Point One in Mandera to Kiunga in Lamu county.

“We though it was a concrete wall but what we are seeing is more of a fence and we wonder how it will keep off the militants who are known to use explosives to have their way,” resident Ahmed Mohamed said.

Mohamed said it was better to have a concrete wall that will take years to put up than what they were seeing.

But Resident Abdi Maulid said that the wall was more than enough to deter the militants from moving in and out of the country at will and.

Speaking in Mandera town when he inspected the 8 km completed section of the wall, regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh said the initial concrete security wall was redesigned because of the huge financial implication and that the works will be carried out in phases all the way to Kiunga in Lamu County.

Saleh however said he was satisfied with the work so far done.

According to the new design, the wall is being constructed with parallel chain links, concrete poles running parallel to each other and razor wires running in between them.

A 3 metre deep trench on the Kenyan side also runs along the fence and next to it is a road to be used by security personnel to patrol the border.
Designated entry points will consist of concrete walls feasted with CCTV cameras.

Saleh said project’ is meant to secure residents from terrorist attacks.

He said an additional 28km of the land had been surveyed, its bush cleared and soon the construction will resume.

Sales added that citizens crossing over to the country for business must do so in a structured manner.

“We want to have good relations with our neighbours but we won’t allow our people to be terrorised by anybody,” Saleh said.

“The era the Somali citizens used to walk in and out is no longer there. Anybody coming into Kenya must use a passport or other legal documents,” he added.

“I am satisfied as the chairman of the Northeastern security and intelligence team with the work the being done by the KDF who are undertaking the project,” Saleh noted.

“I want to assure Kenyans that the government is focused on the project. We have no problems with the people of Somalia. They are our neighbours who have had serious security challenges for the past 26 years,” he added.