{"id":29764,"date":"2016-10-27T02:50:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T02:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ethiopia-withdraws-troops-in-somalia-over-lack-of\/"},"modified":"2016-10-27T02:50:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T02:50:28","slug":"ethiopia-withdraws-troops-in-somalia-over-lack-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ethiopia-withdraws-troops-in-somalia-over-lack-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia withdraws troops in Somalia over &#8216;lack of support&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Ethiopia has withdrawn troops from Somalia, where they had been battling Islamist militants.}<\/p>\n<p>It blames a lack of international support for the move, following the EU&#8217;s recent cut in its funding for foreign troops in Somalia.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia is a major contributor of soldiers to the Amisom, the African Union mission in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia has recently withdrawn from several other bases, which were quickly occupied by al-Shabab militants.<\/p>\n<p>Officials in Somalia&#8217;s Bakol region say some residents have already fled the area since the Ethiopian troops left, fearing an imminent of al-Shabab, which is part of al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopian Communications Minister Getachew Reda told the BBC that the troops withdrawn from south-western Somalia were not part of Amisom.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a separate batch deployed to provide support for Amisom and Somali armed forces,&#8221; Mr Getachew said.<\/p>\n<p>He also denied reports that the withdrawal was linked to unrest at home which led to a state of emergency being declared, saying there were enough troops to handle that.<\/p>\n<p>He said the Somali army should have been in a position to move in after Ethiopia&#8217;s withdrawal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The international community has a responsibility either to train or to support the Somali National Army,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>He went on to warn that indifference would only pave the way for an al-Shabab takeover.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union is the main contributor of funding for Amisom. But it announced in June that its funding for the mission would be reduced by 20%.<\/p>\n<p>BBC Somali&#8217;s Farham Jimale says Ethiopia is not the first provider of troops in Somalia to complain about a lack of international support.<\/p>\n<p>Burundi, Uganda and Djibouti, which also contribute to Amisom, have made similar complaints in the past, he says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-15961 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_91759703_ethiopiatroops.jpg\" alt=\"Ethiopia deployed its troops to Somalia to strengthen the weak UN-backed government\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Ethiopia has withdrawn troops from Somalia, where they had been battling Islamist militants.} It blames a lack of international support for the move, following the EU&#8217;s recent cut in its funding for foreign troops in Somalia. Ethiopia is a major contributor of soldiers to the Amisom, the African Union mission in the country. Ethiopia has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29764"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29764"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}