Stuck in Somalia

How many Ethiopian troops have died in Somalia since December 2006? How many injured?
Quite a few.

Do you have more precise numbers? Hundreds? Thousands?
In the hundreds.

How many troops are in Somalia right now?
A few thousand. Two, three thousand.

How much has the invasion cost Ethiopia in money terms?
Substantial amounts.

A hundred million dollars?
No. It's a low-tech, low-cost intervention on the part of Ethiopia. That doesn't mean that every cent we spent on Somalia couldn't have been better spent in Ethiopia. But on the whole, we have managed without breaking our back economically, to sustain our presence in Somalia.

How much direct financial support has Ethiopia received from the United States to help pay for this intervention?
Zero.

Has Ethiopia been disappointed in the level of assistance by Western nations to the TFG and Ethiopia?
The response of the international community and the United Nations in general has been less than stellar. We understand why the U.N. could not send a peacekeeping mission. But we do not understand why the U.N., through the Security Council, could not provide some funding to the African Union to carry out the peacekeeping responsibilities. The United Nations insisted that the AU mission in Darfur should be taken over by the U.N. and funded by the U.N., [but] they refused to provide budgeted support to the AU peacekeeping operations in Somalia.

The U.S. has been a bit more forthcoming. They have provided support, for example, to the Ugandans [peacekeepers], to deploy their troops in Mogadishu. They have diplomatically been broadly supportive of the TFG and stabilization in Somalia. But that does not mean the Security Council--and the United States is an important part of the Security Council--has not delivered as many of us in the region would have expected.