Somali leaders launched a fresh bid on Sunday to chart a new future for the war-ravaged country and wind up a seven-year transition that has failed to fulfil most of its key objectives.
The life of the Transitional Federal Government was to expire last month, but President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden signed a deal in Kampala in June extending their terms for one more year.
The three-day talks in the capital Mogadishu will also focus on improving security, national reconciliation, a new constitution, governance and parliamentary reforms.
“It is an historic day and I hope that our discussions will bring credible ideas that bring Somalia’s troubles to an end,” Sharif said at the opening of the talks.
The president of Somalia’s breakaway Puntland region Ibrahim Mohamed Mohamud, leader of the semi-autonomous central Galmudug region and members of the pro-government Sufi militia Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa also attended the United Nations-backed talks.
“We have only one year to accomplish the prioritised tasks … This roadmap should give us a chance to realise peace in Somalia that has eluded us in the last 20 years,” said Augustine Mahiga, the UN representive for Somalia, referring to the plan under discussion.
“This roadmap, unlike before, there are going to be timelines, there are going to be compliance mechanisms and there is going to be oversight by the political leaders of the whole region,” he added.
However, neither Somaliland, which broke away in 1991, nor the al-Shabaab insurgents which have sworn to overthrow the government, were represented at the talks.
The Somali government was formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004 with a five-year mandate to reconcile the conflict-shattered country, write a new constitution and hold elections.
Parade of presidents
But constant political bickering and a near-endless civil war have thwarted progress and the government’s mandate renewed twice since. It has also seen two presidents and five prime ministers.
Battered by constant attacks by the al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabaab rebels, the government has been unable to exert authority beyond a few streets in the capital Mogadishu where it owes its survival to African Union troops.
Mahiga warned that future support to the Somali administration will depend on the accomplishment of the new plan.
“If there is a deliberate effort to postpone, to procrastinate or unwillingness to advance, the Security Council has stated in no uncertain terms and several times that future assistance to the [government] will be contingent upon the implementation of the roadmap,” Mahiga said.
He added: “The roadmap will lead us to the end of the transitional government and pave the way for a more inclusive government.
“There is a fatigue on … governments of transition. The region certainly has shown fatigue and it has been at the forefront of the Somalia peace process and it wants change,” Mahiga said.
“The [Somali] leadership knows their time is up.”
Running the Somali government costs donors between $50-million and $100-million dollars a year, while the 9 000-strong African Union force protecting it costs about $400-million per year.
The current government is one of the more than a dozen attempts to form a central authority in Somalia since it plunged into a bloody civil war with the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre.
Somalia’s conflict has worsened the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people affected by a harsh drought currently ravaging the Horn of Africa, which the United Nations says is the worst in decades.
The UN has declared famine in several regions of the country and said on Saturday that the situation in the country was worsening, and that almost all the regions in the south could face famine.
Half of the 10-million population needs food aid. – AFP