/ 4 January 2007

Somalia on a knife-edge

Despite the dramatic 10-day turnaround in which Somalia’s weak transition government, backed by Ethiopian forces, ended the Islamic Courts’s six-month grip on Mogadishu and southern parts of the country, there is still a long way to go to establish long-term stability in the country.

The tumultuous events of the last two weeks have placed a centrally elected government in control of the Somali capital for the first time in 16 years. Whether it will stay in control and extend its authority throughout the country will depend on the short- and medium-term actions of the transition government of Abdullahi Yusuf and the response of the international community — particularly Somalia’s neighbours.

The most unfavourable scenario would be a protracted guerrilla war, similar to those in Afghanistan or Iraq, in which a rapid military success is eroded by an expensive and unwinnable insurgency.

An early illustration of the attendant dangers of this conflict came this week when Ethiopian helicopters bombed what they believed were fleeing Islamic Courts fighters in the border town of Dhobley and hit the Kenyan town of Har Har instead.

The Kenyan government has so far been sympathetic to the new rulers in Mogadishu: sealing its 700km border to fleeing Islamic Courts fighters, arresting 11 of their leaders who had sought refuge across the border and calling a summit of regional leaders to discuss new developments. But, understandably, it reacted angrily to the bombing of Har Har.

Meanwhile, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says his forces will be out of Somalia within weeks rather than months.

He says they cannot continue to bear the financial burden of intervention — indeed he has already asked for international assistance for what he characterises as an operation to curb extremism in the Horn.

The adventure has also cost him politically both at home and abroad. His support for the Somali government has raised considerable opposition within Ethiopia’s population, which is almost equally divided along Orthodox Christian and Muslim lines.

The Arab League and the African Union have both called for the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from Somalia.

Ali Ghedi, the Somali Prime Minister, maintains that Ethiopian forces will be needed for some months to shore up his weak, small and poorly trained army. It will take at least that long to finance, assemble, equip and deploy the 8 000-strong regional peacekeeping force envisaged by the AU.

The Somali government faces two pressing and immediate threats: from the warlords, expelled from Mogadishu by the Islamists six months ago but now back on the scene, and from a threatened insurrection by the Islamic Courts. This week Ghedi is trying to weaken the warlords by giving all irregular forces in Somalia three days to disarm voluntarily. However this is hardly realistic in a clannish society which has been ruled by the gun since the fall of the Siad Barre government in 1991.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, currently chairman of the seven- nation regional grouping known as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, is urging Yusuf to resume talks with the Islamic Courts.

The Somali government has promised an amnesty to Islamic Courts fighters, but says their leaders will face prosecution.

Horn of Africa specialist Iqbal Jhazbhay, of the University of South Africa, says it is too early to say if the Islamic Courts have any fight left in them. ”They gave up Mogadishu and then their southern port stronghold of Kismayo without a fight, realising that resistance to the combined Ethiopian and government forces would have been self destructive,” he said.

”In 1996 the Ethiopian army dismantled what it saw as an Islamist threat inside Somalia at Luuq. They were perceived to be supporting the Ogaden opposition group in Somali Ethiopia, and complicit in the bombing of a hotel in Addis Ababa and an attempted assassination of an Ethiopian Cabinet minister.

”The Islamists withdrew to South Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland to regroup and rebuild their finances. It remains to be seen if they perform a similar recovery this time …

”There are more Somalis outside Somalia than inside. The Islamists get much of their support from the diaspora where there are people who are genuine supporters of their cause and others who are strongly influenced by pan-Islamism. Many of these are people who have done well financially in Europe and North America. To illustrate the extent of this spread, the nominal foreign minister of the Islamic Courts, Ibrahim Addow, is a United States citizen,” Jhazbhay said.