Somalis expressed growing fears of a relapse into violence on Friday as the African Union met to discuss the troubled deployment of a stabilisation force for their war-torn nation.
Visiting United Nations envoy Francois Fall told interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Thursday Somalia had a better chance of peace than at any other time since the era of infighting among warlords began 16 years ago.
But Yusuf, the new ruler of Mogadishu since the ouster of hard-line Islamists late last month, faces a huge task in disarming rival militia and banishing Mogadishu’s reputation for chaos, even with the help of foreign peacekeepers.
Only Uganda has so far indicated its willingness to contribute troops to the force, which a number of countries have doubted can begin deploying any time soon.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council was due to discuss the proposed 8Â 000-strong force at a meeting in its Addis Ababa headquarters on Friday and debate a new report put together by a fact-finding team.
Ethiopia, whose military intervention against the Islamists proved decisive last month, wants to withdraw its troops but its arch-enemy, Eritrea, became the latest country to express doubts about the viability of an AU force.
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki, who has previously accused Ethiopia of destabilising Somalia, said that the AU lacked the “organisational capability” to deploy effectively in Somalia.
“We need to know what will be the mission and second, how would the AU, which has proved to have failed in other parts”, succeed this time around, he told al-Jazeera television.
South Africa, the continent’s current representative on the United Nations Security Council, has also doubted whether the AU can shoulder the burden of another peace mission.
On the streets of Mogadishu, which has lacked a central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, residents fear that the prevalence of weapons and presence of troops from traditional enemy Ethiopia does not bode well for the future.
While a number of key warlords have symbolically handed over guns in the last few days, the vast majority of militiamen from rival clans have kept hold of their weapons.
“Peace is a long way off as long as the government is under the shadow of the Ethiopian government and the president is guarded by Ethiopian special forces in the presidential palace,” said former militiaman Bile Mohamed Gurey.
“We are still waiting for something terrible and are worried so much about security because the government is not fully patrolling the city while the arms are still in the hands of the civilians,” said Mogadishu businessman Mohamed Hussein Daud.
“We cannot forecast long-lasting peace in Somalia, particularly in the capital where there are a lot of government rivals and remnants of the Islamists,” added Daud.
Others fear, however, that the departure of the Ethiopians, the most powerful military in the region, would merely usher back in the Islamists.
“The Islamists are among the people and whenever the Ethiopian tanks leave the country everything will start from where they were,” said Ahmed Nur Elmi, a grocer in Mogadishu’s Bakara market. “The Islamic courts will be seen soon.” — AFP