There goes Somalia again

January 21, 2007

There goes Somalia again


THE attacks against the presidential residence in Mogadishu on Friday and against an Ethiopian military convoy on Saturday appear to signal the launch of a guerrilla war in Somalia along the lines of what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such incidents are likely to delay the departure of the Ethiopian forces from Somalia and that in turn would be an added incentive for guerrilla war to the Islamist forces who were dislodged from their strongholds in the recent Ethiopian offensive backed by the US.
An African Union (AU) force is being assembled to be deployed in Somalia and it is also likely to be targeted by the Islamist forces.
If we were go by the US argument that the Islamists are aligned with Al Qaeda, then it follows that they would engage in suicide bombings and ambushes that have come to be associated with the group in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is no dearth of weapons available to the Islamists in order to wage an effective guerrilla war against the Ethiopian forces, government soliders and the African Union soldiers to be deployed in the Horn of African country.
Indeed, the Islamists appear to be trying to pre-empt the deployment of the African forces by staging attacks against the Ethiopian soldiers and landmarks of authority of the interim government in the country. A raging war of attrition in Somalia would stop the various African countries in their tracks from sending soldiers to keep peace there.
If anything, the Ethiopians are helping the Islamist goal of strengthening the insurgency.
From the accounts of Somali victims caught in Saturday's crossfire and eyewitnesses, the Ethiopian soldiers opened fire indiscriminately when they came under attack and killed four people and wounded several people.
As one of them recounted, "They shot at me and the others indiscriminately ... they shot everybody who was moving around."
If true, then such behaviour would only add to the intensity of the conflict. It is obvious in Iraq that many Iraqis who suffered heavily — most of them lost their entire families — from the highhanded behaviour of the US forces and allies have joined the ranks of insurgence simply for the sake of exacting revenge for their loss and agony. That is the very nature of civil conflicts as we have learnt from history.
The foreign forces present in Iraq are perfect targets for the larger groups of Iraqi Sunni insurgents and the much smaller groups of so-called international "jihadists" (a la Al Qaeda). The same is true for the Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan. In both cases, it is impossible to see an end to the conflict except when dealt from within an internal framework. The story is going to be repeated in Somalia, and no one seems to have any answers to the big questions that need to be answered before the world could feel that things are turning around for the halpless people of Somalia who have been paying and are continuing to pay a heavy price for the tribe-based politics and tug-of-war that once characterised their country's conflict.
Of course it does not mean that there is no optimism for Somalia. A released on Friday by an African Union fact-finding mission says that the recent developments in Somalia "represent a unique and unprecedented opportunity to re-establish the structures of governance and further peace and reconciliation in Somalia."
UN envoy Francois Fall, who concluded after a lightning visit to Mogadishu on Thursday, says that that "this is the best opportunity for peace for 16 years in Somalia and we must not waste it."
Indeed, it is mostly up to the people of Somalia to realise that it is their future that they would be playing with if they continued on the path of aggressive designs against each other.
The Islamists could not be expected to come around to accepting it easily, and the responsibility rests with the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf, the tribal warlords and their followers to accept that the future of their country depends on their willingness to pursue reconciliation rather than settle scores. Parallel to that the international community should step in with generous aid — distributed under strict supervision and away from the corruption that was associated with past efforts in the country — to kindle a feeling among the people of Somalia that they stand to lose something if they continued on their violent ways. Without a concerted push backed by the world, Somalia would slip deeper into crises and become breeding-ground for militancy and extremism.