Somali militias clash

Islamist militias clash in Somalia as Ethiopian troops withdraw

As 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers depart, militia groups are battling to take more control from the weak transitional government.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security update
January 12, 2009

Fierce fighting between rival Islamist militias left at least 25 dead in central Somalia on Sunday, as a struggle for the heart of this war-torn nation rages in the power vacuum left by departing Ethiopian troops.

The BBC reports that the hard line Al Shabab – regarded by the United States as a terrorist group – faced off against a "local militia," killing 30 and injuring at least 30 more. The fighting took place in Guriel, 310 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu.

Correspondents say that a power vacuum may be opening up as the 3,000-strong Ethiopian force pulls out of Somalia. Ethiopian troops arrived in Somalia in 2006 to help the interim government oust Islamists from the capital.

The Ethiopian intervention was deeply unpopular with many Somalis.... Al Shabab, which opposes a peace deal with Somalia's transitional government, is trying to take control of areas vacated by the Ethiopians - Guriel was one such town.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) put the number of wounded at more than 50. It identified Al Shabab's rivals as members of the more moderate group, the Ahlu Sunna Wal-jamaah. It said the two rival militias had already battled several times in December in a struggle for control of Guriel.

"It was the heaviest clash ever in the region between the two sides," Abdulahi Hirsi Moge, a local elder, told AFP. "We have counted at least 25 people, most of them combatants, killed in the fighting and there is still a possibility of some undisclosed dead bodies outside of the town," he added.

Garowe Online, the website of a radio station based in northern Somalia, reported that the fighting broke out around 5:30 a.m. Sunday when Al Shabab forces attacked a checkpoint manned by the moderate group. It claimed the moderates are warlords who are funded and armed by Ethiopia.

Voice of America reports that some Somalis were celebrating after Al Shabab's apparent defeat in Sunday's skirmish. It quoted a senior officer of the moderate militia, Sheik Abdulkarim Risak, as saying his group is determined to drive Al Shabab out of the country.

"Thanks to Allah, we have taught them [Al Shabab] a lesson today because they left at least 50 persons dead... and now we are moving to the capital, Mogadishu. We will continue to chase them wherever they are, and even if they are in a corner of our country, I think we would not stop our fighting," he said.

According to Mr. Risak, many of Al Shabab's men were foreign fighters, possibly from Southeast Asia.

In an interview published Saturday, Reuters quoted Somali interim president Sheikh Aden Madobe as saying Al-Shabab is the "biggest threat" to Somalia. He also said Somali troops were not ready to take over security duties from the departing Ethiopians.

Mr. Madobe said Somalia would select a new president at the end of the month in a conference in Djibouti. Meanwhile, Reuters reported, the African Union is urging member countries to fulfill promises of sending more troops to help bring stability to Somalia.

The AU has been desperately trying to beef up its existing force of some 3,500 troops from Uganda and Burundi. But despite pledges of extra battalions from those two nations and Nigeria, they have yet to deploy.

Analysts say unless the African Union force is strengthened soon there is a risk those peacekeepers will pull out as well, leaving even more of a security vacuum.

A commentary in last week's Economist called Somalia "Africa's most utterly failed state" and warned that the security situation could go from bad to worse with the departure of the 3,000 Ethiopian troops.

Ethiopia's withdrawal may simply leave a power vacuum, to be filled in short order by Islamist militias that are now even more dangerous than those crushed by the original invasion at the end of 2006.

[Former Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf's] gunmen may return north to their more or less autonomous homeland in Puntland, perhaps to profit from piracy. Various armed groups would then fight for control of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and of central Somalia. These include a patchwork of militias loyal to rival clan elders and warlords, along with moderate Islamists, radical Islamists, and private security groups hired by businessmen.

Last week, two World Food Program relief workers were shot dead by gunmen, according to the Associated Press.

In its latest report on Somalia, the International Crisis Group urged the international community to accept that Islamist insurgents must be given a place at the negotiating table. It said the high-profile fight against pirates in shores off Somalia had distracted the world from addressing the roots of Somalia's instability.

Over the last two years the situation has deteriorated into one of the world's worst humanitarian and security crises. The international community is preoccupied with a symptom – the piracy phenomenon – instead of concentrating on the core of the crisis, the need for a political settlement.

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Somali president quits

Amid growing international pressure, Somalia's president resigns

Widely considered an obstacle to peace, Abdullahi Yusuf announced his resignation on Monday.

Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security Update
December 29, 2008

The president of Somalia resigned Monday, in a move that analysts say could help bring stability to the war-ravaged, failed state.

Abdullahi Yusuf, a former warlord, took office amid high hopes in 2004 as the first president of a United Nations-backed transitional government. But during his term he was unable to extend the government's writ much farther than the capital.

Somalia has been without a strong central government since former dictator President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, and the area near the capital of Mogadishu has seen fierce fighting between US-backed Ethiopian and Somali government troops, and Islamist fighters.

Mr. Yusuf's weakness was further highlighted this year by the shocking surge in pirate attacks off the Somali coast, which has stirred international outrage.

Reuters reported that Yusuf's departure could help break a "deadlock" at the top of Somalia's government.

"As I promised when you elected me on October 14, 2004, I would stand down if I failed to fulfill my duty, I have decided to return the responsibility you gave me," Yusuf said....

Yusuf had become increasingly unpopular at home and abroad and was blamed by Washington, Europe and African neighbors for stalling a U.N.-hosted peace process. He had come under intense pressure to step aside.

Reuters cited analysts as saying Yusuf's departure, combined with the scheduled withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, could help stabilize the country. Yusuf had clashed with his prime minister on several issues, including whether to include moderate Islamists in peace talks (Yusuf opposed doing so).

According to Bloomberg, Yusuf made the announcement of his resignation to the Somali parliament.

Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nor, the speaker of parliament, will assume the presidency under the country's transitional federal charter, Yusuf told lawmakers in the nation's parliament in Baidoa, 155 miles northwest of the capital, Mogadishu. The address was broadcast on Capital Voice, a closely held broadcaster.

Garowe Online, the sister site of Radio Garowe, a community radio station based in northern Somalia, reported that security was "extra tight" in Baidoa. It said the president's resignation was no surprise.

Yusuf's resignation was expected, after being labeled an obstacle to peace and pressured by the U.S. and regional powers to resign....

Yusuf's resignation ends a months-long feud with interim Prime Minister Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, who enjoys the backing of the international community.

The power struggle between the two men peaked a couple weeks ago, when the president fired his prime minister, according to a Xinhua report.

Yusuf sacked his Prime Minister Hussein on Dec. 14, accusing him of incompetence, embezzlement and mismanagement.

The Somali Parliament, one day after the sacking of the prime minister, voted to endorse Hussein and his government, overturning Yuruf's decision.

Agence France-Presse described the next steps for replacing Yusuf.

Somalia's parliament now has 30 days to elect a new president by secret ballot.

The winner must win a two-thirds majority of the votes. If not, a second and third round of voting is called. In the last round, the winner would only need a simple majority.

Somalia has been a failed state since 1991, when Mr. Barre was ousted. Warlords carved up the country, but Islamists seized control of southern and central Somalia, and took the capital in 2006. A US-backed Ethiopian offensive drove them out of Mogadishu in late 2006 and Yusuf arrived in the capital several days later.

The government controls only a "few city blocks in a country almost as big as Texas," according to The New York Times. But the Times reported that fighting has now broken out between rival Islamist militias, further complicating the picture.

On Sunday, a powerful, newly militarized Islamist group declared a "holy war" against other Islamist factions, and it seems to have the muscle to back up its intentions. Over the weekend, the group, the Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama, killed more than 10 fighters from the Shabab, a rival Islamist faction known as one of Somalia's toughest.

The group issued a statement calling on its followers to "prepare themselves for jihad against these heretic groups," referring to some of the other, more hard-line Islamist factions, and "to restore stability and harmony in Somalia and achieve a genuine government of national unity."

The US says some Shabab leaders have ties to Al Qaeda, and fears Somalia could become a haven for foreign jihadis, notes the USA Today.

In a background report on Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which Yusuf headed, the Council on Foreign Relations noted that despite widespread instability, elections are due in Somalia next year.

Because TFG members earned their posts through protracted negotiations, rather than elections, Somalia is not a democracy. That is set to change in 2009, when Somalis are scheduled to vote in the first elections in more than twenty years. Few analysts, however, anticipate the government will last until the vote. In an April 2008 report on Somalia, Africa expert John Prendergast called the TFG "feeble, faction-ridden, corrupt, and incompetent."

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Bomb targets Somali president

Somali bomb attack targets president Abdullahi Yusuf

The attack undermines a UN-mediated cease-fire signed last week between the government and opposition groups as the country's humanitarian crisis worsens.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor, June 19, 2008

Somalia's president was targeted Wednesday in a bomb attack that killed two policemen, as violence continued in the capital of Mogadishu despite a peace accord inked last week. The timing of the attack highlights the concerns of United Nations officials that continuing political instability is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.

The June 9 accord aimed to put an end to fighting between the United States-backed Somali government and its Ethiopian allies, and a coalition of Islamic opposition groups. But some hard-line Islamic militants have refused to lay down their arms.

The BBC reported that the bomb blast occurred in Mogadishu moments after a convoy carrying Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf had passed by. The attack followed fierce fighting in Mogadishu on Tuesday that left at least seven dead.

Tuesday's fighting started when insurgents attacked government soldiers and Ethiopian troops who were searching for weapons in houses in the Hurwa and Karan districts of the capital.

Fourteen people were wounded in the fighting that continued until midnight. Ethiopian troops have been in Somalia for 18 months since helping the government oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that ruled much of Somalia in 2006.

Reuters reported that the fighting highlighted the ineffectiveness of the peace pact signed in Djibouti last week.

Somalia's government and members of an exiled opposition group signed a U.N.-mediated ceasefire... but hardline Islamist leaders and insurgents on the ground rejected the pact.

They say they will not talk until thousands of Ethiopian troops backing President Abdullahi Yusuf's government leave the Horn of Africa nation. Somalia has been in near-perpetual conflict since the 1991 toppling of a military dictator.

A donors' meeting in Nairobi on Tuesday was held to discuss support for the new peace deal, with participants including the US, European Union, Norway, the League of Arab States, and the African Union. The deal calls for hostilities to stop within 30 days, with a 90-day cease-fire to follow.

According to the Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN representative to Somalia, said he was pleased with the level of donor support.

"I am overwhelmed by this new, widespread demonstration of goodwill, generosity and support for the agreement and for Somalia as a whole," the envoy said.

Ould-Abdallah said he was pleased by the traditional generosity and willingness of Saudi Arabia to help Somalia and the region to recover. He hoped the formal signing of the agreement will take place in the Holy City of Mecca by the end of the month.

"Today what is at stake is not only peace and stability in Somalia but the credibility of the international community in the country and in the region," he said.

Meanwhile, other UN officials warned of a looming refugee and food crisis that could rank among the world's worst current humanitarian disasters.

On Monday, a UN official told the BBC that the humanitarian crisis in Somalia was worse than in Darfur. He said that some 3.5 million people would need emergency food aid in the coming months due to a combination of the country's political instability, droughts, currency problems, and rising food prices.

Mark Bowden, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for the region, says the food crisis is dramatically worsening....

[He] says Somalia has become one of the world's most challenging humanitarian crises. He fears that there is now a sense of fatalism about what is happening to the country.

Some 20,000 Somalis have fled to refugee camps in Kenya this year to escape the violence, the Associated Press reports. Refugees described an atmosphere of terror and chaos in their homeland.

In more than a dozen interviews with The Associated Press, the newest arrivals from Mogadishu told of relentless shelling and gunfire. Several children said their friends were forcibly recruited into militias. And they all described frantic escapes, with many walking for weeks to reach Dadaab, hitching rides on donkey carts or squeezing into strangers' cars.

"I couldn't live in Mogadishu anymore, my whole family would have been killed eventually," said Osman, 25, who left Mogadishu three months ago, hours after identifying his mother's body. He begged a ride in a car with a crowd of strangers, holding up his daughters – age 2 and 4 – to persuade the driver.

Somalia was plunged into chaos in 1991 when warlords ousted dictator Siad Barre, creating a power vacuum. The United Nations helped set up a transitional government in 2004. But the weak government was unable to exert control over much of the country.

In 2006, it called on Ethiopian troops to enter Somalia to help fight Islamic militants.

The US backs the Somali government and has helped train and equip its Ethiopian allies. The US says the Islamic insurgents have ties to Al Qaeda, and has launched gunship and missile attacks on suspected terrorist leaders in Somalia.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that the latest attack in early May killed a man that US officials described as a "known Al Qaeda target and militia leader in Somalia."

According a recent report in The Guardian, some Western intelligence officials are concerned that Somalia – along with Algeria and Yemen – could become a new front in the fight against Al Qaeda, as the terror group loses ground in Iraq.

Officials talk about the appeal of an "attractive area of ungoverned space". This is Somalia, described as an increasingly popular destination for "western jihadists", though al-Qaida is playing only a small part in the violence there, western intelligence officials suggest.

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Somalia spirals downward

Food riots, anti-U.S. protests erupt in Somalia

The unrest follows reports of atrocities by militants and US-backed Ethiopian and Somali forces, as well as a recent US strike on an alleged Al Qaeda leader there.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor, May 07, 2008

Food riots and anti-US protests in Somalia are compounding the chaos in the long-suffering war zone in the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, an Amnesty International Report released Tuesday alleged that Islamist militants, as well as US-backed Ethiopian and Somali government troops, are committing widespread atrocities against civilians in the capital, Mogadishu. And a recent US strike against what it says was an Al Qaeda leader in Somalia has sparked further protests.

The Associated Press reports that Tuesday saw a second day of protests over rising food prices, with hundreds of youths burning tires, throwing stones, and blocking roads.

Somalia is just the latest country to see riots over rising food prices, after others including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. The Financial Times has a map of the civil unrest sparked by the food crisis here.

The protests began when shopkeepers refused to accept some bank notes, over fear of counterfeiting. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Monday, and troops fired into the crowds.

The Los Angeles Times said witnesses and officials reported five killed in clashes with government troops and armed shopkeepers.

The Times reports that soaring inflation is taking place against the backdrop of a civil war that has raged since 1991, when the government collapsed and a bloody power struggle began.

A sharp rise in counterfeit currency over the last year, and the rise in global food prices, has fed skyrocketing inflation. The devaluing of Somalia's currency, the shilling, has exacerbated the problem.

Prices for basic cereals such as rice and sorghum are up between 100 percent and 400 percent from last year; the price of a sack of rice has risen from US$32 to US$52 in just one month. Adding to the problem, Somalia's local crops were devastated by drought and flooding. Somalia imports 60 percent of its grain.

The Agence France-Presse reported today that Islamist militants are urging shopkeepers to accept Somali shillings instead of US dollars to help curb inflation. They also said they would "punish" those who refuse to comply.

Inflation began rising early last year when Somali government and Ethiopian forces began a push to drive out Islamic militants.

Voice of America interviewed Cindy Holleman, the chief technical adviser with the Food Security Analysis Unit of Somalia, about the country's worsening humanitarian crisis. In the past three to four months, there has been a 40 percent increase in people who need assistance, from 1.8 million to 2.6 million, Ms. Holleman says:

"There are three main factors that are driving it. One is the skyrocketing food prices within the country. The second is parts of the country are being affected by a drought, which is deepening because the rains have failed and haven't appeared yet. And the third reason is civil insecurity, which is increasing," she says.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that human rights group Amnesty International is saying civilians in Somalia are "completely at the mercy of armed groups" who are targeting them for atrocities.

The report blames all sides – Somalian government troops, their US-trained Ethiopian allies, and Islamic insurgents – for being "out of control."

But Ethiopian troops are singled out for committing especially grisly acts. The Ethiopian government has denied the charges and demanded an apology, reports the BBC.

"We have said repeatedly that our soldiers are the most disciplined soldiers in the world," said foreign ministry spokesman Wahide Belaye.

"They have never cut anybody's throat, never gang-raped any women, never deliberately shot civilians in Somalia."

The Amnesty report uses detailed testimony from survivors to paint a picture of a humanitarian and political crisis.

Amnesty International's Africa Program Deputy Director Michelle Kagari said:

"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed."

The Independent writes that Amnesty is also calling for a probe into the US role in war crimes committed by its allies in Somalia. It writes that US troops provided equipment to the Ethiopian military and trained Ethiopian forces that Amnesty says have carried out atrocities.

It gave further details on the Amnesty report, which described a pattern of violence.

Al-Shabaab – an Islamic insurgent group which the US has designated a terrorist group – has launched attacks on residential areas. The Ethiopian troops then respond with a security sweep, with door-to-door checks in which civilians are often attacked again. Some 700,000 civilians have fled such violence.

Agence France-Presse reported on further riots Sunday in Dhusamareb – 250 miles north of Mogadishu – in the wake of a US bombing there last Thursday.

That bombing killed at least 12 people, including Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro, who the Somali government and the US believe was the leader of Al Qaeda in Somalia.

One protest organizer told the Agence France-Presse that since the attack, residents had been vomiting. "We believe the Americans used poisonous bombs," said Abdirasak Moalim Ahmed.

Agence France-Presse writes that Mr. Ayro, who was targeted in the US attack, trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and was linked to the deaths of foreign aid workers in Somalia.

It wrote that the US Pentagon declined to say that Ayro was the target of Thursday's attack, but did confirm an attack on what it called an Al Qaeda military leader in Somalia.

Garowe Online, the website of a community radio station based in the capital of northern Somalia's self-governing Puntland region, reports that the Kenyan government has increased security measures on fears that Islamic militants could launch retaliatory attacks against US interests in Kenya to revenge Ayro's death.

In its latest briefing on Somalia in January, the International Crisis Group called a late December offensive against Islamists by US-backed Somalia government and Ethiopian forces a "major success for Ethiopia and the US, who feared emergence of a Taliban-style haven for Al Qaeda and other extremists."

In that "lightning offensive", hundreds of Islamists were killed and the rest dispersed.

But the group cautioned that the attack had left a political vacuum in southern Somalia and warned of further guerrilla war by Islamic militants.

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