Other countries

The World’s focal point

© Reuters/Pool, STR

Transitional Federal Government soldiers mingle around their truck in Bur Haqaba, 60km (37 miles) south of Baidoa in Somalia December 28, 2006. Triumphant Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies marched into Mogadishu on Thursday after Islamist rivals abandoned the war-scarred city they held for six months. The flight of the Islamists was a dramatic turn-around in the volatile Horn of Africa nation after they took Mogadishu in June and spread across the south imposing sharia rule. Source: Reuters Alernet

By Lars Jørgensen, DanChurchAid, Country Coordinator for Horn of Africa Feature in the Danish daily ”Information”, 21 December 2006

Sometimes, the world’s big conflicts take place in the most obscure corners of the world. Right now one of these corners is Horn of Africa, where Africa, the Middle East and the Western World meet. The clash between the superpower USA and the Muslim world happens right now in Somalia by proxy: Ethiopian troops supported by the USA are confronting Islamic troops supported by Middle East governments. The true victims are the deployed African soldiers and – as usual – the civil population. There is a risk of total collapse in Somalia resulting in new waves of refugees and a major conflict on Horn of Africa.

Horn of Africa – encompassing Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the micro-state of Djibouti – is an area where few want to intervene. In 1994 the Americans had enough of Somalia, when 18 soldiers were killed and 84 wounded in a battle in the streets of Mogadishu against the warlord Aidid’s militia. In 1995, the UN withdrew 20,000 troops from the country. Somalia is notorious as the country without a government – a so-called ‘failed state’ – where various armed groups are fighting to gain power. It resembles Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, only this time with four-by-fours, machine guns and mortars. During 15-20 years of civil war, approx. 2.5 million people have died, 400,000 have fled the country and another 400,000 have been displaced and forced to take refuge somewhere else within the borders of Somalia.

After the ignominious defeat in 1994, the Americans are now back in Somalia. CIA is supporting groups of warlords with money and weapons – even though this is a violation of the UN weapon embargo, and officially the Americans deny it. Earlier this year, the American owned warlords clashed with troops from the so-called Islamic Courts, a Muslim group. Hundreds of civilians died in the street fights. The Islamic Courts won the battle and are in power in Mogadishu.

Islamic theocracy

The Union of Islamic Courts is one of two groups trying to establish power monopoly in Somalia. During the past 15 years, the Courts have grown in the prevailing power vacuum in Somalia. At first they functioned as local courts based on Sharia law; then they expanded by supporting clinics and schools and by working as a police force. Finally, they proclaimed themselves government of approximately fifty per cent of the country.

The Americans fear that the Courts will make Somalia a new Islamic theocracy like the Talibans have done in Afghanistan, nationally suppressed by Islamic fanatics and internationally a sanctuary for al-Qaeda members. Among the leaders of the Court are former members of Al-Ittihad al-Islami, an Islamic group with al-Qaeda connections and under suspicion of being behind a number of bombings in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The supreme leader of the Courts, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad, is however considered a moderate. He belongs to a branch of Islam that tries to integrate Islam in the modern world. But it seems that fundamentalist groups are gaining ground. The women are wearing veil, religious police are patrolling the streets, and it was prohibited to watch the soccer World Championship on TV.

An alternative government in Somalia is the so-called Transitional National Government. It was established in 2003 in Djibouti heavily supported by powers outside Somalia which saw an opening for influencing the political development - not least the neighbouring countries of Ethiopia and Kenya – and the USA. Many Somalians are living in Ethiopia and Kenya; the Somali ethnic group is living across borders, and during the past couple of decades hundred thousands of Somalians have left the country to live in the neighbouring countries. Thus, the unrest in Somalia is strongly affecting the situation in all countries on the Horn of Africa.

Car bomb epidemic

In February 2006, Somalia’s transitional government established offices in the city of Baidoa near the border to Ethiopia hoping soon to be able to move to Mogadishu 250 km away. In the meantime, the situation has developed in the wrong direction from the government’s point of view. The Courts have become stronger, and in stead of the government moving to Mogadishu, it looks as if the Islamists are moving towards Baidoa. In December, an epidemic of car bombs in Baidoa caused the government to prohibit motoring in the city. Ethiopia has followed the situation with growing concern, and in November the Ethiopian government deployed troops in Somalia to support the transitional government. In December, the Ethiopian troops and the Somalians clashed for the first time. At least 50 soldiers were killed, and it is only a question of time before they clash again. The USA is backing Ethiopia, which has led to further aggravation of the tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The government of Eritrea, which is already red alert on the border to Ethiopia, sees the deployment of troops as further proof that Ethiopia tries to become the superpower of the Horn of Africa. Consequently, Eritrea – with fatal logic – is supporting the Islamic Courts in Somalia.

Ethiopia and Eritrea have already fought two bloody wars: firstly, about Eritrea’s independence, secondly, about the delineation between the two countries. And they still disagree. A UN commission decided the delineation in favour of Eritrea, and Ethiopia is furious at losing yet another piece of territory after having to give up Eritrea as well as access to the sea. A couple of months ago, on the other side of the border, a still more paranoid Eritrean government deployed troops close to the border with the explanation that they should assist with the harvest, thus increasingly obstructing UN activities.

The relationship between the two countries and their ethnically closely related populations is therefore still extremely tense. After Eritrea’s independence, both countries seemed to be on a course towards democracy, but it ended abruptly. Eritrea is a real dictatorship, and last year the Ethiopian government was so disappointed at the huge progress of the opposition at the 2005 elections that it took a hard line against the opposition, the media and the civil society. Democracy is fine, but that does not mean that an opposition is welcome!

Despite such anti-democratic development, the USA can use Ethiopia as its extended arm in the area. The USA places the situation of Somalia on the UN agenda, and on 6 December 2006 a resolution was passed in the Security Council with the following points among others:

• That an African peace-keeping force is deployed for protection of the transitional government in Baidoa
• That the Islamic Courts are requested to stop their military activities
• That a dialogue is established between the two parties for obtaining peace and a permanent solution under the auspices of the transitional government

The Islamic Courts together with many Somalians see this resolution as USA’s war against Islam – an extension of the war in Iraq. Several EU countries are sceptical of the resolution which places UN troops in a tense and unpredictable political and military situation. African countries have to deliver the soldiers, and it is not difficult to imagine that these soldiers may soon be in the middle of bloody chaos surrounded by armed Somalians who have been at war for twenty years and are ignited by religion and nationalism. And the conflict may easily spread to the Somali populations in Ethiopia or Kenya.

Holy war

Negotiations seem to have been abandoned already. The Prime Minister of the transitional government, Ali Mohammed Gedi, said last week in Addis Ababa that “war is inevitable if the terrorists (the Islamic Courts, edit.) do not stop their invasion and aggression”.

That is a language which the USA understands. The Islamic Courts have encouraged to Islamic Jihad against the Ethiopians, and that is language which the Middle East understands.

In Somalia, the American government has found a new version of the Islamic arch-enemy, and – even better – proxy troops of Ethiopians and other African nationalities, which will join battle.

The result may well be that the fragile civil society in Somalia collapses in a new war and new chaos. That African troops with UN logo find themselves in the middle of a civil war. That thousands of Somalians flee their homeland. And that all the countries on Horn of Africa will be dragged into a meaningless war. The World’s newest focal point.

Feature in the Danish daily ”Information”, 21 December 2006.