“The extremist al Shabaab Islamist group is best placed to take control of Mogadishu, but this is not a foregone conclusion,” said David Shinn, a U.S. expert on the Horn of Africa at George Washington University.
While al Shabaab have spearheaded attacks this year to become the face of the insurgency, they lack popular support, and do not have enough fighters to rule on their own without alliances with Islamist movements, analysts say.
Al Shabaab’s hardline ways — such as strict imposition of sharia law, banning drinking or films, and the beheading of several suspected government collaborators — sit uncomfortably with many among Somalia’s traditionally moderate Muslims.
Both of these articles point to the same reality. Islamists will be ruling Somalia. The question is what kind of Islamists will be ruling Somalia and will they work with the west and put a check on the things we worry about? Namely harboring terrorists and allowing piracy. Al Shabaab is way to extremist for Somalis, and once they have taken control and there is no one else to fight, how will the Somalis view their form of Sharia Law?
Strategically, I think that is the idea. Let them take the city, and then diplomatically we support the moderate factions who would be better to negotiate with in the future and better for the people of Somalia. The support should not be overt though, because anything the west touches, will disgust the local populations.
And get the Ethiopians out of there, because those forces are infuriating the local populations and driving support to Al Shabaab. When the dust settles, we must find a competitor to Al Shabaab who is willing to work with the west and the rest of the world, and who also can win the support of the people. Good luck with that one though, and that is the challenge. A good first step towards that goal though is to reshuffle the deck, and watch what happens when Ethiopia leaves, the President resigns and more than likely Al Shabaab takes over.
–Matt
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Somalia: Fresh turmoil, uncertainty as president resigns
Date: 29 Dec 2008
NAIROBI, 29 December 2008 (IRIN) – Fresh turmoil and uncertainty loom for the people of Somalia – already ravaged by displacement, conflict, drought and hyper-inflation – after the country’s interim president resigned on 29 December.
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed resigned after disagreements with parliament and his prime minister, as well as pressure from the international community.
“President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned at around 1000am local time. The speaker of parliament, Sheikh Aden Madobe, is now the acting president until a new one is elected,” Abdi Haji Gobdon, the government spokesman told IRIN.
Gobdon said parliament had to elect a new president within 30 days, according to the interim constitution.
Yusuf’s resignation comes days after the man he appointed as prime minister, Mohamed Mahamud Guled, resigned – in defiance of parliament.
Yusuf, a former warlord, was elected four years ago to a five-year term in the hope that he would bring peace and stability to the war-torn country.
According to local sources, Yusuf, in a resignation speech, told parliament he had failed to do so, and blamed both Somalis and the international community for his failure.
Clash with premier
Yusuf and the Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein had clashed over attempts to negotiate a peace deal with the Islamist-led armed opposition.
Yusuf was opposed to peace talks held in Djibouti which brought together representatives of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and a faction of the Eritrea-based opposition group, the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), led by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
The ex-president regarded these talks as “a plan to weaken his power”, said a Somali political observer. “He saw the whole process as a way to sideline him.”
According to the observer, Yusuf could still pose a serious obstacle to peace in the country. “He will most likely re-establish his political base in Puntland and use that as a bargaining chip.”
A member of parliament in the Yusuf camp, who requested anonymity, told IRIN Yusuf was pressured into resigning by the international community.
“He was forced to resign and it will not lead to peace and stability,” said the MP who was speaking from Galkayo, Yusuf’s home town.
“Warlordism”
A Somali civil society source told IRIN Yusuf’s departure would be positive if it meant the end of “warlordism” in the country.
“If it marks the end of a warlord era then it is positive and we welcome it.”
He said the resignation should be accompanied by serious changes in the TFG “if anything positive is to come out of it”.
A Nairobi-based regional analyst who preferred anonymity, welcomed Yusuf’s resignation, calling it “very positive”.
“This is a very positive and long-awaited step that removes impediments to the Djibouti peace process,” he said, adding that considerable challenges remain.
He said the TFG and the Djibouti wing of ARS need to move quickly to form a broad-based government. “They need to move with greater urgency to form a unity government and bring in others opposed to the process.”
Ethiopian forces
Many Somalis will remember Yusuf as the man who brought Ethiopian forces into Somalia, which led to a fierce insurgency and the displacement of over a million people.
Over the past couple of months, insurgents comprising Islamist Al-Shabab, nationalists and militia clans opposed to foreign forces, have taken control of more than a dozen localities, according to a local journalist.
The TFG has control only over Mogadishu and the town of Baidoa, 240km southwest of Mogadishu, where the parliament is based.
At least 16,000 Somalis died between 2007 and 2008 and more than 30,000 were injured, according to local human rights groups. According to the UN, 2.6 million Somalis need assistance. That number is expected to reach 3.5 million by the end of the year.
Somalia has the highest levels of malnutrition in the world, with up to 300,000 children acutely malnourished annually, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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ANALYSIS-Ethiopia pullout opens door for Somali Islamists
Tue 9 Dec 2008, 10:08 GMT
By Andrew Cawthorne
NAIROBI, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Unless U.S. ally Ethiopia is bluffing about a plan to withdraw soldiers from Somalia within weeks, it will usher in a probable power vacuum and a perilous new chapter in the Horn of Africa nation’s bloody history.
The exit of Ethiopia’s remaining 3,000 or so troops at the end of the year will leave the weak, Western-backed government exposed to Islamist insurgents already knocking on Mogadishu’s door.
The government controls little more than its own bases in the capital and the parliamentary seat of Baidoa — and even that with the help of Ethiopian soldiers.
The African Union has about 3,200 peacekeepers in Mogadishu, but they would be unable to resist an Islamist takeover even if it were in their mandate.
There is talk too, among regional diplomatic circles, that they would like to follow the Ethiopians out of Somalia fast.
And should the United Nations overcome its reluctance to intervene in Somalia, where a disastrous mission in the 1990s led to ignominious exit, it would take at least six months to get a peacekeeping force ready.
So exactly two years after the Ethiopians drove the Islamists out of Mogadishu, there appears little stopping their comeback in an about-turn mocking the efforts of the West to make President Abdullahi Yusuf’s government work.
The Islamists’ main obstacle is their own disunity.
Should the insurgents — who already control large swathes of south and central Somalia — take the war-shattered capital again at the New Year, they will not be the homogenous movement they were during a six-month rule in 2006.
This time, there are deep divisions, ranging from the militant al Shabaab movement, to moderate elements in the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) who support power-sharing with the government.
“The extremist al Shabaab Islamist group is best placed to take control of Mogadishu, but this is not a foregone conclusion,” said David Shinn, a U.S. expert on the Horn of Africa at George Washington University.
While al Shabaab have spearheaded attacks this year to become the face of the insurgency, they lack popular support, and do not have enough fighters to rule on their own without alliances with Islamist movements, analysts say.
Al Shabaab’s hardline ways — such as strict imposition of sharia law, banning drinking or films, and the beheading of several suspected government collaborators — sit uncomfortably with many among Somalia’s traditionally moderate Muslims.
“LET THE CARDS FALL”
“If Ethiopia goes, the main rationale for Shabaab’s jihad goes, and they will be isolated. Then the ICU and the pro-peace wing of the ARS would come to the fore,” one diplomat said.
“Let the cards fall. There will be a bit of fighting and revenge-taking, then they will do the usual deal-making among themselves. There is no option now but to let the Somalis work it out. We should hope that a democratic Islamic state, like Malaysia, Singapore or Pakistan emerges. Why not?”
An obvious alternative would be chaos, feuding fiefdoms, and a further deterioration of the country that tops the index of failed states prepared by the Washington-based Fund for Peace.
Somalia’s breakdown has already contributed to a surge of piracy that has brought Western navies rushing to protect the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
Some doubt Ethiopia will pull out.
There is conjecture too, among Somalis and experts, that Washington is pressing its ally to stay in for fear of a takeover by al Shabaab and others whom the United States see as al Qaeda proxies.
But the signs from Addis Ababa are that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is serious.
He is genuinely fed up with the financial cost of his Somali mission, the lack of progress by Yusuf and other squabbling leaders, and the absence of a serious, international effort to pacify Somalia, analysts say.
“Ethiopia’s decision to withdraw its troops from Somalia is final and irreversible. Ethiopia serious and is not bluffing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wahade Belay said.
Ethiopian officials do say, however, that logistics might delay a complete exit by a few days beyond the stated year-end deadline, meaning it would be completed in early January.
A pullback is not the end of Ethiopian involvement, though. It will keep troops on the border, ready to spring back in should there be a threat to its interests.
“The security stakes for Ethiopia are far too high for it to do anything else. Ethiopia is ‘pulling out’ but not ‘pulling away’ from Somalia,” said another Somalia expert, Ken Menkhaus.
During the Islamist rule of 2006, and again now in Islamist-taken areas, Somalis have a nuanced view. They welcome the order and security the Islamists bring, but chafe under the imposition of strict religious rules.
Many are bracing for yet another period of instability in the seemingly incessant rounds of violence gripping the country since 1991. Just the last two years’ fighting has killed about 10,000 civilians, made more than a million homeless, and left about three million hungry.
“I am afraid when Ethiopia withdraws, Somalis will just kill themselves,” said Omar Muhudin Abudar, a 24-year-old Mogadishu student, expressing the general fear of the future. (Additional reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled in Mogadishu and Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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