From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Feb 02 2010 - 15:15:36 EST
Violence Marks Somali Government's Year Anniversary
Somalia's U.N.-supported Transitional Federal Government marked its one-year
anniversary under former Islamist opposition leader Sharif Sheik Ahmed last
week amid one of the most intense insurgent attacks in the capital in
months. There are dwindling expectations that the government can bring peace
to its citizens, and Somalis are increasingly blaming the international
community for the country's worsening problems.
Alisha Ryu | Mogadishu 02 February 2010
Photo: AFP
An African Union peacekeeping forces tank takes up a position near
Mogadishu's State House as Pres. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's Somali government
commemorates the 1st anniversary under his rule (File)
January 29 was supposed to have been a day of celebration. In the sprawling
presidential compound known as Villa Somalia, preparations had been made to
mark the one-year anniversary of the new transitional government with poetry
readings and a military parade.
But the country's most powerful Islamist insurgent group, al-Shabab, and an
allied rebel group, Hizbul Islam, had something different in mind to mark
the occasion.
The attack on government troops and African Union peacekeepers began around
two o'clock in the morning with a crash of mortars and automatic machine gun
fire, which could be heard from the south end of Mogadishu to the north.
The peacekeepers, who have a mandate to hit back if attacked, launched a
counter-barrage, firing a combination of heavy artillery, Katyusha rockets
and tank rounds into the inky blackness that gave cover to insurgents but
left residents inside homes helpless to avoid the rockets and shells raining
down around them.
When the fighting ended hours later, local hospitals reported that more than
a dozen civilians had been killed and another 35 wounded. The government
canceled the day's festivities.
It is a situation that has become all too familiar for residents in this
embattled city. A U.N.-mediated deal in 2008, which added hundreds of
moderate Islamists into the ranks of the government and ended Ethiopia's
two-year occupation of Somalia, has yet to translate into safety and
security for civilians.
AP
A Islamic fighter is seen through a hole caused by shrapnel in a wall, in
Mogadishu, Somalia (File)
The Transitional Federal Government, or the TFG, continues to be violently
opposed by Islamist insurgents, most notably al-Shabab, which has proclaimed
allegiance to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab militants, who control most districts in
the capital and key towns throughout southern Somalia, have imposed their
austere version of Islam in areas they have seized, shocking Somalis into
submission with such punishments as public beheadings and amputations of
limbs.
The only military force capable of keeping the government from being toppled
is the 5,300 troops from Uganda and Burundi making up the African Union
peacekeeping mission known as AMISOM. But since their arrival in Somalia in
2007, AMISOM troops, particularly from Uganda, have been severely criticized
for retaliatory attacks, which have caused untold number of civilian
casualties in Mogadishu.
Fartun Abdisalam Aden, who heads the Mogadishu-based human rights
organization Elman Peace Center, says Somalis are no longer seeing a light
at the end of the tunnel.
"People in the beginning of this government had hope. They were thinking,
'Things might get better," Aden said. "It will change.' Now, it is getting
worse and nothing is working. I think the international community made a
mistake. People are dying and people do not have hope anymore. Whomever
you talk to, they think, 'Every year it is getting worse. What are we
waiting [for] now?' We do not know," he said.
Government officials insist it could improve security and public services
immediately if they had direct access to more than $200 million the
international donor community pledged last year to support the TFG and the
African Union mission.
First Deputy Prime Minister Abdurahman Aden Ibrahim "Ibbi" tells VOA most of
the money that has been promised to the Somali government has been given to
U.N. and U.S. government agencies for release to the government at their
discretion. Ibbi says only a fraction of the pledged amount has been
released so far.
"We are weak because the international community is not supporting this
government the way it is supposed to," he said. "All the money that was
supposed to be given to the Somali people has been given to international
organizations. We have been defending ourselves for one year with no
money. Today, they are saying, 'We are training.' Still they are not giving
us money! We do not have any friends now, to be honest with you. If they
are our friends, let them give us something concrete," said Aden.
A respected civil society leader Abdullahi Mohamed Shirwa agrees that there
has been inadequate support for the TFG from the international community.
He says that is because the international community - which has tried 14
times in the past two decades to create a central government for Somalia
without the participation of Somalis at the grassroots level - is itself
divided over how best to guide and work with the new transitional
government.
"They cannot create a consensus among themselves to support the Somali
government or the Somali peace process. Someone says, 'Go ahead.' Others
are saying, 'No, no.' And they are fighting among us - Ethiopia-Eritrea,
African Union-Arab League, European-American, whatever. They do not have a
common policy toward Somalia," he said.
In 2008, when the United Nations spearheaded efforts to create a new
transitional government composed of both TFG officials and members of a
former Islamist opposition faction, the aim was to establish a government
that had the political and religious legitimacy to bring about a national
reconciliation and end nearly two decades of civil war.
AP
Personnel Armored Vehicles stand in front of Villa Somalia in Mogadishu
(2006 file photo)
Abdullahi Mohamed Shirwa says what the United Nations actually created was a
government of bickering factions that could barely manage issues inside
Villa Somalia, let alone the rest of the country.
"We talk many times to the international community. We told them Somalis
cannot maintain 40 ministers and 550 parliament members. It is very huge.
It cannot work," he stressed. "They are a lot of different groups. They
are fighting amongst themselves day and night. The problem is the
international community always engage in peace process and establish Somali
governments, which have no legitimacy in the local communities. And after
they establish it, they sit in Nairobi and say, 'Let us see how they do.'
And they are not supporting it. They are saying, 'They [the government] are
not transparent. They are not accountable to anybody.' Why didn't they
think before the establishment [of the government]?" asked Shirwa.
The increasing threat of an al-Shabab takeover, continuing violence, and the
inability of the Transitional Federal Government to act decisively are
driving Somalis out of Mogadishu and the rest of the country at an alarming
rate. In parts of central and southern Somalia, the crisis is also fueling
movements among groups aligned with the TFG to create autonomous
administrations that can provide public services and offer some degree of
stability and protection from al-Shabab.
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