Somalia: A new war-on-terror chapter

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf on Monday marked the fourth anniversary of his inauguration as the country's head of state, but any optimism he may have had of ushering in stability is tainted by a persistent insurgency and government in-fighting that continue to sideline progress on a fledgling peace process.

Instead of the usual fanfare of festivities on such occasions, the anniversary was celebrated in a low-key manner as authorities reflect on the current situation and the changing realities on the ground.

Both the government and the opposition remain strongly divided, with dispute centered on which approach - that of President Yusuf or that of Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein - the government should take to end the conflict. The opposition diverges over tactics of war and on whether talks with the government should be on the agenda.

After the escalation of their disputes in August, Somali leaders were summoned to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for talks with the opposition to resolve the internal power struggle threatening to derail the peace process. However, the deal reached there soon faltered and collapsed, with the Somali Parliament refusing to endorse part of the provisions of the agreement between President Yusuf and Prime Minister Hussein.

The differences between the two top leaders led to a external pageseries of resignations and sackingscall_made from the government, splitting the government literally down the middle into two factions.

The hawkish group surrounding President Yusuf believes there is no way to compromise with the opposition, while the dovish faction led by Hussein maintains that dialogue with every opposition group is the only way out of two decades of lawlessness, chaos and conflict for the war-torn Horn of Africa country.

The two men have been at loggerheads ever since the Somali premier embarked his quest for reconciliation with both moderate and more radical elements in the Somali opposition. Several rounds of talks were held in the Djiboutian capital since early this year and a number of tentative agreements and communiqués were signed between the government and opposition - but with little effect on the ground.

Fighting between insurgents and Somali government forces backed by Ethiopian African Union peacekeeping troops are as deadly as ever, with hundreds killed or wounded and thousands displaced since the signing of the Djibouti agreements.

Bolstering the moderates

While the government's Ethiopian allies have been working in vain to hold the ranks of the government together, the opposition has been drifting into increasingly radical and militant quarters. The opposition appears to have been courting a militant camp led by the feared Al-shabaab (Youth) Islamist Movement. The opposition also has joined forces to some extent with moderate groups led by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) - a movement that had swept to power in Somalia's south and central regions in the latter half of 2006. 

The ICU leaders, as part of the grand Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), have been participating in the Djibouti peace talks with the Somali government - a move strongly opposed by the Al-shabaab group, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the current transitional government and views Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers in Somalia as occupying forces, according to prominent Somali commentator Ibrahim Yasir.

"The two factions within both sides complement each other and the moderates in both sides have difficulty convincing their hardliners that the way forward is only dialogue," Yasir told ISN Security Watch in Mogadishu. "The hardliners on both sides point their fingers at each other and the real struggle is for both [groups of] moderates to overcome that hurdle."

In September, differences between the two insurgent camps escalated further when the Al-shabaab group threatened to shoot down aircraft, including civilian planes, using the Mogadishu airport. They said the facility, guarded by African Union troops, was being used for military purposes.

That threat was vehemently opposed by the ICU and revered local Hawiye clan elders in the Somali capital. They both urged Al-shabaab to rescind its threat to close down the airport, which they said was being used by civilians more than by AU peacekeepers or Ethiopian forces. Al-shabaab caved in and rescinded the threat after two weeks of shelling the airport and counter shelling from AU forces in a battle that led to the death of nearly 200 civilians and the wounding of some 350 more.

The rift between the two Islamist camps over tactics and general vision for the country is likely to lead to new clashes between former comrades who are now, more than ever, "external pageon the verge of warcall_made."

However, the international community's role at this stage, say observers, is to encourage and actively assist moderates in both camps to win over the hardliners so that alliances can be forged across government and opposition lines.

That, they say, is the real challenge for everyone interested in peace and reconciliation in Somalia.

In the latest round of peace talks in late September in Djibouti between a government delegation led by Prime Minister Hussein and opposition representatives headed by Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the two parties held a joint press conference at the conclusion of the talks without any formal ceasefire - a move hailed as the beginning of the end of the hardliners in both camps.

Furthermore, the reality on the ground also dispelled a number of myths created either by default or by design that a "security vacuum" would result in the event that Ethiopian troops withdrew from Somalia without a UN stabilization force to replace them, maintains Ahmed Yarow, a political scientist in Mogadishu.

"Look at the situation in the central Somalia regions from southern Galkayo, the provincial capital of Mudug, to Galgadud, Hiran and Middle Shabelle regions - that is four main provinces in central Somalia where fighters of the Islamic Courts Union have been in full control for the past months and they have been more peaceful and people were happy about it," Yarow told ISN Security Watch.

With that, says Yarow, the world could learn to appreciate the realities on the ground that have dispelled the myth created by the Ethiopian and US governments that a "so-called security vacuum" would be created by the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.

To the south of Mogadishu, Al-shabaab has taken over two major provinces including the main port city of Kismayu and adjacent districts where its members have formed their own Islamic administrations. According to Yarow, the group has managed to restore at least a semblance of law and order. Though some observers ask at what cost this temporary peace, others say living under Islamic rule is preferable to living under chaos, lawlessness and continual violence.

Closing another war on terror chapter

Ethiopian troops and their Somali allies have been withdrawing or being driven out of the whole of central Somalia up to a few kilometers to the north of the Somali capital and most of the southern provinces. There are external pagepersistent reportscall_made that the entire Somali government has been invited to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi for "a conference" this month at the request of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), of which Somalia is a member.

In effect, it appears that the government is relocating to Nairobi, its original birthplace, four years on. It also appears that the Ethiopian government is fed up with internal squabbling in the Somali government and the lack of progress toward seeing a UN stabilization force relieve Ethiopian of the Somalia burden.

"The silent withdrawal" of Somali and Ethiopian troops from most of the territories that they captured from the Islamist fighters in late 2006 and the reported "relocation" of the whole structures of government from their confines in Mogadishu and Baidoa to Nairobi suggest that the Somalia chapter of the US-led war on terror has failed and that a new approach is in the offing, argues Mohamed Fanah, of Mogadishu-based Centre for Peace and Democracy (CPD).

In an August interview with the external pageFinancial Timescall_made, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi lashed out at the international community for its lack of support in Somalia, saying that his government would withdraw its forces even if the current government was still weak.

"We didn't anticipate that the international community would be happy riding the Ethiopian horse and flogging it at the same time for so long," Zenawi told the Financial Times.

Asked if Ethiopia would withdraw its forces if such a move would endanger the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, Zenawi said that the two countries were "not joined at the hip."

"We will try everything in our capacity to create an environment where our withdrawal would not seriously disrupt this process in Somalia but that is not necessarily precondition for our withdrawal."

So for now all the indications are that, considering the shifting alliances and changing tactics in the Somali political and military situation, a whole new phase, albeit unclear and unpredictable, is emerging.