By Moyiga Nduru
NAIROBI, Jul 30 1996 (IPS)

Somalia’s warlords have been locked in a bitter struggle for the control of transport facilities that are the key to the country’s export trade.

In March and April, Merca, a small port 90 km south of Mogadishu, was rocked by fighting and, in late July, rival clans clashed over Ballidogle airport, 90 km west of the Somali capital.

All the battles have pitted the militia of General Mohamed Farah Aideed, the man who thwarted efforts by a U.S.-led force to capture him during a two-year U.N. intervention that ended in 1995, against those of rival faction leaders.

The latest round of fighting began on Jul. 25 when the ‘Force for Peace’, made up of three factions, overran Ballidogle airport, cutting Aideed off from one of his economic and military lifelines.

The Force for Peace comprises three groups, one loyal to Aideed’s arch-foe, Ali Mahdi, another that swears allegiance to Osman Hassan Ali ‘Atto’, Aideed’s financier-turned-foe, and a third made up of the Awalde clan.

The combined force also attacked Aideed’s militiamen in the Medina district of Mogadishu.

Since then, there had been various rumours about Aideed’s fate. The ‘Force for Peace’ claimed that he had been “seriously wounded” in the fighting. Others said he had been flown to neighbouring Kenya for treatment and there were even claims that he had died.

On Sunday Aideed went on his faction’s radio station, ‘The Voice of the Masses of the Somali Republic’ and denied that he had been wounded in the Medina fighting. “The enemy’s wishes can neither kill nor wound me,” he said. “I will only die when my time runs out and when Allah wishes.”

He also commended his forces for retaking Ballidogle airport on Saturday, adding that his enemies had suffered “such heavy losses that they will never be able to recover”.

Aideed, who controls northern Mogadishu and parts of southern Somalia, has been on the defensive since March, when fighting broke out between his forces and those of Atto over the control of the lucrative banana export to Europe.

Aideed needs the banana revenue, estimated at around 800,000 dollars a month, to pay his soldiers as he tries to establish his control in the Bay and Bakool regions, which lie west and northwest of Modagishu respectively, and take on a rival clan, the Rahenweyne.

The fighting had erupted over the control of Merca, which is Aideed’s naval economic lifeline.

“The port was renovated by two tiny foreign firms — an Italian company called Somali Fruit and an American company called Sombana — when the main port of Mogadishu was closed by Ali Mahdi following a quarrel over the banana trade last year,” said Hussein Ali Dualleh of the Nairobi-based Somali Affairs Monitoring Committee.

“The two companies renovated Merca and pay Aideed 20 cents for every carton they export. That comes roughly to about 800,000 dollars a month during the peak season from April to August,” he told IPS. Additional levies bring in an extra 200,000 dollars to Aideed’s coffers each month, he said.

Atto and Ali Mahdi had blocked Aideed from using Mogadishu port last October. Then, in March, Atto threatened that the combined force would close Merca unless Aideed shared the revenue from that port.

In the battle that followed, Aideed’s forces were overrun. However, a full-scale war was averted when elders of the Habir Gedir clan, to which both Aideed and Atto belong, persuaded the latter to withdraw his militia.

Before the anarchy that followed the overthrow of former dictator Siad Barre in 1991, the country earned some 20 million dollars annually, around 15 percent of its export income, from the sale of its bananas.

Now, any money that comes in goes to whoever can control the fertile Lower Shabelle region, where much of Somalia’s food is grown, and the country’s ports.

In addition to Merca, Ali Mahdi has another port which he had built at Al Eel Maan, 30 kms north of Mogadishu.

While the warlords fight for political and economic control, most Somalis are struggling to survive. With the withdrawal of the U.N.peacekeeping mission in 1995 and the sharp drop in the number of foreign aid agencies willing to risk operating in Somalia, jobs are scarce.

The four-billion-dollar U.S/UN intervention had been prompted by the death in 1991-1992 of some 300,000 people due to starvation, famine-related diseases and civil strife.

Washington withdrew its troops in 1994 after Aideed supporters killed around 60 U.S. soldiers. In March 1995, the United Nations also pulled out, leaving Somalia at the mercy of its warlords.

For peace to come to Somalia, says Hussein Dimbil of the Somali Affairs Monitoring Committee here, all the warlords would have to leave the country.

“For seven years the Somali people have witnessed nothing but suffering,” he says. “The warlords have shown us that they are only looking for personal interest. They should all go.”

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