AFRICA-U.N.: Envoy Under Fire For “Refusing” To Visit Somalia

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 25 1997 (IPS) - Somalis based in Kenya say they will make a formal complaint to the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to protest against a decision by a special envoy to skip strife-torn Somalia during his fact-finding mission to the region.

Ismatt Kittani, an Iraqi diplomat, named by Annan as his special envoy to Somalia in July, visited only Ethiopia, D’jibouti, Yemen and Kenya, deepening an already prevailing hostility against the world body harboured by a powerful militia group of the late General Mohamed Farrah Aideed.

“All Somalis are very unhappy with Kittani’s refusal to travel to Somalia,” a Somali elder told IPS here on Monday. “As a result, we are writing to Kofi Annan within the next two weeks to register our complaint.”

It is not clear which group — many exist here — will take responsibility to lodge the complaint. “That is not important. We have already secured a consensus. Everybody here is agreed that we should write to Kofi Annan,” said the elder.

Hussein Ali Dualleh, the spokesperson of the ‘Somali Affairs Monitoring Group’, also confirmed to IPS on Monday that Somalis based in Kenya were not happy with Kittani’s refusal to visit their country. The Monitoring Group claims to protect the assets — ranging from embassy property, airplanes to vehicles — of the Somali government worldwide.

“Many people I have talked to said they would have prefered the U.N. envoy to make an effort to visit Somalia so that he could obtain first-hand information,” he said.

Dualleh, a former Somali ambassador to Kenya, said he met with the U.N. envoy for about 45 minutes here last week. “I told him my views about the solution to Somalia’s problems,” he said.

Also, in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the 36-year old former U.S. Marine corporal Husein Aideed, who maintains that he is the “legitimate president” of Somalia, reportedly refused to travel to Kenya to meet with Kittani.

He instead sent his vice-presidents — Hilole Omer and Mohamed Aliow — and foreign minister Jama Ghalib, as part of a six-member delegation to represent him at the talks in Nairobi on Aug. 21.

Husein Aideed, the son of the late powerful warlord Mohamed Farrah Aideed, controls south Mogadishu.

Also, Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, leader of the breakaway self- declared Republic of Somaliland in northwest Somalia, did not reportedly turn up in D’jibouti, a 45-minute flight from the republic’s capital Hargeissa, for talks with the U.N. envoy. He prefered to meet Kittani in Hargeissa.

Kittani, however, held talks with Ali Mahdi, another powerful warlord, whose forces control north Mogadishu, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. And, he also met with Aideed’s arch rival Osman Atto, in Nairobi last week.

U.N. sources here could not be reached for comments regarding the complaints raised against Kittani by the Somali community here.

Appointed in July for the second time in five years to become UN Special envoy to Somalia, Kittani is no stranger to the seemingly unending hostility faced by international organisations operating in the Horn of African country.

Kittani, an Iraqi Kurd, was first appointed as a special envoy by former U.N. chief Boutros Boutros Ghali, before the United Nations deployed a U.S.-led task force in Somalia in December, 1992. He was replaced in three months after he encountered hostilities from the late General Aideed, who regarded him as “an enemy of the Somali people”.

The request for his current appointment had been made by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Arab League, both of which have been searching for a peaceful solution to the conflict in Somalia.

Somalia collapsed into the anarchy of warlord politics with the overthrow of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Some 30,000 soldiers were sent to the country in 1992, following the deaths of some 300,000 Somalis in 1991-92 due to starvation, famine-related diseases and civil strife.

The role of the four-billion-dollar operation was to halt the looting of food convoys by warring militias.

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

Later Ethiopia and Kenya stepped in to fill the vacuum created by the departure of the United Nations from Somalia. President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya brought together the three main Somali factions in Nairobi in October 1996, but nothing tangible has come out of these talks.

Ethiopia has now thrown its lot behind the peace talks in Bossaso in northeast Somalia. But Egal and Aideed have refused to take part in the parley. “For any peace talks to succeed, all Somali factions must be involved. Otherwise it will be a waste of time, money and energy,” said Dualleh.

Driving a further rift between Somalia and the U.N., Hussein Ali Elmi, a spokesperson for a Somali faction “Soomaaliya”, issued a statement here recently casting doubt over the U.N.’s 50- million-dollar figure that the world body said it had spent in Somalia last year.

“That money which was collected from donors in the name of Somalia was spent by U.N. officials in Somalia. And much of it went into private accounts, using only a small amount in Somalia,” he claimed.

“This is because there is no central government in Somalia to monitor U.N. projects and activities. And the Somali faction leaders are too busy with their differences that they don’t bother about what the U.N. does in Somalia,” said Elmi.

His claims have, however, been described by a U.N. official here as “nonsense”. “These so-called Somali politicians sit in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and D’jibouti and they don’t have a clue what we do on the ground in Somalia,” he said.