SOMALIA-POLITICS: Shoved out of the Limelight

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Nov 15 1996 (IPS) - Overshadowed though it is by the conflict in eastern Zaire, strife-torn Somalia is refusing to be completely blacked out from the international limelight.

As the United Nations and the international community concentrated on Zaire, Somalis held a peace meeting in Kenya and prepared to do so in Ethiopia.

In Kenya, a group of 30 Somalis Friday began a four-day seminar on Decentralised Political Structures for Somalia. The seminar in Nakuru, some 200 kms west of here, has been funded by the European Union (EU).

“This project is in line with the belief shared by the majority of Somalis that administrative decentralisation and institutional power sharing are the prerequisites for a peaceful and durable solution to the Somalia crisis,” Sigurd Illing, EC Special Envoy to Somalia, said on Friday.

He said the participants had been invited on a personal basis because of their position in their community, their experience and their qualifications, all of which enable them to speak for a large cross-section of their compatriots.

“… they are not invited as representatives of any political or social organisation,” said Illing. “The participants include a former Somali prime minister, former ministers and ambassadors, as well as religious and traditional leaders.”

The Nakuru workshop should concide with a meeting of faction leaders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Called by Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, it is a follow up to one held here a month ago under the auspices of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi.

But, up to Friday, only Ali Mahdi Mohamed of the Somali Salvation Alliance (SSA) had turned up in Addis Ababa. Conspicuous by their absence were Hussein Mohamed Aideed and Osman Hassan Ali Atto, whose forces were reported to be fighting in South Mogadishu on Friday.

The two men head rival factions of the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance (USC/SNA).

The fighting in South Mogadishu followed the abduction of Halima Hassan Ali, a sister of Osman Atto. She was kidnapped on Wednesday by eight gunmen who forced her out of the vehicle she was travelling in and ordered her to follow them.

Omar Hassan Ganey, a spokesman for Atto’s faction, immediately described the act as a political abduction. “We don’t expect demands for any kinds of ransom. We demand her immediate release,” he had told journalist in south Mogadishu soon after the abduction.

Halima Hassan Ali was finally released on Thursday night.

Osman Atto broke with the late General Mohamed Farah Aideed two years ago. Immediately after Aideed’s death in August, Osman Atto and Ali Mahdi Mohamed offered an olive branch to his successor and son, Hussein Aideed, a former U.S. marine corporal.

Hussein Aideed reciprocated, but the truce failed to hold. Fighting erupted and Somalia returned to the anarchy that had forced the U.S./UN to send an intervention force there following the death in 1991-92 of some 300,000 Somalis due to starvation, famine-related diseases and civil strife.

Washington withdrew its troops in 1994 after 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.

At last month’s meeting in Nairobi, attended by all three faction leaders, Moi said he was convinced that peace was around the corner in the Horn of African nation.

However, Somalis here are less optimistic. “To me, all these problems will end if only the Americans and the United Nations troops return to Somalia,” Islan Mohamed, a Somali businesman in Nairobi told IPS on Friday. “Everybody is ready to host the Americans and the UN troops except the warlords.”

But while U.S. and U.N. troops are returning to Africa, they are to be sent to Zaire, not Somalia.

The U.S. contigent is to join a proposed multinational force, which will be led by Canada, to provide a corridor for the distribution of food to the over one million Burundian and Rwandan refugees scattered by the fighting in eastern Zaire.

In Eastern Zaire, a war between local Tutsi rebels and the Zairean army has, since the rout of the latter a few weeks ago, become a conflict pitting the rebels, on the one hand, and the former Rwandan army (FAR) and its Hutu militia allies on the other.

On Friday, the rebels reportedly drove the FAR/militia from the last refugee camp they held, located at Mugunga, near the Zairean border town of Goma.

As Zaire moves to the top of the international peacekeeping agenda, there is little attention for Somalia.

“Somalia seems to have been forgotten by the international community,” said an academic here who monitors the region. “Unless Kenya and Ethiopia step up pressure, I don’t think that the world will bother about Somalia.”