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Violence in Somalia Continues 

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Somali news

RELATIVE calm prevailed in the Somali capital Mogadishu yesterday after days of fierce fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents, which killed at least 24 people.

Meanwhile, the bodies of 11 Russians were recovered from the wreckage of the plane that exploded in mid-air on Friday afternoon. Capt. Paddy Ankunda, the spokesman for the African Union (AU) peacekeepers who control the airport, said it was too early to tell what caused the crash.

But the government of Belarus said its plane was hit by a missile, according to Reuters. “The plane was shot down,” transport ministry spokeswoman Kseniya Perestoronina said in Minsk. She added that the large Ilyushin plane, in Somalia to assist the AU peacekeepers, was hit at a height of 150 metres.

The plane had carried engineers and equipment to repair another aircraft, carrying Ugandan soldiers and equipment, which caught fire during landing on March 9.

The crew and the Ugandans came out unharmed but some armoured personnel carriers are reportedly still stuck in the back of the plane. The AU is investigating the incident but the government of Belarus announced the plane had been hit by a mortar.

In the midst of the heat, the Ugandan soldiers are upbeat about the task in hand, as they also set about winning over the hearts and minds of local people.

As the vanguard of the planned 8,000-strong AU force, known as AMISOM, the 1,500 Ugandan troops have set up their headquarters in the ruins of a Mogadishu villa.

Inside to the hum of crackling radios, shouting and walking about, staff officers have moved into windswept rooms equipped with a few pieces of plastic furniture. “We are still settling down. We are lacking means but we are doing our best to implement our mandate,” the commander of the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia General Levi Karuhanga told the reporter of the French press agency AFP.

“Our mandate is to provide support and assistance to the TFG (Somali Transitional Government) to enable it to rebuild Somalia and to carry out the reconciliation process.”

At their camp near the city’s international airport, dozens of khaki tents have been erected while machetes are used to clear the immense compound and sandbags are piled up on the principle routes.

For the soldiers’ relaxation, a television has been hooked up to a satellite antenna in a large building where sandbags provide the office wall and stones improvise to serve as seats.

“We are buying our supplies from local suppliers and we are cooking here. We are still receiving some equipment and step by step we are settling down,” Captain Ankunda said.

Faced with cases of malaria and acute diarrhoea among the troops, a field hospital was quickly set up, which has also proven a way of reaching out to the local population.

“We receive civilians too suffering from cholera, as our soldiers,” said army doctor Joseph Sabila.

“The problem comes from water that is contaminated. Now we see the number of cases decreasing among our men because we received a filtering machine.”

For the Ugandan soldiers, it is important to step up direct contact with local people.

Several Islamist leaders who controlled parts of the country until the end of last year before being defeated by the Ethiopian-backed Somali government had vowed to attack foreigners.

“Now that we have treated some people, the word is spreading that we are not nasty or dangerous and the people are coming,” Captain Ambrose Oiko, of the health services, said.

After two days of clashes this week, the Ugandan troops prepared a convoy of armoured vehicles for its first venture into the centre of Mogadishu, where fierce fighting raged for three straight days.

AU peacekeepers have taken up position at the notorious but strategic K4 junction in southern Mogadishu, and control the port, airport and government headquarters.

“From here we will organise patrols and steadily spread out to all the areas of the town and secure it. But we need to receive the whole force to do so,” operations’ commander Colonel Peter Elwelu said. Among the Ugandan troops are 40 women.

One is 23-year-old Lieutenant Winnie Nyakwera Baguma, who is hardly visible atop her tank, which becomes a throbbing mass of tonnes of steel as the tracks start moving.

“I’m a pioneer, I’m the first woman in the whole Ugandan army to become tank team leader,” she said proudly. “I’m also the first one in my family to have entered the army.”

Asked about the Soviet-made T-55 tank, this petit woman clad in a camouflage helmet said: “I like it because they are combative vehicles, they are the support of infantry in battles.

“And the tank is the king of jungle.”
Their bosses in Kampala, too, are optimistic about the operation. In a press conference on Saturday, defence minister Crispus Kiyonga blasted the media for what he described as portraying the situation in Mogadishu in an alarmist way.

“Those who wish our troops bad luck have been issuing very negative speculations about the forces,” he said. “They (Ugandan public) should disregard those fabrications and treat them with the contempt they deserve.”

Kiyonga emphasised that the UPDF was in Somalia on a pan-African mission to assist “our brothers and sisters in long troubled Somalia.”

The Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, added: “Our troops have the full support of the majority of the Somali people. After 16 years of statelessness in Somalia, the situation is under control.”

President Yoweri Museveni, while receiving a UN delegation on Friday, said efforts were being made to reach out to all the parties in Somalia.

He called on the UN to support the transitional government, encourage dialogue among the warring Somali groups and maintain an all-inclusive approach to the peace initiatives.

Ungovernable Somalia and the Imminent Collision of Hegemonic Interests

Modern day Somalia became a nation of profound paradox and a web of political conundrum — a country where perception is always reality; where the “mundane” is a cherished deadly thrill; where “new” political dynamics are nothing but old, and, where potential “solutions” are problems. But, that is not all.

Once again, Somalia became a magnetic political rink that lures powerful entities with incompatible strategic interests into a potentially deadly competition that causes more suffering for that dying state.

In the past it was between the super powers of the Cold War who armed Somalia to the danger zone and paved the way to its ongoing demise. Today, it is between partners on the “global war on terror” with dichotomous interests: Ethiopia — a country lately became known as ‘the Hegemon of the Horn’ — and Washington.

Beneath the veneer of their mutual strategic interest highlighted by their recent military cooperation against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) there is an intriguing political undercurrent that is rapidly gathering momentum as Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the leadership of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) continue their “business as usual” approach and implement a successive, haphazard set of initiatives that proven to add fuel to inter-clan deadly polarization and keep Somalia in perpetual chaos. The reckless invasion of the residence of an influential clan leader as he met with other clan elders and the former president of the Transitional National Government is but one such example.


The Ethiopian/US invasion prematurely ended a delicate peace process, six months of law and order, and threw Mogadishu back into that all too familiar vacuum of nihilism. Today, motors and artilleries are routinely fired from all directions; assassinations — including high profile ones — became part of the daily rituals; robbery and rape became rampant, and a full-fledged insurgency is underway.

The latter was ignited by the Ethiopian occupation which is seen by the majority of Somalis as that country’s centuries-old hegemonic aspiration coming to fruition. Not only because the TFG Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister recently insinuated annexation enthusiastically, but because of the reports of systematic establishment of new “facts on the ground” that continues to settle thousands of Ethiopian families in various regions such as “Somaliland” and “Puntland” that could, in due course, make annexation of Somalia a tantalizing option.

That is why many Somalis are generally skeptical of the authenticity of the TFG. To many, there is no difference between the TFG led by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi and President Abdullahi Yusuf and the Ethiopian regime led by Meles. They consider the first duo as self-serving charlatans and the latter as their master and puppeteer.

Yet, as ironic as it may be, the trio insists on convening a “national reconciliation congress” and is already appealing to the international community for the most important element in attaining their objective: “urgent funding.” They are determined to bring together 3000 Somalis who would neither see this as flawed process nor as a delusional enterprise.

According to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi "The situation in Somalia is broadly positive in a sense that the transitional government is embarking on a reconciliation process.” On the other hand, according to the Somali civil societies, voices coming from various Somali intellectual circles and the Diaspora-based organizations: a reconciliation conference that grants one of the parties in conflict the sole authority to dictate who participates, under what terms and preconditions, and more importantly, who arbitrates would, at best, prove an extravagant exercise in futility.

In the mean time, the Bush administration is undergoing a great deal of pressure.

The clock is ticking rapidly toward the end of their second term. The pendulum started to swing back as the administration apparently started to cleanse itself from the influence of a number of Islamophobic and zealot officials; Congress has a new majority, and lawmakers such as Russ Feingold, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, are turning up the heat- they are publicly expressing their dissatisfaction with the current policy toward Somalia and are soliciting a better alternative.

However, even with its current policy toward Somalis, the Bush administration realizes the importance of restoring law and order in Mogadishu and establishing a “broad-based” government to the attainment of its strategic goals. It is for this reason that the State Department is actively pushing to bring back ousted leaders such as the last Speaker of the Parliament, Sharif Hassan Aden, and the Islamic courts leaders such as Shiekh Sharif Ahmed.

These leaders carry significant political credibility and clout that could help disarm Mogadishu, restore peace and order, and give credence to any future (mutually organized) intra-Somali reconciliation conference. Alas, neither one is in the Meles’ approved list.

For Meles who micromanaged most of the 14 previously failed “reconciliation” conferences, maintaining the status quo is the sure approach to attaining his overall objective. It is what diverted attention away from him; what veiled his dictatorial tendencies and his regime’s systematic disenfranchisement of certain ethnic groups such as the Amhara; what gave him a carte blanche on human rights abuse; and, of course, secured his country an endless follow of US taxpayers’ dollars as a “partner” in the perpetual global war on terror.

Obviously, that which benefits Meles does not only hurt Somalia.

Abukar Arman is a freelance writer who lives in Ohio.

 People Fleeing Somalia War Secretly Detained

(New York, March 31, 2007) � Kenya, Ethiopia, the United States and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia cooperated in a secret detention program for people who had fled the recent conflict in Somalia, Human Rights Watch said today. In a March 22 letter to the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Human Rights Watch detailed the arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting between the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia from December 2006 through January 2007.

"Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. "Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to 'disappear,' and US security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado."

Human Rights Watch's recent research in Kenya indicates that since late December 2006, Kenyan security forces arrested at least 150 individuals from some 18 different nationalities at the Liboi and Kiunga border crossing points with Somalia. The Kenyan authorities then transferred these individuals to Nairobi where they were detained incommunicado and without charge for weeks in violation of Kenyan law.

Human Rights Watch recognizes that Kenya may have valid security concerns regarding people seeking refuge within its borders. Nonetheless these concerns must be addressed through a fair process in accordance with international law, not arbitrarily at the expense of fundamental human rights.

US and other national intelligence services interrogated several foreign nationals in detention in Nairobi, who were denied access to legal counsel and their consular representatives. At least 85 people were then secretly deported from Kenya to Somalia in what appears to be a joint rendition operation of those individuals of interest to the Somali, Ethiopian, or US governments.

Human Rights Watch obtained the flight manifests for three flights from Kenya to Mogadishu and Baidoa, Somalia in January and February 2007. Each manifest listed the names of several Kenyan police officers who accompanied the detainees.

Many of the people expelled from Kenya were later transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia, but their exact locations in Ethiopia are unknown. Several detainees managed to briefly contact relatives prior to or following their transfer to Ethiopia, and said they were being held with numerous other people who had been deported from Kenya and Somalia.

"Dozens of people have effectively disappeared into Ethiopian detention facilities," said Gagnon. "It's imperative that the Ethiopians acknowledge the people they are holding and permit independent international access to them."

Plane Crashes in Mogadishu

 Mogadishu, Somali - A plane has crashed shortly after taking off from the main airport in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Local witnesses said they saw columns of smoke on the ground. The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

One reporter said he saw a missile hit the plane but this is not confirmed. It crashed in the northern suburbs, where there was no fighting on Friday.

A spokesman for the Uganda peacekeepers in Somalia, who control the airport, said 11 people were on board.

"I saw the plane on fire... One of the wings exploded in the air... When it hit the ground, another explosion occurred," local resident Hassan Mahamud Jama told Reuters news agency.

Some reports said the plane crashed because of a mechanical failure.

Capt Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for Uganda's peacekeepers in Somalia, said he was aware of reports of a plane crash but was unable to confirm this.

Mogadishu's international airport is located in the heart of the city.

'Large explosions'

Earlier, clan elders from the Hawiye clan which dominates Mogadishu said they had agreed a truce with the Ethiopian army, which helped install the government in they city last December.

However, some shooting continued in the south of the city.

One local resident said he had heard a number of large explosions and machine gunfire.

A government official, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC he had heard that Ethiopian tanks had been firing on buildings occupied by Islamist insurgents.

More than 20 people have died in clashes between insurgents and Ethiopia-backed government forces during two days of clashes - the heaviest fighting in the city this year.

Earlier this month, some 1,200 Ugandan peacekeepers arrived in the city to replace the Ethiopians who want to pull out.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.

© AlaskaReport News

Diyaarad ku burburtay Muqdisho

Waxaa diyaaraddu dhacday muddo gaaban kadib markii ay ka kacday garoonka diyaaradaha ee caasimadda Soomaaliya ee Muqdisho.

Dadgoobjoogayaal ah, ayaa sheegay in ay arkeen diyaaradda oo iyadoo holcaysa dhulka ku soo dhacaysa.

Wararka qaar ayaa sheegaya in ay dhici karto in lagu soo riday gantaal, balse ilaa hadda lama cadaynin.

Diyaaradda, ayaa la sheegay in ay ahayd diyaarad nooca Ilyushin oo Ruushku uu sameeyo, waxaana iska lahaa shirkad ku taalla dalka Belatus.

Wasiir ku xigeenka gaashaandhigga Salaad Cali Jeelle, ayaase BBC-da u sheegay in diyaaraddu Nigeria ay lahayd.

Waxay u timid garoonka diyaaradaha Muqdisho si ay injineero iyo qalab ugu keento diyaarad kale oo taalla garoonka diyaaradaha kadib markii ay iyadoo holcaysa lagu dhexdamiyay garoonka diyaaradaha, taasoo ilaa hadda garoonka dhex taalay.

 Somalia fighting  

worst in 15 years: Red Cross

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Updated Fri. Mar. 31 2007 2:09 PM ET

Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Insurgents shot an Ethiopian helicopter gunship out of the sky Friday and mortar shells slammed into a hospital during the worst fighting in the capital in more than 15 years, leaving corpses in the streets and wounding hundreds of civilians.

 

At least 30 people, and likely many more, have been killed since Thursday.

 

The violence came on the second day of an offensive in Mogadishu by Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies to quash an increasingly lethal insurgency.

 

The rebels are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which was driven from power in December in an Ethiopian-led offensive by UN-recognized Somalian government troops, accompanied by U.S. special forces.

 

The exact number of casualties was unclear due to the chaos in Mogadishu. Hospitals were overwhelmed and bodies were scattered in the streets.

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people have been killed since Thursday and more than 220 wounded, most of them civilians with bullet, grenade and other shrapnel wounds.

 

"The population of Mogadishu is caught up in the worst fighting in more than 15 years,'' the agency said.

 

Mohamed Deq Abukar Aroni, who was carrying two mattresses on his head as he fled, said he had never before abandoned his home in one of the world's most violent cities.

 

"But today I'm fleeing because shells are hitting residential areas indiscriminately,'' said Aroni, whose children carried two small paper bags of belongings. "I saw two of my neighbours get killed. I'm not going to stay here anymore.''

 

An Associated Press reporter saw an anti-aircraft missile hit an Ethiopian helicopter that had been bombing insurgent positions.

 

"The helicopter looked like a ball of smoke and fire before crashing,'' said Mogadishu resident Ruqiya Shafi Muhyadin, who watched as the helicopter rolled over in the sky and went down near the airport.

 

Dr. Mohamed Dhere, who spoke to The AP by telephone from an underground room, said three mortar shells hit Alhayat Hospital, wounding a doctor and a staff member.

 

"Since early this morning I have been hiding here from the mortar shells so I can't help rescue people,'' Dhere said. "I urge the two sides to respect health facilities.''

 

Mogadishu resident Abdi Hussein Aboke said he saw 10 bodies in the street Friday, all apparently civilians.

 

"Some were lying in alleys between houses while others were lying on the streets,'' he said.

 

"Residents are fleeing in all directions to escape the shelling,'' added Khalif Mohamed Mumin, who was also abandoning his home in search of safety.

 

Since being driven out, insurgents linked to the Islamic group have staged almost daily attacks on Somalian government and Ethiopian troops.

 

Last week, a cargo plane carrying equipment for African Union peacekeepers was shot down by a missile during takeoff, killing the 11-member crew.

 

The United Nations refugee agency said 57,000 people have fled violence in the Somali capital since the beginning of February, including more than 10,000 people who fled the city in the last week.

 

The figures were based on information provided by non-governmental organizations in Somalia, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.

 

The United States has accused the Islamic group of having ties to al-Qaida. On Thursday, a White House report said that despite recent setbacks to Islamic radicals in Somalia, foreign terrorists are still able to find a haven there because of the country's lack of governance, which contributes to a growing security threat throughout East Africa.

 

The report, said several al-Qaida operatives have used Somalia as a base of operations, including the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2002 attacks against an Israeli airliner and a hotel in Kenya.

 

"The individuals pose an immediate threat to both Somali and international interests in the Horn of Africa,'' the report said.

 

 

 

A series of very

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 illegal things is about to happen.

 

They all concern money. First, the payroll for government workers is all ready and, by this time next week, the public will have forked out a considerable sum in salaries.

Among those who will be smiling all the way from the bank are staff of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority. And they should not be.

Kaca employees have done no work since a constitutional court ruled that their employer was an illegal organisation. The learned judges ruled that the anti-graft authority was unconstitutionally established as it infringed on the powers of the attorney-general and those of the police commissioner.

By the same logic, Kaca's functions are illegal. And anyone working for an unconstitutional authority cannot draw pay, unless they are trying to defraud the public. To pay salaries for work which the Constitution does not recognise is not only illegal and wrong, but also amounts to thieving and shameless corruption.

The possibility of having the anti-graft agency at the centre of such open venality is, however, not worrying many people in government or outside it. No one is talking about disbanding Kaca or reconstituting it. The institutions and people who crow hardest about corruption are busy looking for a weak scapegoat. Parliament, the attorney-general and the government are obvious targets.

As the blame game turns into high art, another illegality is being born in our legalistic midst.

Word reaches us that the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) are not amused about Kaca being declared unconstitutional. And it is not just Kaca.

The two institutions are extremely pained that all the laws they are writing are being frustrated by a rowdy Parliament. The big money lenders have converted themselves from dealing with the government – which is their natural customer – and are trying to read Parliament the riot act about what Bills to pass.

It needs to be pointed out that Parliament is free to vote down Bills out of sheer malice. The responsibility of running the country does not rest with MPs, ultimately, but with the government. When donors cross into the ring and start fighting the government's wars with the legislature, there is often more than meets the eye.

So anxious have the IMF and World Bank become about the anti-graft laws that they are willing to send technical experts to supervise the redrafting of certain rejected Bills. You may want to ask what business those two have in drafting Kenya's laws, but that is neither here nor there.

What the Bretton Woods institutions are not disclosing is that their interest has shifted from lending money to writing laws. Draftsmen at the AG's chambers disclose – off the record – that donors have shoved no less than three Bills down the government's throat, with instructions to swallow them whole or miss the aid gravy train.

The Public Service Code of Ethics is one, the National Commission on Human Rights is another, and the Economic Crimes and Anti-Corruption Bill is the third member of the trinity. These laws have not been drafted at the Attorney-General's chambers. They have been written elsewhere and Kenya's legal draftsmen asked to make sure that they fit in the local statutes. Draftsmen have warned that some of the clauses in these Bills would not stand in a court but the donors say they are paying ...

"What is happening is evil," one draftsman told this writer last week. The world may be a global village, but things like voting, writing laws and vetoing certain decisions remain national prerogatives.

There are 12 draftsmen at the AG's chambers. They are working very hard and could use another eight people, but they are not about to die from overwork. They are all a competent lot of trained lawyers.

When the Bretton Woods institutions say they are willing to provide legal teams to assist them draft laws, the question to ask is why these teams are needed now. Kenya's laws have been just fine until the donors started getting interested. When they begun participating in law-making, all sorts of constitutional conflicts started arising.

The aspersions being cast on the quality of legal drafting at the AG's chambers could be little more than an attempt to cover up donor involvement.

The intentions of the donors may still be noble. After all, they have a right to ensure that they are not sinking money into a bottomless pit. And yet, it would all be so much easier if they had just a little faith in the Kenyan people.

All right. Kenya has messed up big time. It is poor and on its knees all the time. But it is still a country – even if that may not be apparent from certain vantage points. Our leaders are poor managers. We steal everything in sight, are unreliable, and hardly do anything right. And yet, the donors are the same people that tell us to have democracy and good governance and everything will be just fine.

That democracy cannot by some mischance mean having them write our laws.

The Bretton Woods institutions are organisations recognised in Kenya's laws, namely the Bretton Woods Agreements Act. It would be absurd for creatures of our own legal system to turn around and start making laws that run the country.

The debacle of the Bretton Woods Bills is not the problem of the Kenyan legal system. It is a problem created by the two institutions turning their attentions to Kenya's lawmaking. The distrust that has convinced the IMF and the World Bank that Kenya is a renegade nation in need of micro-supervision has given rise to the belief that everything needs to be spelt out in black and white.

True, our government has not been very faithful to past agreements with donors. But it is lack of national ownership of the donor-prescribed reforms rather than anything else that has been the undoing of these pacts.

The Bretton Woods institutions are wailing louder than the owners of the corpse. And the bereaved are a little bewildered. The solution to the corruption quandary is not in forcing through some bank-sponsored laws.

It is in looking at the problems of corruption as they are specific to Kenya and trying to deal with them.

The solution to the current problems lies not in importing some new laws from some developed country, but in dealing with the challenges the local situation provides to efforts to fight graft.

The three High Court judges who decreed that Kaca could not investigate graft or prosecute the corrupt know that the powers of investigation are not exclusive to the police. They also know that the AG is empowered to take over prosecutions and discontinue them – meaning that someone other than the AG started them.

At moments like these, when development partners' arguments begin blurring the discussion between sovereignty and assistance, the patriotic thing would be to review that landmark decision.