Originally posted by Maakhir: Thanks to Our brother Muse Yusuf who is from the heart of North West regions What difference does it make which region's heart he hails from? These "concrete" steps seem to have be written for a western audience. Perhaps the "brother" is trying to find a job in one of the many conservative think tanks Washington, DC is littered with.

Originally posted by NGONGE: Have they done it all Radio Stations or only the ones they deem troublesome? Ngonge, as you said earlier, it will be near impossible to keep a lid on events occurring on the ground. Even if they shut down all of the media outlets, "news" will seep out somehow. One of the main goals of this media blackout is to deny any atrocities that the government is sure to commit "disarming" the population. If there are no official news outlets, it's easier to say anything and everything is a rumor.

^ LOOOOL. There were 28,000 US troops in Muqdisho area at some point and even they couldn't keep this town under control. How can some dabadhilif, Ethiopian and Malawis do it?

Here's your BBC service saaxib. They'll shaft it soon enough. BBC Somali Service almost banned in Somalia SomaliNet) As we reported earlier today, Somalia’s fledging interim government closed three radio stations and Al Jazeera TV office in Mogadishu today. The government saw these stations as foes and the letter sent to them did not say much. Owners of the radio stations and Al Jazeera representatives are expected to go to the national security office tomorrow morning for further instructions. A government insider told SomaliNet that these stations were jeopardizing the government’s efforts to secure Mogadishu by fuelling and magnifying the actions of few bandits in the city. The source said BBC Somali Service became another faction in the past several years and was originally on the list to be shutdown. However, the government decided to give the service more time and to watch its actions more closely. BBC Somali service was once banned in north eastern Somalia known as Puntland by then president of Puntland and current Somalia president, Abdulahi Yusuf who is now in Mogadishu. The interim government also shut down Shabelle Radio’s office in Baidao last year. The Islamic Courts were not different when they were in power. They closed one station in Jowhar and told Mogadishu reporters not to be neutral on the current conflict. One of the courts leaders told reporters to leave Mogadishu and go to Addis Ababa or Baidao if they wanted to remain neutral. No one knows where the line between free to report and national security will be drawn by the interim government. SomaliNet

^ Taxing Shabelle News will fund the reconstruction? How much could they tax them? Saaxib, you're right, this is a futile effort but that does not make it any less ominous.

^ Is that why the US clamped down on the press in Iraq shortly after the invasion? You know, bomb Al-Jazeera, kill their correspondents so they would come "register and pay some fees"? Ngonge, cut it out.

At least on person was killed in heavy skirmishes that took place around Eimiska, a neighborhood in northeast of the capital Mogadishu last night. The fighting started about 10:00 pm local time. Unknown gunmen, reportedly on two pick-up trucks fired, rocket-propelled grenades at Ethiopian and government convoy passing by the road. Witnesses said one of the government military vehicles was blazing as heavy exchanges of gunfire followed. The gun battle continued for at least an hour. The number of casualties is not yet known. Crowds of people came together on Monday morning at the areas where the incident happened. A large number of Ethiopian and government troops supported by tanks and armored vehicles blocked the main road linking Eimiska to Bakara market at the center of the capital. Ahmed, a resident in Eimiska, told Shabelle by phone this morning that he saw a dead man lying in the middle of the road. "I think the man was deaf. The soldiers told him to go back but he did not, so he was shot dead instantly," he said. Also last night, a government soldier was killed and three automatic guns were forcefully taken by unknown gunmen who attacked a government military compound in Hurwa, north of the capital. Mohammed Hassan, one of the staff working for Shifo, a privately owned hospital in north Mogadishu, has told Shabelle by the phone that two people who were seriously wounded in last night's fighting were admitted to the hospital. The government has not yet commented on the attacks. Residents in Eimiska neighborhood said they could not come out of their houses in fear of Ethiopian troops and tanks that were positioned there. The troops searched house to house for guns and explosives. AllAfrica

A media blackout is the only way this puppet regime can hide the heinous crimes it commits against the people.

Aweys Osman Yusuf Mogadishu At least three FM radios and a TV outlet were ordered to close their stations today. A decree issued by the security department of the Somali government ordered the Shabelle Media Network, Horn Afrik, IQK and Aljazeera TV stations in Mogadishu to be shut down. The decree says, "From today 15 January, 2007, the above-mentioned radio and TV stations are to halt their broadcasting operations as soon they receive this decree. The managements of the media are being informed to come to the government security department that lies in Bar FIAT in Mogadishu on Tuesday." All radio stations including Shabelle Radio instantly went off air. The news comes as all local and foreign journalists were busy covering the events in Somalia. In the past the Islamic Courts have closed down some of the local FM radios in the country after they broadcast music and songs. The government did not specifically justify why the free media in Somalia was shut down. AllAfrica

How many fcuking armies does it take to defeat the ICU? There ain't no Qaeda in Somalia. Originally posted by Al Burcaawi: Why thank Blair? What did he do? British help hunt al-Qa'ida in Somalia * Hala Jaber and Michael Smith * January 15, 2007 A BRITISH SAS team has joined American special forces hunting al-Qa'ida terror suspects as they try to flee war-torn Somalia after the crushing defeat of the country's Islamist forces last week. Read the rest

dp

Iraqis are split between Shia and Sunni. The Lebanese, Sunni, Shia, Christan and Druze. Though two of those four are always united. Somalis, on the other hand, are split tens of ways. Even within a clan, you have feuding subclans that are ready to sell off their own brethren. The end result: you have the whole country under occupation and men with borrowed testicles taunting us about their presence in Muqdisho. But worst of all are the nitwits around here that cheer the occupiers. Uff!

The Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, must have been studying the magnificent successes of the U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq and Israel's recent foray into Lebanon. He has clearly decided to emulate them. His argument is exactly that which was given by George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert. We must attack our neighbor because we have to keep Islamic terrorists from pursuing their jihad and attacking us. In each case, the invader was sure of his military superiority and of the fact that the majority of the population would hail the attackers as liberators. Zenawi asserts he is cooperating in the U.S. worldwide struggle against terrorism. And indeed, the United States has offered not only its intelligence support but has sent in both its air force and units of special troops to assist the Ethiopians. Read the rest of the article here.

Charles Onyango-Obbo Nearly 15 years ago the United States sent troops to Somalia to “restore order”. Their landing was a spectacle orchestrated for the cameras. Somalia was then more divided than it is today, split up into small turfs ruled mostly by bandit warlords. An American “thinking” journal, Dissident, called and asked me to do a commentary on how the American face-off with the warlords might end. Piece of cake, I thought. It was going to be a walk in the park, I opined, and painted a picture of how Somalia might pan out -- with the victorious Americans overseeing reconstruction and the surviving warlords scattered and hiding in khat plantations. A few months after the article appeared, the Americans were retreating from Somalia with their tails between their legs. That article is the most embarrassing of my career. I learnt my lesson: in modern times, any time a country, however militarily powerful, invades another and I have to bet on the outcome, I always wager that the invader will, eventually, be routed. Ethiopia, a poor country without anything remotely close to America’s military might, has invaded Somalia to deal with the “terrorist” threat it claims is posed by the Islamic Courts, whose forces swept through most of Somalia in the past six months and which, through a brutal application of Sharia, ended lawlessness. Will Ethiopia succeed where the US failed? While the Islamic Courts have certainly been put to flight, if we need an example of a likely outcome, we need go no further than what happened to Rwanda and Uganda in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Rwanda, with varying degrees of assistance from Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Eritrea, helped overthrow the vile and thieving Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, and installed the wine-loving and womanising Laurent Kabila as president. Towards the end of 1998, Kabila had fallen out with Rwanda, and Uganda then invaded the eastern DRC. Angola and Zimbabwe rallied to Kabila’s side. Directly and indirectly the conflict ended up killing five times more people than the 1994 Rwandan genocide -- four million! The Congolese used to say, “Rwanda and Uganda might bite into Congo, but it is too big for either to swallow.” They were right. In the end, both Rwanda and Uganda spat out the DRC and withdrew. This was remarkable because the Rwandan and Ugandan armies at that point were among the most battle-hardened in sub-Saharan Africa, outclassed in that regard only by the Angolans. Rwanda and Uganda went back into the DRC with more strategic advantages than Ethiopia has going into its Somalia campaign. There’s more beyond Ethiopia’s claim that it has moved against the courts in Somalia because they are allied to al-Qaeda and pose a “jihadist” threat to it. There is a trend in the Horn that is not widely acknowledged -- the dissolution of the colonial African state. First, Ethiopia cut Eritrea loose after the overthrow of the tyrant Haile Mariam Mengistu. Next, Sudan signed the peace agreement with the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army. It provides for a referendum on the future of Southern Sudan. That referendum will take place in four years, but the verdict is already in -- the south will vote to secede. If Ethiopia attempts an occupation, thus courting disaster, then its Somali region (the ******) will certainly break away. The bigger worry should perhaps be what happens politically and militarily in the northern regions of Kenya bordering Ethiopia and Somalia. If the courts somehow rally and expel the Ethiopians -- which, granted, looks most unlikely at present -- will they stop only at trying to absorb the ****** into a greater Somalia? No, and they might eye northern Kenya next. And if Ethiopia is able to dominate Somalia, it too might be emboldened enough to look further south. Mail & Guardian

You're onto something yaa Red Sea. Recently I read about how humans with vegetarian diets have, on average, higher intelligence than the omnivorous variety. Seeing that vegetarian diets are superior, intelligent people would naturally gravitate towards the ICU. I mean vegetarian diet. Originally posted by Che-Guevara: Castro is old, but without Che, it would have been difficult. Did you guys know when Che was assassinated in 1967 the person who led the CIA to his location in the jungles of Bolivia was none other than Abdillahi Yuusuf? Yeey tells people he was fighting the Ethiopians when in fact, he was riding around in an unmanned (well, they were manned back then) aerial drone and he spotted Che smoking a cigar under a tree. The rest is history. Once a rat, always a rat.

Originally posted by n-syl: God bless the Mujaahidiin in their fight to liberate the homeland from dirty Xabashos and their Somali slaves... Aamiin. Waxyaabihii ku qornaa waraaqahaasi waxaa ka mid ahaa in ururkaan uu dagaal la gali doono Ciidamada Itoobiya iyo wax uu ku tilmaamay kuwa dabadhilifka u ah , waxayna shacabka Soomaaliyeed uga digeen in aysan ku dhawaan goobaha ay joogaan. If at all possible, start with the dabadhilif first.

Somalia as a Military Target Stephen Zunes | January 14, 2007 Foreign Policy In Focus The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and subsequent U.S. air strikes and naval blockade against that east African country mark another dangerous chapter in the Bush administration’s war against Islamic nations. And, despite no authorization from Congress for the United States to become engaged in that country’s civil war and despite the failure of President Bush to consult with Congress as required by the War Powers Act, the new Democratic leadership in Congress apparently has no objections to this dangerous and illegal escalation. The renewed U.S. military involvement in Somalia must be understood within the context of the U.S. role in Somalia during the cold war, which helped sow the seeds of that country’s subsequent chaos. Like the ill-fated 1992-94 U.S. military intervention, the current U.S. and Ethiopian attacks have done little to bring peace or stability to this impoverished country. Cold War Pawn During the early 1970s, Somalia was a client of the Soviet Union, even allowing the Soviets to establish a naval base at Berbera on the strategic north coast near the entrance to the Red Sea. Somali dictator Siad Barre established this relationship in response to the large-scale American military support of Somalia’s historic rival Ethiopia, then under the rule of the feudal emperor Haile Selassie. When a military coup by leftist Ethiopian officers toppled the monarchy in 1974 and declared the country a Marxist-Leninist state the following year, the superpowers switched their allegiances--with the Soviet Union backing Ethiopia and the United States siding with the Barre regime in Somalia. In 1977, Somalia attacked the ****** region of eastern Ethiopia in an effort to incorporate the area’s ethnic Somali population. The Ethiopians were eventually able to repel the attack with large-scale Soviet military support and 20,000 Cuban troops. Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-National Security Adviser under President Jimmy Carter, has since claimed that the conflict in this remote desert region was what sparked the end of detente with the Soviet Union and the renewal of the cold war. From the late 1970s until just before his overthrow in early 1991, the United States sent hundreds of millions of dollars of arms to the Barre regime in return for the use of military facilities that had been originally constructed for the Soviets. These bases were to be used to support U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. The U.S. government ignored warnings throughout the 1980s by Africa specialists, human rights groups, and humanitarian organizations that continued U.S. support of the dictatorial Barre government would eventually plunge Somalia into chaos. These predictions proved tragically accurate. During the nearly fifteen years of support by the U.S. and Italy, thousands of civilians were massacred at the hands of Barre's increasingly authoritarian regime. Full-scale civil war erupted in 1988 and the repression increased still further, with clan leaders in the northern third of the country declaring independence to escape the persecution. (Though not recognized by any government, this northern region – known as Somaliland -- has been a de facto separate state living in relative peace ever since.) In greatly centralizing his government’s control over the rest of the country, Barre severely weakened traditional structures in Somali society that had kept civil order for many years. To help maintain his grip on power, Barre played different Somali clans against each other, sowing the seeds of the fratricidal chaos and mass starvation to come. Meanwhile, by eliminating all potential rivals with a national following, Barre created a power vacuum that could not be filled when the regime was finally overthrown in January 1991. Barre’s downfall was barely noticed outside the country since world attention was focused on the start of the Gulf War. With the end of the cold war and with the United States granted new bases in the Persian Gulf countries to respond to Iraqi aggression, Somalia fell off the radar screen of U.S. foreign policy. Had the U.S. government not supported the Barre regime with large amounts of military aid, he would have been forced to step down long before his misrule splintered the country. Prior to the dictator’s downfall, former U.S. Representative Howard Wolpe, then-chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, called on the State Department to encourage Barre to step down. His pleas were rejected. “What you are seeing,” observed the congressman and former professor of African politics, “is a general indifference to a disaster that we played a role in creating.” A U.S. diplomat who had been stationed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu acknowledged, “It’s easy to blame us for all this.” But, he argued, “This is a sovereign country we’re taking about. They have chosen to spend [u.S. military aid] that way, to hurt people and destroy their own economy.” While pouring in more than $50 million of arms annually to prop up the Barre regime, the United States offered virtually no assistance that could help build a self-sustaining economy that could feed Somalia’s people. In addition, the United States pushed a structural adjustment program through the International Monetary Fund that severely weakened the local agricultural economy. Combined with the breakdown of the central government, drought conditions, and rival militias disrupting food supplies, famine on a massive scale resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 Somalis, mostly children. Humanitarian Mission Goes Awry In November 1992, the outgoing senior Bush administration sent 30,000 U.S. troops--primarily Marines and Army Rangers--to Somalia. This “humanitarian mission” was designed to assist in the distribution of relief supplies being intercepted by armed militias before reaching the civilian populations in need. Though initially a unilateral mission, the initiative was endorsed by the UN Security Council the following month. Many Somalis and some relief organizations were grateful for the American role. Many others expressed skepticism, noting that the famine had actually peaked that summer and the security situation was also gradually improving. As U.S. troops began arriving, the chaos limiting food shipments was constrained to a small area, with most other parts of the country functioning as relatively peaceful fiefdoms. Most food was getting through, and the loss from theft was only slightly higher than elsewhere in Africa. In some cases, U.S. forces essentially dumped food on local markets, hurting indigenous farmers and creating greater food shortages over the longer term. In any case, few Somalis were involved in the decisions during this crucial period. Most importantly for the United States, large numbers of Somalis saw the American forces as representatives of the government that had been the major outside supporter of the hated former dictatorship. Such a foreign presence in a country that had been free from colonial rule for little more than three decades at that time led to growing resentment. Contributing to these concerns was the fact that the U.S. troops arriving in Somalia were elite combat forces, and were not trained for such humanitarian missions. (Author and journalist David Halberstam quotes then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney telling an associate, “We’re sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them.”) Shootings at U.S. military checkpoints became increasingly commonplace, and Somalis witnessed scenes of mostly white American forces harassing and shooting black citizens. In addition, the U.S. role escalated to include attempts at disarming some of the warlords, resulting in armed engagements, often in crowded urban neighborhoods. This “mission creep” resulted in American casualties, creating growing dissent at home in what had originally been a widely supported foreign policy initiative. The thousands of M-16 rifles sent, courtesy of the American taxpayer, to Barre’s armed forces were now in the hands of rival militiamen who had not only used them to kill their fellow countrymen and to disrupt the distribution of relief supplies, but were now using them against American troops. Within the U.S. ranks, soldiers were heard repeating the slogan, “The only good Somali is a dead Somali.” It had become apparent that the United States had badly underestimated the resistance. In May 1993, the United States transferred the failing mission to the UN. This was the first time the world body had combined peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and humanitarian assistance, as well as the first time the UN had intervened without a formal invitation by a host government (because there wasn’t any.) Within Somalia there was little trust of the United Nations, particularly since the UN Secretary General at that time was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a major supporter of Barre when he led Egypt’s foreign ministry. Even though the UN was technically in control, U.S. forces went on increasingly aggressive forays, including a major battle in Mogadishu that resulted in the deaths of 18 Marines and hundreds of Somali civilians, dramatized in the highly fictionalized movie Black Hawk Down. The U.S.-led UN forces had become yet another faction in the multisided conflict. Largely retreating to fixed positions, U.S. forces largely focused on protecting their own. With mounting criticism on Capitol Hill from both the left and the right, President Bill Clinton withdrew American troops in March 1994. The UN took out its last peacekeeping forces one year later. By this point, there was a widespread bipartisan consensus that the U.S. intervention in Somalia was a fiasco. Indeed, the negative feelings of becoming involved in a civil conflict in Africa were so strong that it became the major factor in the U.S. refusal to intervene--either unilaterally or through the UN--to prevent the genocide in Rwanda during the spring of 1994. This tragic decision came despite the fact that the calculated government-led massacre of the country’s Tutsi minority could have easily been interrupted, while there was little good the United States could have done to end the fracticidal conflict in Somalia. Ironically, President Bush now says Clinton’s widely supported decision to withdraw from Somalia was a mistake that emboldened terrorists. He uses the Somali case as an illustration of why the United States must not withdraw from Iraq. Renewed U.S. Military Intervention With the withdrawal of U.S. and UN troops, Somalia returned to a series of fiefdoms run by warlords with widespread lawlessness and occasional outbreaks of inter-clan fighting. Several efforts to form a coalition government of clan elders and warlords failed, making little progress in reconciling warring militias and uniting the country. The northeastern region of Puntland became self-governing since 1998, though -- unlike Somaliland – it appeared willing to be part of a federated state rather than an internationally recognized independent country. It has experienced its own battles between contending leaders and factions, however. Parts of southwestern Somalia and a subsection of Jubaland – the site of the recent U.S. air strikes – also declared their independence, though they also seemed willing to settle for autonomy within a federated state. With the country splintering, chaos reigning, and no central government to suppress them, some cells believed to be affiliated with al-Qaida sought refuge within Somalia’s borders. Also emerging during this period in various parts of the country was a system of Islamic courts that tried to bring some semblance of legal order, whether combating robberies and drug dealings or providing education and health. In 2004, after protracted talks in Kenya, the main warlords and politicians signed a deal to set up a new parliament, which later appointed a president. The fledgling administration, the fourteenth attempt to establish a government since 1991, became known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), headquartered in the town of Baidoa. Though strongly backed by the United States and recognized by the UN, the TFG had little credibility among the Somali people. Not only did it have no civil service or government buildings, it consisted of the very warlords that had wreaked such havoc on the country over the previous fourteen years. As with Afghanistan, which suffered from similar chaos following the ouster of its Communist government in 1992, stability came through puritanical Islamist elements. The system of Islamic courts had become increasingly popular since they – unlike the TFG or anyone else – had brought peace and stability in areas where they ruled. This past summer, they came together to form the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and set up a government. Unlike the Taliban, however, which was heavily influenced by al-Qaida and hard-line elements of Pakistani intelligence, the ICU was a purely homegrown movement. While it included some extremist elements that may have indeed had some affinity with radical jihadists, U.S. charges of al-Qaida affiliation appear to have been grossly exaggerated. They were also not nearly as repressive in their interpretation of Islam as the Taliban, such as barring women from employment, education, or health care. Within months, they controlled most of the country outside the Baidoa region. The ICU limited civil liberties -- such as strongly discouraging Western dancing, music, and films – but it also disarmed militias and banned the widespread and debilitating use of the narcotic qat. It publicly executed two convicted murderers, though this was just one-twelfth of the number of people executed in Texas in 2006. Indeed, the ICU was not nearly as repressive or as extremist in its interpretation of Islam as the U.S.-backed government of Saudi Arabia. And despite the dangerous intentions and connections of some of its leadership, the ICU had finally brought stability and peace to a country that had suffered the lost of over one million people over the past sixteen years of violent chaos. The Bush administration could not tolerate the existence of an Islamist regime it could not control, however. The United States began arming, training, and financing the armed forces of the Ethiopian dictatorship in preparation for an invasion of Somalia, despite the fact that such an act of aggression is a clear violation of the UN Charter, which – as a signed and ratified international treaty – both Ethiopia and the United States are obliged to uphold. After weeks of clashes on Somali territory, Ethiopian forces launched a full-scale invasion on December 24. Four days later, Ethiopian forces advanced to Mogadishu, installing the TFG in government offices. Since that time, violence and lawlessness have returned to the Somali capital. Fighting between various armed factions has reignited, roadblocks manned by various militias have sprung up to extort money from passing motorists, and the peace enjoyed under ICU rule has come to an end. As ICU forces retreated southward, the U.S. Navy tightened its blockade of the Somali coast. On January 8, the United States launched a series of strikes in southern Somalia. Despite initial claims by U.S. officials that the air strikes killed senior al-Qaida officials implicated in several notorious terrorist attacks in East Africa, it now appears that the scores of people killed were primarily civilians, along with some ICU militiamen. The attacks have set off waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu and elsewhere. By January 12, the last ICU stronghold had fallen. To have the first government that brought any semblance of stability to Somalia in seventeen years ousted by military operations of its historic rival Ethiopia and the United States, both predominantly Christian nations, will likely play into the hands of radical Islamists who hope to stir up religious hatreds. No longer in power, the Islamists could indeed start engaging in terrorism and – like other Muslim countries under occupation by non-Muslim powers – could become the center of a global jihad. Furthermore, what al-Qaida operatives may have indeed found their way to Somalia were there not as a result of an Islamist-identified central authority but because of the chaos and instability from the lack of a central authority. While the Bush administration has long obsessed over alleged state-sponsored terrorism, it is failed states like Somalia and Iraq where extremist movements and terrorism is allowed to flourish. The recent interventions by the United States and Ethiopia have only made matters worse. Stephen Zunes is the Foreign Policy In Focus Middle East editor ( www.fpif.org ). He is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) . Foreign Policy In Focus

^ It was a tongue-in-cheek question, atheer.

Mashallah indeed. We know the boy is smart but does he support the TFG? That's what we'd like to know. :cool:

La xawla wala quwata ila bilahil caziim. Take your medication son. The only thing you'll get from cruel Somalis is ridicule. Nin kuu digay kuma dilin.

^^^ *yawn*

Arab League has been neutered by the United States. Membership in it is meaningless. The AU is another organization castrated by the UN and the US. In my view, these organizations exist to provide the imperial quests of the west with a fig leaf to carry on their work. Just look how hard the AU is working on Somalia now that the US is "encouraging" it.

Uganda wants exit strategy for troops By BARBARA AMONG Special Correspondent Uganda will not contribute to a peacekeeping mission for Somalia unless its mission and an exit strategy are clearly defined, Minister for International Corporation Okello Oryem told The East-African last week. “We are unwilling at the moment because we need to know the composition of IGASOM, its mandate, aims and the objectives of the Uganda army’s involvement, time frame for us in Somalia, exit methods and strategy. There is equally a need for the involvement of the UN and US,” the minister said. He said the Uganda government will not go into Somalia or give in to pressure from the international community to send troops there. Uganda, the minister said, is consulting with the AU member states, the UN and the US on the mission’s purpose and exit strategy before going in. The consultations are expected to go on until mid February. Three weeks after chasingIslamist leaders from Mogadishu with military backing from Ethiopia, Somalia’s interim government now faces the huge task of securing the gun-infested capital. Diplomats from Western, African and Arab states who met recently in Nairobi are pushing for a quick deployment of foreign peacekeepers, approved last month by the United Nations. So far, Uganda is the only country that has pledged troops for the mission under a plan formulated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), which was endorsed a year ago by the African Union. The minister said Uganda will now need to explain to the country’s Cabinet and parliament why there is a need to reverse an earlier decision and only go in once the mission’s purpose is defined. Igad agreed two years ago that Somalia’s immediate neighbours should not be part of a peacekeeping force, adding to pressure on Uganda to take on the role. But Kampala fears getting sucked into a wider regional conflict. “The UDPF is not going there to attack or pursue former warlords or Islamists, we are going in as peacekeepers,” Mr Oryem said. “It will be the work of the TFG army to lead operations to disarm the militias.” Uganda also says that its troops would go into Somalia strictly under the command of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). “UPDF will work within our own framework, though going as a peace keeping mission under the IGASOM arrangement,” said Mr Oryem. Last week, local and international media reported that Uganda had sent 1,000 troops to Somalia, a claim the government has denied. “Once the appropriate mechanisms are in place, we shall participate in peacekeeping, but we must also look at our own constitutional provisions which say we cannot deploy troops outside Uganda except with the agreement of parliament. We are going to parliament to ask for this permission,” Minister for Defence Crispus Kiyonga said last week. Mr Oryem said, “The reason why some people are claiming this is because last year we sent a fact finding mission team to Somali led by Maj Gen Kale Kayihura (Uganda’s Inspector General of Police). However, a senior minister told The EastAfrican that a group of about 20 soldiers were sent five months ago and are currently providing protection to President Yusuf Abdulahi. They went there under an arrangement between the defence ministries of Uganda and Somalia. “We would love to take part in solving the Somalia problem, but at the moment it is not a right move. We can’t afford to lose our soldiers,” said Latiff Sebaggala, a member of the Parliamentary Defence Committee. Uganda opposition leader, Col Kizza Besigye said it is prudent that the TFG and the UICC establish a political consensus first. “If the Somali people are to be assisted to rebuild the country, it is important that they establish a political consensus among themselves first,” he said. He added, “The Somalia situation is fluid and there have been specific calls from both the UICC and a section of the TFG against the deployment of foreign troops in their country. It would be foolhardy for the Uganda government to deploy the UPDF against that background.” Although Washington would probably provide logistical support and some funding for a Uganda-led force, it has essentially charged the responsibility to IGAD, most of whose members oppose intervention. AllAfrica

^ Ouch. Kan iska daa. He's harmless.

^ Don't blow my cover. I was trying to be nice. LOL.