News Analysis
In Somalia, Violence Is Status Quo
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: February 20, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb. 20 — Fierce mortar attacks killed more than 10 civilians in Somalia today, but this is the new status quo.
A series of attacks killed 10people, doctors and witnesses said, and added further damage to one home, above.
Nearly every day, government forces and insurgents shell each other across Mogadishu’s already dilapidated neighborhoods, scattering limbs and any remaining traces of hope. Gun prices are soaring and more clans are joining the underground, while an outbreak of cholera sweeps the countryside.
“To tell you the truth, I’m pretty worried,” said Ali Mahdi Mohammed, an influential clan elder and once a contender for president of Somalia. When the government came to Mogadishu, he said, “I felt we were going the right way. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore and soon it’s going to be too late.”
It is hard to believe, but Somalia is actually becoming a more violent and chaotic place. This is not how it was supposed to be. Nearly two months ago, an internationally supported transitional government ousted the Islamist movement that ruled much of the country and steamed into the capital with great expectations. But confidence in the government —which was never very high — is rapidly bleeding away.
Somalia seems to be just shy of total collapse — again — because the Ethiopian troops who provided the muscle to throw out the Islamists have already begun to withdraw, yet none of the peacekeepers promised from other African countries have arrived.
Hundreds of families are streaming out of Mogadishu, the capital, hoisting mattresses on their backs and following pitted roads to villages where there is no electricity, medicine or even the faintest hint of government, but at least no warfare, at least, not yet.
“We can’t stand the shelling anymore,” said Hassan Mohammed, a father of four, who was headed to a village in the south.
There was a brief burst of optimism beginning Dec. 28, when government troops marched into Mogadishu and planted the hope that this was the end of nearly 16 years of anarchy and bloodletting. Cheering crowds poured into Mogadishu’s ruined streets. Aid experts in Nairobi began circulating ambitious reconstruction plans. Ethiopian and American officials, who worked together to overthrow the Islamists, whom they accused of threatening the entire Horn of Africa, breathed a mutual sigh of relief.
But what has happened in the past few weeks has killed that mood. A deadly insurgency has started, beginning with a few clans connected to the Islamists and now expanding to several more. Many government troops refuse to get involved.
“We’re not going out there,” said Dahir Hassan, a police captain, from the confines of his police station. “If we get hurt, who’s going to take care of us?”
All analysts agree that that the violence will continue and probably intensify unless the government genuinely reconciles with clan leaders, who control, as much as anyone controls, what happens in Somalia.
But so far, there has been very little of that. Instead of reaching out to truly influential figures, political analysts say, the government has picked ministers not because they have any substantial support among their clans but because they will do the government’s bidding. As a result, the government is increasingly isolated, authoritarian and unpopular, and the transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, is accused of behaving more like a clan warlord — which he was — than a national leader.
“Where this government is heading is so far from where the international community wants it to go,” said Ali Iman Sharmarke, co-owner of Mogadishu’s HornAfrik radio station.
A common complaint is that the transitional government does not appear to want to be transitional. Donor nations agreed to pay the salaries of Somali officials with the understanding that these men and handful of women would shepherd the country to democratic elections in 2009. But there has been almost no progress towards setting up an election commission, let alone even taking a census. Many Somalis say they would be more inclined to support, or at least tolerate, the transitional government if they thought it was indeed transitional.
To be fair, ruling Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government since 1991, is no easy task. Thirteen previous governments have been formed and 13 previous governments have failed.
Abdirahman Dinari, the government’s chief spokesman, said criticism of the government’s selection of ministers was just an excuse.
“These people wouldn’t be happy with anyone in power,” he said.
He conceded that the government, on its own, did not have the skills to pull the country together.
“We need help,” he said.
But Mr. Dinari said help had been slow to arrive partly because international organizations were spending millions of dollars on Somalia staff based in Kenya, which is deemed a much safer place to work, instead of investing those resources directly in Somalia.
“This is not just our failure,” he said, “but the failure of the international community.”
Still, many say that argument rings hollow. Security in Somalia does not depend on foreign troops or foreign aid. At least, it never has. In the mid-1990s, the United States and the United Nations poured hundreds of millions of dollars into stabilizing Somalia. But their efforts failed, leaving the country as capriciously violent and hopeless as it had ever been. Then along came the Islamists, who during their six-month reign last year pacified the hornet’s nest of Mogadishu without foreign peacekeepers or significant foreign aid. They succeeded by getting clans to voluntarily disarm their militias and getting Somalis on the street to buy into their Islam-is-the-answer solution (Somalia is almost purely Sunni Muslim).
One Western diplomat laughed when asked if a modest force of peacekeepers — the African Union is proposing around 8,000 —could deliver the same level of stability that the Islamists had delivered on their own.
“No way,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “And the government’s urgency for peacekeepers shows you just how badly they’ve done with reconciliation.”
Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.
