Forcible disarmament to follow the predictable and utter failure of voluntary drive

[Castro]

Interim Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi is reported to have said forcible disarmament will begin in Mogadishu at the weekend. Few residents have responded to a call to disarm and the demand for AK-47 rifles, hand grenades and land mines has risen. In a city of two million people, there are an estimated one million weapons.

 

The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the capital says although calm has returned, tension is high and people fear anarchy may return to Mogadishu.

Read more on BBC

[ElPunto]

^Forcible disarmament bothers you senor?

[Castro]

^ In this environment, yes. I see no good coming out of it. All those who declined to voluntarily disarm must be anticipating trouble. It's hard not to. So, given there's an ongoing occupation, a government with no backbone or any means to acquire one, a severely deteriorating security environment, forcibly disarming anyone is throwing fire into a 93 octane fuel tank. Or you don't think so yaa Le Point?

[Castro]

Not to mention this is being conveniently done in Muqdisho and not in other parts of the country. Unless Yeey disarms his own clan first, does he think the clans of Muqdisho will happily give him their weapons so he can stick them up their behinds?

 

Mise you, like others on this site, take the Muqdisho clans for fools? Geedi and Caydiid Jr. are clearly the exception, I'm afraid and the old man will get burnt by none other than those clans.

 

Be back later.

[ElPunto]

^Ok - you've convinced me. I wasn't too sure either way before. I think the key words are 'in this environment'. No need for further fighting and intimidation at this stage.

[ElPunto]

^^Hehe Adeer. Mogadishu is the most lawless part of the country - as such a special emphasis on it is warranted. As to clan X or clan Y - I don't see the broader clan wars coming and as to Yey pulling a Rwanda on Mog 'residents' - highly unlikely and undermines his whole position as head of the republic.

 

Aditionally - this disarmament campaign is national or about to be if memory serves me rite.

 

El Jefe - u must stop seeing Somali politics as an adverserial, zero-sum game only. Hardly the way to move things forward in a fractured and complicated society such as Somalia.

[General Duke]

The comparison to Rwanda highlights the deperation of the confused one. Remmeber that no one belived that Mogadishu could fall so easily, now do not belive the wepons can not be taken.

 

Also no clan, X, Y or Z has come out and said they will not disarm. The time for action has come, there must be procedures put in place to secure the capital city and safe guard its people.

[ElPunto]

^Ur rite - the majority were saying Mog is impregenable and that rivers of blood will start to run. I certainly was of that persuasion. So props to you for calling it rite. However, disarmament is more complex given the current state of flux in the country. As such - TFG should proceed very carefully.

[General Duke]

^^^Indeed, it has to, however the population wants to disarm and thats the main point here. There are groups that think its romantic for every clan to be armed ans even wish for the status quo to remain. The reaction so far has been posative, you are right we dont need mistakes in which some clans are aggrivated, but one must not allow the situation to remain as it is.

[Dhubad.]

^You see, people of Mogadishu are suspicious about this whole disarmament issue and as long a C/Yusuf's clan have their weapons. So if he is serious about this he should disarm his kinsmen first.

[General Duke]

^^^What do you mean by this?

[Castro]

Somalis loath to disarm

 

Only a handful turned in weapons by the time a 72-hour amnesty ended Thursday. Tension grips the capital.

 

By Rob Crilly | Correspondent of The Christian

Science Monitor

 

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – The old Fiat truck is still smoldering more than 12 hours after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into its radiator, setting its cargo of fuel alight and injuring three of the passengers.

 

"This wasn't political. It wasn't the Islamists. This was bandits," says a police officer standing on the sand road, a couple of miles north of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

 

"There isn't much we can do," he adds. "We are simply outgunned."

 

For six months, the notoriously chaotic city was pacified by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). Its leaders imposed Islamic law and succeeded in ending almost 16 years of Kalashnikov-fueled racketeering by freelance warlords.

 

But now, after a two-week preemptive offensive launched by troops from neighboring Ethiopia helped the weak, secular Somalian government force the Islamists to flee, the bandits are starting to return.

 

Earlier this week, the prime minister announced a 72-hour gun amnesty. Residents could give up their AK-47s, grenades, and "technical" battlewagons - pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns - or face the threat of seeing them taken by force.

 

Somalis reluctant to give up guns

 

But when the deadline came and went Thursday with only a handful of weapons turned in, the government was forced to back down. Mogadishu now has three months to disarm, according to the deputy prime minister.

 

It is a humiliating and potentially dangerous climbdown.

 

The truck was attacked at a checkpoint manned by warlords and now residents fear that the old extortionist roadblocks may be going up once again.

 

"If this is how they are going to govern, then heaven help us," says Abdullahi Ahmed Adam, sipping bitter coffee on a roadside stool.

 

A woman selling mangos opposite the Villa Baidoa, an old presidential palace designated as a gun collection site, says Ethiopian soldiers inside had collected only one weapon.

 

"It was only a Thompson," she says laughing at the pre-World War II machine gun which changes hands for only $10 in Mogadishu.

 

A city armed to the teeth

 

Mogadishu remains awash with weapons held by people too scared to give them up.

 

Most families keep one in the house to deter robbers. Businesses group together to employ armed guards. And most hotels have a dozen or more militiamen available to visiting dignitaries or journalists for $20 a day or less.

 

Hussein Aideed, deputy prime minister and minister for the interior, estimates there are $3 billion worth of guns in Somalia. He says the three-day amnesty was ill-conceived. Some businesses should be licensed to hold weapons legally, and the government needs to find a mechanism to disarm clan rivals simultaneously, he adds.

 

"But the prime minister is an academic, not a military man," Mr. Aideed says in his office at Villa Somalia, which will be the president's residence once it is safe for the president to come to Mogadishu. "The prime minister has good intentions, but Somalia is not like that."

 

While serving in the government, Aideed was one of the clan-based warlords who controlled a chunk of Mogadishu before losing ground to the Islamic militias this summer.

 

His father was the man that US Rangers were trying to capture during the disastrous "Black Hawk Down" episode, in which Somali mobs dragged bodies of dead US soldiers through the streets in 1993.

 

At the moment, he has 1,000 police officers for a city of 2.5 million people. He has appealed to some 3,000 former officers to return to work without pay and without guns.

 

His entire police arsenal comprises 326 AK-47s - a gift from Yemen to the Somali president for his personal bodyguard.

 

Aideed says that disarmament can only be imposed on the city if and when a regional peacekeeping force is deployed to support his police. There are diplomatic efforts to find countries willing to send forces to Somalia, but Aideed worries that help will not come soon enough.

 

"We have goodwill from the people to build security so we have to do it fast. If we don't then that goodwill will disappear." he says.

 

Mogadishu has been on edge for the past week since the Islamist militias vanished, many fleeing south toward the Kenyan border, others blending back into civilian life in Mogadishu. "There are 3,500 Islamists hiding in Mogadishu and the surrounding areas and they are likely to destabilize the security of the city," Aideed said at a news conference.

 

Thursday, gunshots punctuated the muezzin's call to prayer in the south of the city - recently a stronghold of the Islamists.

 

Meanwhile, Somali troops and their Ethiopian allies continued the hunt for the remnants of the Islamist militias believed to be in and around Raas Kaambooni, close to the Kenyan border.

 

In response, Kenya has sent troops to seal the border. The US Navy has deployed off the coast of Somalia to prevent Al Qaeda operatives or other foreign militants from escaping by sea.

 

With the Islamists defeated - at least for the time being - all eyes are on the old warlords who used to rule Mogadishu.

 

At least one says he has no intention of handing over his weapons until the city is secure.

 

Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, who commands 1,500 men, says his force exists to protect his kinsmen from their rivals in Mogadishu's main ****** clan.

 

"If you disarm one clan, and you do not disarm the other clan, then that other clan will take the benefit of that, creating insecurity," Mr. Qanyare says. "So what I'm saying is that they must disarm simultaneously," which, he says, would require a well-coordinated nationwide program. "That cannot happen any time soon."

 

CS Monitor

[Castro]

El Jefe - u must stop seeing Somali politics as an adverserial, zero-sum game only. Hardly the way to move things forward in a fractured and complicated society such as Somalia.

I wish I were the one who saw it this way. In reality, it's not far from how you describe it above. Furthermore, I didn't bring any Rwanda comparison. All I'd like to bring to your attention is: the TFG starting with disarmament before doing anything else wreaks of trouble.

 

How could any sane Somali give their weapon to those same people who came in riding on an Ethiopian tank? Even worse, it was the same warlords that terrorized them in the past that came riding on these Ethiopian tanks. A double whammy indeed.

 

I say let everyone keep their weapons until the dust settles. If the TFG proves to be what many of us suspect, a puppet government, it will have been a good decision. If they prove us wrong, people will disarm for they have no reason to keep their weapons.

[ElPunto]

Originally posted by Castro:

quote:El Jefe - u must stop seeing Somali politics as an adverserial, zero-sum game only. Hardly the way to move things forward in a fractured and complicated society such as Somalia.

I wish I were the one who saw it this way. In reality, it's not far from how you describe it above. Furthermore, I didn't bring any Rwanda comparison. All I'd like to bring to your attention is: the TFG starting with disarmament before doing anything else wreaks of trouble.

 

How could any sane Somali give their weapon to those same people who came in riding on an Ethiopian tank? Even worse, it was the same warlords that terrorized them in the past that came riding on these Ethiopian tanks. A double whammy indeed.

 

I say let everyone keep their weapons until the dust settles. If the TFG proves to be what many of us suspect, a puppet government, it will have been a good decision. If they prove us wrong, people will disarm for they have no reason to keep their weapons.

Y - I know you didn't bring in the Rwanda comparison per se but you implied the definite possiblity of mini Rwanda if Clan X is disarmed but not Clan Y etc.

 

The TFG MUST start with disarmament. How can it possibly do anything but start to improve security(of which disarmament is the key component) if it is to get anything else done? You have me utterly puzzled by this statement.

 

To my knowledge - the tragic circumstances of Somalia have not been due to Ethiopian tanks but rather Somali technicals. The less of those on the streets the better. I can understand distrust and that's why I would advice TFG to proceed slowly.

 

Even if the TFG proves to be a puppet govt less arms in Mogadishu will benefit the ppl - then they will have to stab each other to death. A more hazardous undertaking than strafing ppl from the safety of your technical. And generally trouble makers will not disarm easily.

[Dhubad.]

Originally posted by General Duke:

^^^What do you mean by this?

I mean, it is only logic if the disarmament should be started from Puntland in order to win the trust of the people of Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia otherwise JUG JUG MEESHAADA JOOG.