American Diplomat to Visit Strife-Torn Somali Capital

[Liibaan]

Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed (L) and Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer attend a meeting in Nairobi. The international meeting called for urgent funding for a peacekeeping mission in Somalia which the strife-torn African country's president said was desperately needed.(AFP/Simon Maina)

 

Somalia's Prime Minsiter Ali Mohamed Gedi gives a press conference in Mogadishu on 1 January.

 

American Diplomat to Visit Strife-Torn Somali Capital

 

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: January 6, 2007

 

 

KISMAYO, Somalia, Jan. 5 — The State Department’s top diplomat for Africa plans to visit Mogadishu, the violence-scarred Somali capital, on Sunday, American officials said Friday. It would be the first time in more than a decade that a high-ranking United States official has set foot there.

 

But Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged the world’s Muslims on Friday to turn Somalia into a battlefield and use suicide attacks.

 

These developments were part of Somalia’s transformation after Ethiopian-led forces ousted the once powerful Islamist movement from the capital last week and helped install a potentially viable government there for the first time in over 16 years.

 

American officials said the schedule for the diplomat, Jendayi E. Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was still tentative, but that she planned to be in Mogadishu for four hours to meet with officials of the transitional government and leading Somali intellectuals.

 

The United States has a minimal presence in the country since its diplomats were withdrawn in the fall of 1994, nearly a year after 18 Americans were killed during an ill-fated attempt to capture a warlord in Mogadishu. In his speech on Friday, Mr. Zawahri urged Muslim fighters to wage a holy guerrilla war in Somalia. “I speak to you today as the crusader Ethiopian invasion forces violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia,” he said in an audio recording on a Web site that has featured Qaeda messages before. “Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal attacks until you consume them as the lions eat their prey.”

 

It was not the first time that Muslim extremists have called for a holy war in Somalia.

 

Ethiopia has a long Christian history, and Somalia’s Islamist leaders had been trying for months to rally outside support by portraying the Ethiopians as infidel invaders and urging Muslims worldwide to turn Somalia into the third front for jihad, after Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

In the end, though, Western intelligence officials said that only a few hundred foreign fighters headed the call, and that they seemed to make little difference. The Islamist forces, made up of mostly untrained teenage troops, were routed by Ethiopian soldiers in one battle after another and lost in one week all the territory they had gained in the past six months.

 

Somalia’s transitional government is now in loose control of most of the country and Western diplomats, including Ms. Frazer, are urging African nations to quickly put together a peacekeeping force before Somalia reverts back to anarchy.

 

Officials from Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations in the world, have said that they do not have the resources to keep soldiers here much longer. Ethiopia has justified its intervention by saying that Somalia’s Islamists were a regional menace.

 

Ms. Frazer met Friday with Kenyan and Somali officials in Nairobi to discuss the details of the peacekeeping force. Uganda has already volunteered troops, and Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania have indicated they might also send forces.

 

Ms. Frazer was to travel to Yemen and Djibouti on Saturday to pursue the matter.

 

In Mogadishu, the transitional government was struggling to collect weapons. Earlier in the week, Ali Muhammad Gedi, the transitional prime minister, announced that Thursday was the deadline for all militias and gunmen to surrender their arms. Only a handful have complied and the deadline has been pushed back to Saturday.

 

As for the Islamists, Somali officials said Friday that the last remnants of their forces were cornered in a remote area of southern Somalia, south of Kismayo. Somali officials said they expected the conflict to end soon, though the Islamists have vowed to fight on as an underground insurgency.

 

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yusuuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

[Wisdom_Seeker]

I hope she gets shot in the head.

[Fanisha]

Waxa la yiri bustaanka dhexdiisa bood boodooy mar uun baan banaanka kaa heli. wax ba ayayna Xabashida isku haleyn soon Xabash will leave and any African troops that replace them will be killed one by one.