NASSIR Posted February 26, 2005 Editorial: Somalia's struggles / A stalemate leaves the country largely ungoverned Saturday, February 26, 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Ten years ago at the end of February 1995 the last United Nations forces were escorted out of Somalia by a task force of U.S. Marines. The withdrawal of the 18,000 Pakistanis, Egyptians, Bangladeshis and others signaled the somewhat inglorious end of a U.N. and U.S. intervention in the state on the Horn of Africa that had begun in 1992. Somalia's collapse began in January 1991 when its government, headed by a long-standing dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, collapsed in the face of attacks by a coalition of opposing Somali forces who converged on the capital, Mogadishu. The country has not had an established government since. The problem was that those who overthrew Siad Barre were unable to agree among themselves on a successor to him, leaving a vacuum -- or, worse, a seething maelstrom of competing, heavily armed elements -- lined up roughly on the basis of clan, sub-clan and sub-sub-clan. The economy and all social services collapsed, producing a humanitarian catastrophe of starvation and lack of medical care. Somali militias took advantage of the disorder to steal wildly and widely, including from nongovernmental and U.N. organizations seeking to alleviate the suffering. U.N. forces came. Unable to cope with the violence the Somalis threw at them, they called for U.S. assistance. President George H.W. Bush sent it at the end of 1992, just before leaving office. Some said he authorized the intervention in Somalia to leave incoming President Bill Clinton a nasty present. Some order came to Somalia, but when the United Nations and the United States sought to re-establish a Somali government, to preclude a return to disorder, they failed. The famous "Black Hawk Down" incident in Mogadishu in 1993 led quickly to the withdrawal of U.S. forces. A notable lack of U.N. success led a year later to the withdrawal of its forces. What was left in Somalia for the next 10 years, until now, was slightly structured chaos, with a patchwork quilt arrangement of local governments -- warlords and sub-clans, Islamic councils and village councils -- across the country, with no central government. The Kenyans presided for two years over a sort of national conference of hundreds of Somalis in Kenya. It produced an unelected legislature, which named an unelected government, headed by a president and a prime minister with a Cabinet. When the Kenyans suggested politely that it was time for the new Somali government to go home and set up shop, the Somalis' response was that it was too dangerous to do so without foreign protection. The African Union expressed willingness to send forces to perform that function. Somalis in Mogadishu, the capital, demonstrated against the insertion of such a force, saying that they wanted no foreign troops in Somalia. So, 14 years after the last Somali government was in power in Mogadishu and 10 years after the U.N. forces left, the situation is still at a stalemate, with the country ungoverned and -- perhaps -- ungovernable. Economically, in terms of world trade, it doesn't matter. All Somalia ever exported anyway were bananas and camels, for meat and for racing. Fishing off its coastline, the longest in Africa, proceeds largely untouched by government regulation. There have been rumblings from the United States about the place potentially serving as a base for terrorists, although little or no evidence has emerged to support such a contention. It is up to the Somalis themselves to reject this lack of a government and to let the administration-in-waiting in Kenya come to Mogadishu unmolested. And that could take a while. In the meantime, the 8 million people of this miserable country pay the price for the failure of their leaders to reach agreement Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
