Ethiopian contingents enter Somalia, via Gedo region?

[Gabbal]

Warar Dheeraad Iyo Ciidamadii Itoobiyaanka Ee Soo Galay Gobalka GEDO

[Gabbal]

Ethiopian troops cross border into Somalia

 

By Andrew Cawthorne

 

JOWHAR, Somalia (Reuters) - About 300 Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia on Saturday, a top Islamist said, after Islamic fighters who wrested control of Mogadishu moved inland towards the seat of Somalia's interim government.

 

Ethiopia immediately denied sending soldiers in but warned the Islamists not to cross the border, where reports say Ethiopia has been massing soldiers for days.

 

Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf, a former warlord, is closely allied with Addis Ababa, which was instrumental in his election after peace talks in Kenya in 2004.

 

"There are Ethiopian troops just past the border and coming in. Ethiopia is on an offensive passing our borders and bringing war to us. They are backing the (interim government)," Islamic Courts Union Chairman Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters, referring to an incursion in Dollow in southwest Somalia.

Ethiopia denied sending troops across the border.

 

"Ethiopia has not crossed the border. So far, the fundamentalists have occupied Baladwayne and are marching towards the Ethiopian border," Ethiopian minister Bereket Simon said. "Ethiopia hopes that they will not cross."

 

Ahmed said troops had been crossing in and out further north in Mudug region and the Hiran region, where Baladwayne is. Bereket declined to say if troops were on the border.

 

Dollow is at the intersection of the Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali borders and on the road to Baidoa, where Somalia's weak interim government is based and has been increasingly surrounded by the Islamist militias.

Local officials there said about 50 armoured vehicles with Ethiopian soldiers had passed Dollow and 50 km (31 miles) further in at Luuq. There were conflicting reports on whether they were heading to Baidoa or Jowhar.

WARLORDS FLEE

 

Ethiopia, Washington's top counterterrorism ally in the Horn of Africa, had backed and armed warlords the Islamists have routed from their strongholds in Mogadishu in a swift march from the coastal capital to Baladwayne near the Ethiopian border.

 

Bereket denied any involvement, but said Ethiopia supports the interim government.

 

Largely secular Ethiopia has long been wary of the influence of Islam in the region, and has not hesitated to send its military into Somalia before to fight Islamic forces.

 

The warlords were widely believed to have been financed with U.S. money in their last stand against the Islamists, which killed 350 people in battles since February.

 

Earlier on Saturday, Islamic court sources said two warlords, Bashir Raghe and Muse Sudi Yalahow, took a boat to a waiting U.S. vessel which approached the Somali coast.

 

"They said they would be back in a few days but everybody thinks they may take asylum," said a senior aide to the Islamist leadership, Abdulrahman Ali Osman.

 

It was not immediately possible to obtain independent confirmation of the report, and the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said it had no information and urged caution. But U.S. ships are in the area, Fifth Fleet spokesman Commander Jeff Breslau said.

 

This is the first time Mogadishu has been under the control of a single entity since warlords plunged Somalia into anarchy with the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

 

The Islamists say they have no interest in starting their own government and want talks with the existing administration, but have imposed sharia law wherever they have arrived.

 

"There is no hidden agenda," Ahmed told reporters, adding that the courts planned to focus on cleaning up the territory it had taken.

 

"People might rise up in other towns. If that happens, we have no choice but to respond if the people of any region rise up and ask us to help," he said.

 

They said they can make Mogadishu "sufficiently secure" to host the government, but said it opposed a government plan to allow in foreign peacekeepers.

 

(Additional reporting by Heba Kandil in Dubai and Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)

 

 

Reuters

[Abdi2005]

This report seems to be credible, it looks like shekh sharif after all was not lieng. The courts seems to have people in gedo holding a watchful eyes on the ethiopians and their movements.

[Gabbal]

Abdi-

 

Ethiopia, at this point, has not shown agression to the people of Gedo. That is because they are not after any elements in Gedo. Al Itihad has long been gone, and the former SNF has completely united and not susceptible to the Ethiopian's divisionist tactics. Rather, it seems as they are sending a subliminal message to the courts by putting troops enmasse in areas near Luuq and Dollow, themselves former strongholds of Al Itihad remenants in the current Islamic Courts. It seems as that is all.

 

Do I believe Ethiopian soldiers and army contingents will enter Somalia beyond various miles from the Gedo border? No and that is because of the level of international attention and scrutiny directed at Somalia at the moment as result of the heavy western media coverage there.

 

The world will find out that the Somalis have not been lying about the Ethiopians for the last decade and half and infact Ethiopia will be caught red-handed for intruding into the territorial integrity of the Somalis and help keeping the flames of anarchy alive.

 

Ethiopia does not have enough weight in the international community to ignore and/or not feel the weight of the strong international condemnation from the international community were it to be found to be intruding into Somalia's internal affairs materialized in the form of troops and military installations.

[Socod_badne]

Ethiopia denies sending troops to Somalia

 

 

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 17, 11:22 AM ET

 

JOWHAR, Somalia - The leader of Somalia's increasingly powerful Islamic militia accused Ethiopian troops Saturday of crossing into the country — a charge Ethiopia denied.

 

Ethiopia said its forces only massed near the border to monitor the situation and had not entered neighboring Somalia.

 

"Ethiopia has a right to monitor its border," Bereket Simon, an adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told The Associated Press in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

 

His comments came after Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, said 300 Ethiopian troops entered Somalia through the border town of Dolow in the southwestern region of Gedo on Saturday morning.

 

"We want the whole world to know what's going on," Ahmed told journalists. "Ethiopia has crossed our borders and are heading for us. They are supporting the transitional federal government."

 

Ahmed's interpreter initially said the Islamic leader accused the United States of encouraging an Ethiopian intervention. But Ahmed later said that was a mistranslation and he had not made that accusation.

 

In recent days, Ethiopian troops have been crossing into Somali border towns and leaving, Ahmed said.

 

"They have deployed a lot of soldiers around the border towns, which is why we have been saying that Ethiopia is going to send in troops to Somalia," the cleric said.

 

The Islamic Courts Union is the group behind the militiamen that have swept across southern Somalia, installing clan-based, religiously oriented municipal administrations. It captured Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on June 6 after months of fighting with an alliance of warlords backed by the United States.

 

More than 330 people died in the fighting, most of them civilians. The Islamic group now controls most of southern Somalia.

 

The group, accused by the United States of harboring al-Qaida fugitives, portrays itself as free of links to Somalia's past turmoil and capable of bringing order and unity. But the future of a country accustomed to moderate Islam would be uncertain under hard-line Islamic rulers.

 

Ahmed denied Saturday that any foreigners were involved in its Islamic courts or that anyone in the courts had ties to al-Qaida.

 

Somalia has been without an effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

 

Ethiopia has intervened in Somalia in the past to prevent Islamic extremists from taking power.

 

Ethiopians also were key power brokers in forming President Abdullahi Yusuf's transitional government in 2004. Yusuf, himself a former warlord, had asked for Ethiopian troops to back his government.

 

The Islamic group's only competition for control of southern Somalia is Yusuf's transitional government. That government is supported by Somalia's neighbors, the

United Nations, the United States and the

European Union, so opposing it could mean regional and international isolation and possibly crippling sanctions for any administration the Islamic forces try to build.

 

Yusuf said Saturday he was willing to hold talks with the Islamic Courts Union if they agree to mediation by Yemen.

 

He said they must stop their advance, agree not to enter any more towns and recognize the legitimacy of the government and the constitution.

 

Ahmed said his Islamic group was ready to meet with what he described as the "illegitimate government," but he would not agree to any conditions.

 

Meanwhile, Islamic Courts Union spokesman Abdi Rahman Osman said the last two main warlords who lost the Somali capital to the militia — Muse Sudi Yalahow and Bashir Rage — fled the country on a boat and were picked up by a U.S. warship early Saturday.

 

U.S. officials have acknowledged backing the warlords against the Islamic group. But the U.S. Naval 5th Fleet, which patrols international waters off Somalia and is based in Bahrain, said it had no reports that any of its ships had picked up the warlords.

 

___

 

Associated Press writers Mohamed Olad Hassan and Salad Duhul in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Leslie Neuhaus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

[Gabbal]

^Ethiopia might not have entered say Mogadishu or Jowhar, but they have been sighted around Dollo, Somalia which would mean their troops have entered the Somali Republic.

 

This is a gesture that will bring the people of Gedo into the picture of the current war in Somalia. They have driven the Ethiopians out of Gedo before and I do not believe they will allow them to enter the region fully again without a fight.

 

We wait to see.

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

cama daashan miya etopia aya soo socota?

[Gabbal]

^Af-Soomaali si fiican u qor ama soo baro sida loo qoraya. Axmarada kabaha-u-qaad miyaa kugu kaliftay inaad qolkani soo gashaa?

[Alle-ubaahne]

Originally posted by Naxar Nugaaleed:

cama daashan miya etopia aya soo socota?

****** Nugaaleed, iska waran?

______________

 

Aflagaada hala yareeyo, baliis.

 

[ June 18, 2006, 01:50: Message edited by: Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar ]

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

Axmarada kabaha-u-qaad miyaa kugu kaliftay inaad qolkani soo gashaa?

 

HornAfrique

Af-Soomaali si fiican u qor ama soo baro sida loo qoraya.

physician heal thy self. Ma waxa ka wada baro Sida loo Qoro, wa maxay baro sida loo qoraya? grammatically incorrect, no? SXB, wax kale oo ad igu dahdo ayad weythey? Stop being an A...