NAIROBI, 12 October 2004 — It took two years of tortuous negotiations, occasional fist fights and countless walkouts before warlords and clan leaders finally chose a new president for Somalia on Sunday. That was the easy part. Survival — both personal and political — tops the security problems President Abdullahi Yusuf will face when he returns from Kenya to set up the first national government in 13 years.
Analysts familiar with the fractious militia barons who still dominate the broken country suggest that any number of rivals disgruntled at not winning the top job could disrupt Yusuf’s attempts to establish his rule in Mogadishu, home to an estimated 60,000 militiamen.
As if that were not difficult enough, Yusuf is inheriting a failed state bereft of the infrastructure and cash any government will need to help make a start at rebuilding.
“Certainly there will be opposition. The question is the level of magnitude,” said analyst Jabril Ibrahim Abdulle, speaking before news of Yusuf’s election. “Any new leader will have to negotiate with warlords before going back to Somalia. There has to be some reconciliation.” The election, by lawmakers meeting in comparative safety across the border in Nairobi, was the culmination of two years of reconciliation talks intended to end a decade of chaos. But Ken Menkhaus, a former UN political advisor on Somalia who now teaches political science at Davidson College, North Carolina, says the new leadership’s challenge will be to ensure the fledgling unity of the government does not unravel. “If there are external actors, regional governments, who become unhappy with the direction of the government, then it is not going to take much to pull the thread,” he said.
The country disintegrated into anarchy after dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991 as clans pressured by famine and turf feuds launched battles for territory. Hundreds of thousands have since died from famine, disease and violence. The country now comprises two self-declared enclaves in the north and a patchwork of quarrelling clan fiefdoms in the south. Security is so bad that Yusuf and the Cabinet he will choose may not be able to return to Mogadishu any time soon. They may have to settle for an interim capital in a quieter rural town. “Militias are a big problem, but there is a bigger problem — control of heavy weapons,” said Abdulle. “So the government’s priority, with the help of the African Union, (will be) containment and removal of these weapons in consultation with the warlords.”
To date Somalia’s reputation as a militia quagmire has deterred the outside world from offering anything substantial in the way of reconstruction aid, although that may now change following Sunday’s relatively orderly vote.
“All the necessary support ought to be given to the incoming government to ensure it delivers to the people of Somalia. It is critical that this is done, and done timely,” said Mohammed Ali Faum, the African Union’s special envoy to the talks.
Sweden is organizing a conference in Stockholm on Oct. 29 where representatives of the African Union, Arab League and European Union member states will look at how best to support the government, although money will not be discussed.
