NAIROBI, Kenya, 21 August 2006 — Ethiopian troops, allied to Somalia’s weak transitional government, entered Somalia early yesterday and reached the southern town where the government is based, officials and witnesses said.
The move was expected to raise tensions with the Islamic militiamen, who oppose Ethiopia and control the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south.
The unknown number of troops crossed the border before dawn and passed through several towns on their way to Baidoa, where President Abdullahi Yusuf’s transitional government is based, two militia officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Though Ethiopia and Somalia view each other as enemies, having fought a 1977-78 war, Yusuf is a longtime ally of Ethiopia.
In the past, Ethiopian and Somali officials have denied the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia, despite witness accounts of them entering late July to protect the transitional government.
It was not clear if the latest group of Ethiopian troops in Somalia was the same that was said to have entered in July, and may have later withdrawn.
Officials of the transitional government have said they reached an agreement to work with Eritrea’s Liberation Front rebel group, after reports that the Eritrean government was supporting Somalia’s Islamic militiamen.
In a statement e-mailed Saturday to The Associated Press, they accused Eritrea providing military and intelligence support to an Islamic group, with the aim of destabilizing the Horn of Africa region. The statement was dated Friday and signed by the Somali government’s envoy to the European Union, Yusuf Ismail, and the rebel group’s foreign secretary, Yohannes Zeremariam.
In the past, Eritrea has denied supporting Somalia’s Islamic courts.
This latest development opens up a new dimension in Somalia’s 16-year political crisis, drawing Eritrea into a conflict that already has seen its archenemy, Ethiopia, take the side of the transitional government.
The Eritrean rebel group, based in Sudan, is one of several opposing Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki, whose government has clamped down on opposition within the ruling party and backtracked on promises to turn Eritrea into a multiparty democracy.
A committee monitoring a 1992 UN arms embargo on Somalia said in its May report that Eritrea supplies weapons to Al-Itihaad Al-Islaami, a conservative Somali group that operates as a militia supporting the Islamic courts.
The Islamist movement announced yesterday it would organize a national forum to chart the country’s future, further bypassing the weak government it threatens.
At the same time, the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) renewed vows to fight the deployment of a proposed east African peacekeeping force, plans for which were finalized last week, saying foreign troops were “not welcome.”
“We are inviting all the Somali people to attend a national reconciliation conference in Mogadishu,” Abdurahim Ali Muddey, spokesman for the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), told reporters in Mogadishu.
