Deadly anarchy continues in Somalia, spawning as it does violence beyond its borders, the most visible form of being piracy, which this week spread to the waters off Oman. However, while the international community is seeking to tackle Somali pirates by sending warships from more than a dozen navies to protect international shipping, all it can do is wring its hands at the continuing death and destruction within Somalia itself.
The transitional government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed continues in power but is hardly in control of the country. The latest challenges to its authority came last week with the murder of the Mogadishu police chief and the suicide bombing that killed 20 people in western town of Beledweyne including Sharif’s security minister and close aide Omar Hashi Aden. Behind such high-profile slayings there is also a steady campaign of murder and intimidation against journalists and ordinary people who refuse to pay money to one armed gang or another or who just happen to be at the wrong place when some thug decides to fire off a mortar round.
Somalia is in truth more than just a failed state. It is also a series of failed insurrections, each of which has left its own tide line of blood and destruction. The Islamic Courts militia is now part of the transitional government but its fundamentalist challenge has been replaced by the Shebab armed group and the more political Hezb Al-Islam. Western sources insist that both organizations have strong links with Al-Qaeda. Before his assassination, the security minister had warned the Shebab had an extremely tight and cellular command structure which contained foreign leaders. Aden had been in Beledweyne to spearhead efforts to stop the Shebab fighters moving across the border from Ethiopia. But in reality a large swathe of the south of the country is now controlled by the insurgents who effectively surround Mogadishu itself.
Analysts note that one reason for the apparent cohesion among the insurgents is their complete rejection of the clan system that has splintered and deformed Somali politics since the 1991 overthrow of President Siad Barre. Indeed, even though the transitional government is still holding together, its core weakness remains the clan divisions that are never far from the surface. Nor unfortunately is the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu apparently able to do more than underline how alarmed other African states are that one of their numbers has for 18 years been an unstable danger to it immediate neighbors and the wider region. Indeed the AU troops have several times already been targeted by the Shebab that has branded it as an occupying force and claimed absurdly that it is intent on forcing the country to Christianity. While politically its Somali mission is as important to the AU as its no less difficult peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, the reality is that the solution to this mare’s nest of a conflict can only rest in the hands of Somalis themselves, though when and how that can be achieved is currently hard to envisage.
