Daily Independent (Lagos)
5 January 2009
editorial
The East African state of Somalia is at present a devil's workshop, being a theatre of war so precipitated by fundamentalists of religious colouration. On 14 December, 2008, government was near collapse when Islamic insurgents, the al shabals, accused of having ties with al Qaeda swore never to negotiate or share power with the West-backed administration of President Abdullahi Yussuf.
In what could be described as a divided house, President Yussuf had sacked the Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, alleging security lapses and accusing the Prime Minister of failing to bring about peace. President Yussuf had, however, vowed to comply with any decisions by the parliament. The Somalian Parliament has however declared the sacking of the Prime Minister illegal and passed a vote of confidence in him by a huge majority. Also, upon the sack of the Prime Minister, hundreds of people had demonstrated in his favour, carrying placards and his portraits through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu.
The African Union Commission under the auspices of its head, Jean Ping, has also condemned the dismissal of Mr. Nur, claiming it was an attempt to derail UN-sponsored peace talks with Islamists.
Since the overthrow of President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has not had a functional national government. President Yussuf's government controls only part of Mogadishu and the town of Baidoa after recent advances by Islamist insurgents, and has largely been dependent on international aid and Ethiopian military support to function.
President Yussuf's perceived intransigence had led to the announcement of sanctions against him two weeks ago. Kenya had issued a strong public rebuke to a man already seen to be increasingly marginalised as his country struggles with a powerful insurgency and piracy off the coast. At a news conference held in the Somali capital, the spokesperson of the al shabab insurgent group, Sheik Muktar Robow, had been anything but interested in whatever could restore peace to Somalia. He had boasted: "we will never talk to the government and will never accept any political power sharing; our aim is only to see Islamic law running this country." Since 2007, when Islamic militants began a brutal insurgency, thousands of civilians have been killed while many have fled for their lives.
Yet there was no respite for Somalia President Yussuf as Kenya, which is home to more than 215,000 refugees and which also doubles as base for all UN and international NGO operations in Somalia, and with many Somalia leaders having family property or businesses there, singling him out for blame over the intractable problems of his country. According to the Kenyan Foreign Affairs Minister, Moses Wetangalu, President Abdullahi Yussuf was an obstacle to peace. While pronouncing Kenya's sanctions against Somalia and which also applies to Yussuf's family in form of a travel ban and freezing of any assets in Kenya, Wetangalu says "The region and international community should act in unison to collectively condemn all spoilers to the Somali peace process." Wetangalu also claimed that Kenya only recongised Hussein as Prime Minister saying Yussuf did not have the power to fire him. This is coming from very influential quarters seeing that Kenya was the venue of the two-year-long peace talks that formed Yussuf's government in 2004.
Following in the heels of Somalian political haemorrhage, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, had threatened to withdraw the African Union peacekeepers. Meles had told parliament in a surprise announcement that Uganda and Burundi, the only contributors to the AU force, wanted to withdraw their embattled peacekeepers ahead of Ethiopian troops, who are set to leave next month.
Uganda had immediately issued a strong denial that it was withdrawing its troops, just as an AU official in Burundi said the country had only on Wednesday pledged to send another battalion to Somalia. Again Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi insisted that, notwithstanding their denial, they had already informed the appropriate quarters that they (Uganda and Burundi) would want to withdraw, and were only waiting for ships and planes to arrive in Somalia in order for them to pull out.
Climax came on Monday December 29, 2008 when the man at the centre of the storm, Somalian President Abdullahi Yussuf threw in the towel by resigning amid deepening international pressure. "Most of the country is not in our hands", Yussuf said in a speech before parliament in Baridoa, one of the only towns controlled by Somalia's government, which has equally been sidelined by Islamic insurgents with alleged ties with al-Qaeda. He claimed in a radio broadcast that he could not write Somalia's bickering leadership and that the country was "paralysed." The speaker of the parliament will stands in as acting President until the parliament elects a new President within 30 days.
The Nigerian government must realise that much as we would always like to play the big brother in the African Union, human lives are just not dry leaves to be trampled upon and wantonly wasted without much qualms. The sanctity of human lives is pivotal to the sanctity of state and twenty-first century diplomacy cannot shy away from the fact that it is always better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. We should use all the diplomatic know-how at our disposal to bring warring factions to a roundtable than just pumping troops to death.
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Well said. Obviously, Emperor Yar, in his desperate attempt to win international approval has rushed to commit Nigerian troops to replace the Ethiopians in Somalia, without first, debating the pros and cons and getting the NASS approval after ensuring and getting UN commitment that there will be adequate provision for our troops’ logistics and life support. The Emperor never learned from how 9 Nigerian soldiers were murdered in Sudan because UN gave them neither the mandate nor the logistical support to defend themselves thus making them sitting duck peace-keepers to be sniped at, a la target practice. What about other… [Read Full Text]