Ironduke

US Seeks to Prevent Escape of al-Qaida Figures From Somalia

By David Gollust
State Department
03 January 2007

The United States said Wednesday it is patrolling Somalia's coast and consulting with its neighbors to try to prevent the escape of terrorist suspects after Ethiopia's military rout of Islamist militias there. A top State Department official is in Addis Ababa to discuss the Somali situation. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

Bush administration officials had said in recent months that al-Qaida figures had been sheltered by, and perhaps even had positions of authority, in Somalia's formerly dominant Islamic Courts movement.

Now they say the United States is patrolling the Somali coast and having talks with Somalia's neighbors to try to prevent terrorists from escaping the country, after the Islamic militia group's military collapse.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer began talks in the region Wednesday after intervening Ethiopian troops, and forces from Somalia's Baidoa-based interim government, routed the Islamists from their last stronghold in southern Somalia earlier this week.

In the wake of the surprising battlefield turnabout, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. naval units from the Gulf region are involved in the interdiction effort.

"We would be concerned that no leaders, or members, of the Islamic Courts who have ties to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are allowed to flee and to leave Somalia," he said. "So that is of great concern to us. And we of course have a presence off the coast of Somalia and the Horn of Africa to make sure there are no escape routes by sea where these individuals could flee."

The United States believes that members of an al-Qaida cell responsible for the 1998 truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and also 2002 attacks on Israeli interests in Kenya, were in the Somali capital Mogadishu when it came under control of the Islamic Courts last June.

U.S. officials believe they now may have joined leaders of the militia movement in flight from the capital, where spokesman McCormack said only a rag-tag group of teenaged fighters had been left to confront the Ethiopians.

McCormack said Assistant Secretary Frazer began her mission in Addis Ababa and was to have talks Wednesday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who was also in the Ethiopian capital.

Uganda is the only country to have publicly committed troops to a proposed East African peacekeeping force for Somalia, which was approved by the U.N. Security Council a month ago when it appeared the Islamic militiamen were about to overrun the internationally recognized interim government.

Spokesman McCormack said the United States continues to support the proposed force to bolster the interim administration despite the changed strategic situation.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles told the country's parliament Tuesday his financially strapped government cannot afford to keep forces in Somalia much longer, and that the country's stability depends on the speedy arrival of foreign peacekeepers.

McCormack said that after the talks in Addis Ababa, Assistant Secretary of State Frazer will meet Friday in Kenya with diplomats from African and European countries making up the international "contact group" on Somalia.

He said Frazer will also visit Djibouti, which borders Somalia in the north, and Yemen, which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia and has been the destination of refugees trying to flee Somalia by boat.

The State Department said U.S. foreign aid chief Randall Tobias will hold a meeting of potential donor countries in Washington Thursday to try to generate new humanitarian aid commitments for Somalia.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...0103-voa03.htm

Ray

Most interesting.

And I was wondering what gave the Ethiopians the sudden courage to emerge from their hibernation!

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Dreadnought

Sir,
I would be inclined to believe "support" that they have badly needed thus far.

__________________
Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

Ray

That's right.

It has been shaken out of the doldrum.

Somalia is a very important area from the strategic point of view in the Indian Ocean.

I sure hope some semblance of order is established.

The warlords and their tribes are real awful and cruel.

Dreadnought

One thing for sure..these senseless rapes, killings, and kidnapping of children to be forced into guerrilla warfare must at all costs cease.

Ray

This much I know about Somalia since I was to command the UN Brigade out there that it was badlands.

Good that some order comes to Somalia with this action.

gunnut

But will they restore order? Or merely kick out the islamists so the warlords can continue their power struggle?

The clans and tribal based order in Africa is the problem. They have no loyalty to the nation. All their loyalties are to the tribe and the clan.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Ray

Clans, tribes - that is the problem.

Like ME, the colonialists drew illogical borders to suit their economic and political aims!

Just to bad.

Now, it is too late to re-draw the borders!

All the same, Somalia badly requires stability.

And from the western strategic point of view - the Chinese are swarming all over the place!

Ray

The Times January 04, 2007
+ Post a Comment

At last, a glimmer of hope for Somalia

Rosemary Righter

The peremptory ousting of the Islamic courts by Ethiopian forces is Somalia’s first piece of potentially good news in two devastating decades. Ethiopia acted out of national interest, to deny Islamic extremists a base in the troubled Horn of Africa from which they could disrupt the balance in Ethiopia itself, where almost equal-sized Christian and Muslim communities currently coexist in reasonable harmony.

Somalis, who fought two wars with Ethiopia over the Ogaden desert, will not readily see their old enemy as a saviour. Yet by acting when the UN and the African Union could come up with nothing but paper plans, the Ethiopians have given this wretched failed state a chance. When the Tanzanians invaded Uganda in 1979 to get rid of the murderous Idi Amin, they were piously denounced by the international community. They deserved praise and so do the Ethiopians. Uganda’s troubles did not end then, but it was the start of the road out of Hell. Somalia is an even tougher case, but it has at least been rescued from another plunge into the inferno.

What next? The country has a federal Government only in name, without ministries or offices, let alone an effective military — a Government whose writ ran nowhere a mere fortnight ago, not even, securely, in the little town of Baidoa where it had been holed up since in 2004. Transitional in name and impotent in fact, it has had, until now, no relevance to Somalis. Not least because its ranks include warlords, its brave insistence that “the warlord era is over” will not readily be believed. It has only weeks to introduce some semblance of civil order. The process will be chaotic; the attempt may fail.

Yet this is still the first government since 1987, when tribal armies combined to overthrow the dictator Siad Barre, that, for now at least, does not face an organised military threat. That is important. So is the fact that President Abdullahi Yusuf hails from one of Somalia’s two biggest clans, the more northerly Darod, and Ali Mohamed Ghedi, its convincingly moderate and well-educated Prime Minister, from the other, the Mogadishu-based Hawiye clan. The warlords are at least nominally within the government camp.

Above all, the Government seems serious about persuading the traditional elders of the six principal Somali clans, most of which are represented in the embryo parliament, to halt the feuds that erupted after Barre fell in 1991. The clan leaders have a strong interest in doing so. The vacuum that this fighting created enabled warlords to usurp their traditional authority, the basis in Somalia of civic order. Their followers, who trade, intermarry and work with each other daily, would respond because they are desperate for peace.

The dominant hardline faction among the Islamists offered no such prospect. They sought the military overthrow of Somalia’s internationally recognised government; their call for jihad against Ethiopia was a pretext. Before the Ethiopians moved, the Islamic courts had geared up for renewed civil war. They expected it to be protracted and bloody, as it would have been without the decisive Ethiopian intervention.

The intolerant but effective order the courts imposed on Mogadishu after ejecting the warlords in June gave an impression that was ultimately misleading. It impressed both Somalis and outsiders, yet they never unveiled an agenda for the country as a whole, or showed interest in reconciling Somalis.

Nearly all the courts’ officials were Hawiye, most from the subclan of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a militant who denies links to al-Qaeda, yet compares Osama bin Laden to Nelson Mandela.

Tellingly, the Islamist leaders showed no interest in establishing government structures, instead ruling by suppressing, with draconian punishments, what remained of personal freedoms and imposing a fundamentalist regime alien to the relaxed, gentle Islam of most Somalis. Theirs was a spurious prospectus; beyond ousting the warlords and then the government, the Islamic courts had nothing to offer but the certainty of more fighting.

Last month factions prepared to negotiate with the transitional Government lost out to the hardliners bent on attacking Baidoa. By now persuaded that they were invincible, they issued the Ethiopians, who until then had insisted that they were in Somalia only as military trainers, with a ten-day ultimatum to leave the country and appealed to Islamists from around the world to join the battle. The Ethiopians called their bluff, politically as well as militarily.

Supposedly loyal units defected almost immediately and open support for the Islamists evaporated the moment they left Mogadishu. But the guns, and some warlords, are also back, and a three-day deadline for the surrender of all weapons, which expires today, has been ignored.

Quite logically, people will not voluntarily give up guns that they fear they may need. The Government cannot enforce the ban. The Ethiopians cannot use their troops for that purpose without arousing intense hostility.

The promised African peacekeepers may not arrive for months. Working with moderates from the Islamic Courts, as Mr Ghedi proposes, may be the only way to hold the line while power-sharing is negotiated with the Hawiye.

Massive and above all immediate humanitarian aid is essential, along with engineers to repair shattered infrastructure, and administrative advice. So is the presence, for now, of Ethiopian troops. But in honesty Somali leaders should be told that there is small enthusiasm for another large peacekeeping mission to save them from themselves. Reconciliation is a job for Somalis alone. Somalis want that job done.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...530242,00.html

667medic

How secure is the coast of Somalia. The USN might actually have the dual role of preventing the escape of the terrorists and more importantly to prevent the arrival of reinforcements from abroad. This is because it would be perceives as a war between the momin and the kaffirs (Ethiopians who are christian)....

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Seek Save Serve Medic

Ironduke

I'm sure the blockade is meant to work both ways... if the border with Eritrea and Kenya were sealed friendly forces in Somalia would have free rein to rout terrorist-aligned forces there. Chalk up another win in the Global War on Terror... I say move on the Philippines, combine US naval supremacy with Filipino ground operations and isolate and rout the enemy there next. One country at a time... keep sustained pressure on the major front while systematically seeking and destroying terrorist-aligned forces one country at a time.

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The Buck Stops Here

highsea

I hold no optimism for Somalia. Once the Ethiopians leave, it will be back to the same old story- feuding warlords and private militias. The Islamists will simply go back to guerilla tactics, and the chaos will continue unabated as always. Even in the light of a complete rout, they were offered amnesty. How stupid. They should have been driven into the sea.

The only thing to do is just leave them alone to kill each other off in their own fashion.

__________________
My baby called me up. She said- Why don't you ever take me out? Pick me up in your brand new car....You shake the short change from the old fruit jar...

Ray

The strategic position of Somalia makes it an area that requires to be kept stable and safe.

The greater Horn of Africa—including Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda—is a region of strategic importance. It is also a region in crisis.

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia, backed by Ethiopian troops and air power, completely and swiftly dislodged the Islamic Courts movement from power in the capital, Mogadishu, and in Kismayo, the second major city. As a result, the dangers of a “proxy” war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in Somalia and that of a larger regional war seem to have receded.

It will be recalled that while Ethiopia has been supporting TFG, Eritrea has been supporting the opposing forces.

A look at the map will indicate the geo-strategic importance of the Horn of Africa.

It is important that this positive scenario is reinforced.

highsea

It has been unstable and unsafe for 25 years. Why should it change now?

The AU doesn't have the forces, and the UN doesn't have the will. Who is going to step in?

Ray

WAB!

Seriously, if the current thing goes through, then there is hope!