Ethiopian Troops To be in Somalia Next Friday!

[abgaalKING]

This is The Reason Alshabab will get boosted and become even stronger.It is the US foreign Policy to keep somalia is a constant state of chaos and violence.



An alliance of mostly East African nations is preparing a coordinated military campaign in Somalia to finish off the embattled al-Shabab extremist group. The al-Qaida-inspired extremists were driven out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu by African Union troops in August, and have recently lost ground to advancing Kenyan forces in the south. The plan includes possibly sending Ethiopian troops back to Somalia.

The ongoing Kenyan operation in southern Somalia, and al-Shabab's recent collapse in Mogadishu, are raising hopes that the militants' stranglehold on Somalia can be broken.

Toward that end, heads of state from the six-nation Horn of Africa regional bloc known as IGAD will meet next Friday to discuss a military strategy aimed at greatly expanding the control of Somalia's weak Transitional Federal Government.

Planners say the Addis Ababa summit will encourage all IGAD countries, including Ethiopia, to contribute to the effort.

Ethiopian officials say no formal decision has been made on joining the list of troop contributing countries. But foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti says Addis Ababa will help the campaign in any way possible.

"You can simply guess Ethiopia is going to be part and parcel of this process," said Dina. "The decision is not made as to sending the army, but per the IGAD council's resolutions of the past months, all IGAD member countries, the African Union and others also will be summoned, will be called, will be expected to somehow contribute something to strengthening the operations in Somalia."

Dina said a decision on Ethiopia's role in the offensive would probably be announced at next Friday's summit.

Ethiopian troops are regarded unfavorably by many Somalis, who remember them for brutality during a previous incursion from 2006 to 2009, made to support the Somali government. The troops were withdrawn after their presence became an al-Shabab recruiting tool.

Dina says conditions are different now. He says this time Ethiopia is part of a broad alliance of countries that recognize al-Shabab as a threat to regional stability.

"It's not only Ethiopia that's interested in crushing al-Shabab, it's in the interest of the IGAD countries, the African countries, even the international community to get rid of al-Shabab, which is actually quite a menace to the region," added Dina.

Besides controlling large portions of central Somalia, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a bombing in Uganda's capital last year that killed 76 people. Kenya blames the group for a series of recent cross-border kidnappings of foreigners, an allegation al-Shabab has denied.

Two senior United Nations peacekeeping officials were at African Union headquarters this week for a briefing on the Somalia strategy, which includes asking for U.N. authorization to double the size of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to 20,000 troops. Diplomats say the plan calls for Kenyan troops to be brought under the AMISOM command, but not Ethiopian troops.

AU Peace and Security Director El-Ghassim Wane says U.N. and wider international support is needed to capitalize on the gains made by AMISOM and the Kenyan offensive.

"We believe the Kenyan operation is further contributing to weakening al-Shabab and creating space for the political process to take hold and lead to the conclusion of the transition next August... It's a challenging task, and we are fully aware of it, and that's why we are calling for further and enhanced support from the United Nations and the larger international community," said Wane.

Uganda and Burundi currently contribute the bulk of the nearly 10,000 AMISOM troops, with tiny Djibouti adding a small contingent. Kenya is said to be ready to contribute several thousand, and AU officials say Sierra Leone is preparing a few battalions that could be ready to join the operation within months.

The United Nations, which funds a large portion of AMISOM, and several other countries are said to be ready to provide what are called "force enablers," such as helicopters and other equipment to support the mission.

[AbdiWahab252]

Will Sheik Sharif regain his lost voice ?

[abgaalKING]

Will Sheik Sharif regain his lost voice ?

It is what somalis think of ethiopian and kenyan invasion that matters.

[AbdiWahab252]

So will the Abgaal welcome them as much as the last time ? Will Maxamed Dheere make speeches calling his tol to provide the Ethiopians with food, water and milk ?

[abgaalKING]

M.dheere doesnt Equal abgaal,and besides every sane person knows ethiopia and kenya have their own interests in somalia which is always contrary to that of somalia.i see the re-making of what happened in 2006.

[AhlulbaytSoldier]

Dejavu again
Zoomalia will always be playground of war and misery.

[Dudaaye]

WikiLeaks: US warned Kenya against invading Somalia

By ALAN BOSWELL
McClatchy Newspapers

Updated: 2011-11-18T23:24:31Z


NAIROBI, KenyaU.S. cables made public by WikiLeaks show that the United States warned Kenya two years ago not to launch an offensive in southern Somalia against al-Qaida-allied al-Shabab rebels, but a U.S. official also offered to check on the "feasibility" of a U.S. review of the plans.

Kenya went ahead with an invasion a month ago, saying it was a response to a recent series of kidnappings near the border between the two countries. But the existence of the cables undercuts Kenya's claim that the move had not been long planned.

The cables paint a contradictory picture of whether the United States encouraged Kenya's invasion of its neighbor.

Taken as a whole, they seem to lend credence to Washington's claims that it had neither encouraged nor supported the invasion. But one particularly lively cable depicts a senior U.S. official asking Kenya's foreign minister if Kenyan troops shouldn't consider trying to take Kismayo, the al-Shabab stronghold seaport, on their own or with the help of Somali militias, and promising the review of the plans by an American team. The tactics described in that cable match the plan Kenya appears to be trying to execute.

While reliable independent information from the ground is scarce, the Kenyan offensive appears to have stalled one month in. The military has cited heavy rains and mud for slowing its movements, but Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based Somali analyst at the International Crisis Group, says that the military is hesitating to proceed into al-Shabab territory because the Islamist group is refusing to engage the Kenyan troops openly.

"The Kenyans were hoping to fight on their terms. Al-Shabab has now turned the equation," Abdi said.

Kenya could be trying to buy time in hopes of more outside assistance. Kenya has called for a blockade of Kismayo from the sea, and on Wednesday it hosted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his Somali counterpart, Sharif Ahmed, to shore up regional backing of its military campaign.

A bogged-down campaign is one of the reasons U.S. officials cited, according to the cables, for opposing a Kenyan operation.

According to a cable dated Feb. 2, 2010, Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, provided Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula with a variety of reasons that the U.S. believed a proposed Kenyan incursion could backfire during a Jan. 30, 2010, meeting in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

Kenyan officials had been aggressively pitching the idea over several months, the cables show, asking U.S. officials to back their plan to create a semi-autonomous buffer zone on Kenya's border with Somalia. The Kenyans vowed that not "a single Kenyan boot" would enter Somalia and that the entire operation would be conducted by Kenyan-trained Somali troops.

Carson, however, warned that the operation would be more complicated and expensive than expected. He also said such an invasion might spark conflict between Somalia's combustible clan and sub-clan networks and weaken the authority of the central government in Mogadishu.

Carson also questioned Kenya's resolve in the case of defeat or setback and wondered if its leaders were prepared to deal with discontent back home if the war turned sour.

The cable said Carson "concluded by suggesting that there shold (sic) be more conventional and convenient ways to accomplish the same end. Could, for example, the trained Somalis help Kenya to re-take Kismayo?"

According to the cable, the National Security Council's senior director for African affairs, Michelle Gavin, then expressed the United States' willingness to brainstorm other strategies with Kenya.

The Kenyan delegation, which included Kenya's minister of defense, the head of its intelligence service and the chief of its armed forces, continued to press the Americans passionately for support, with Wetangula summing up their arguments by pleading, "I may not have been as convincing as I should have been," but "the threat is real," according to the cable.

Carson ended the meeting by promising to "look into the feasibility" of sending a U.S. team to Kenya to review the plan's technical details, but he told the Kenyans that he "still maintained deep reservations" about it, the cable said.

The cable noted this was the third time Wetangula had made a personal pitch to Carson to support the plans, which would involve 2,000 Kenyan-trained Somali troops in an offensive. The end goal was to create a new semi-autonomous administration in Jubaland, the southern region of Somalia. Kenyan officials argued that Kenya's poorly secured border with Somalia was a major national security threat.

Since Kenya's invasion last month, U.S. officials have denied that the U.S. was involved in planning Kenya's offensive or was providing assistance - a position that appears to be backed by the deep skepticism the cables show U.S. officials had for the plan.

"I don't think it points to an American plot," said Roger Middleton, an analyst in London for Chatham House, Britain's premier foreign policy think tank. "For me the cables make the case a bit stronger that Kenya went on this on its own."

But Middleton also said that the United States, Britain and France now have a "begrudging acceptance" of the invasion and are likely to be providing intelligence and other covert forms of support now that the operation is under way.

"In the short term, people would be happy if Kenya succeeds and takes Kismayo. But I haven't seen a plan of what comes next. And that's the real worry," Middleton said.

The diplomatic cables show that, at the beginning of last year, Washington shared those concerns.

Kenya tried repeatedly to persuade Washington to ease its opposition to its Jubaland project. In addition to Wetangula's pitches to Carson, senior Kenyan officials pitched a number of U.S. representatives around the same time: Karl Wycoff, the deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, on Dec. 8, 2009; Alexander Vershbow, the assistant secretary of defense, on Jan. 26, 2010; and Daniel Benjamin, the ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, on Jan. 29. All U.S. officials told Kenya that the U.S. had strong reservations about the plan, according to the cables.

The British government also was pessimistic of the plan, according to a Jan. 15, 2010, cable from the U.S. Embassy in London.

Opposition also came from Uganda, according to another cable, which said that on Jan. 31, 2010, in Addis Ababa, Ugandan President Museveni questioned Kenya's ability to wage unconventional war in Somalia, criticizing Kenya's military as a career army and asking rhetorically, "Is Kenya used to fighting like this?" Museveni also questioned the ideological commitment of Kenya's proxy Somali militias.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi offered only qualified support and said he shared U.S. concerns. "We are not enthusiastic, but we are hoping for success," he told U.S. officials on that same day, according to a separate cable.

The foreign minister of Djibouti, a small country to the north of Somalia that hosts a major U.S. military base, told the U.S. he feared Kenya's invasion could produce the same ill consequences as the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006, which prompted al-Shabab to launch its insurgency in southern Somalia.

The concerted rebuff had one notable exception, however: China. A February 2010 diplomatic cable from the United States' Nairobi embassy says that in January, as Kenya was feverishly pitching its Western and regional allies for support, the Chinese government gave Kenya weapons, ammunition and uniforms for use by the Somali force that Kenya was training for the task.

The Kenyan military denied support from the Chinese in its current operations. "If there is under-the-table support, I am not aware," said Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, the Kenyan military spokesman.

Chirchir also denied that China gave military support to Kenya's trained Somali militias two years ago. He would not directly respond to how Kenya's current military offensive is related to the Jubaland project as laid out in the WikiLeaks cables.

"There is no such thing as the Jubaland initiative," Chirchir said. "We attacked because our tourism industry was attacked."

(Boswell is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent.)

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/18/32 ... rylink=rss

[Estarix]

From bringing the ICU to the political squander to allowing the African Union to strip away our sovereignty. This Shariif guy is an absolute debacle. Look at him, today his legitimately solely comes from Amisom troops in his own damn city, and even then as the president has almost no influence outside of Mogadishu.

[abdisamad3]

what the white man couldn't bring down cannot be brought down by few mercenery african slaves we shall crush them insha-allah.

[CaynabaX]

Time for ina-Godane and his mujahidiin to step up against those ethiopian infidels.

[ina aadan]

inasha alaah al-kalaabta waa laga tirtiri somaliya.

[abdisamad3]

inasha alaah al-kalaabta waa laga tirtiri somaliya.

doqon baa tahay..wadankii waa loo tashaday adigana halkaan ceey la soo istaagtay sidii naag camal. no wonder we are fucket left and right when we have people like you among us,

[ina aadan]

Caqligu haduu yahay ka kugu jira anigu maba donaayo, e aayahaaka ka tasho bal adigu. Itoobiya iyo wax alaal waxa gacan nagusiinaya in la laayo al-kalaab waanu tageraynaa.
Adiguse dhiiga islamed eed xalaalaysatay xageebay tolo ko gayn wilka caqliga badanow.

[abdisamad3]

ina aadan dhiga wixii gaal lo socdo oo dad muslim ah uu soo kaxeeystay waa xalaal..adiga iyo ethiopianka aad soo raacday waa la idin wad dili xaaskagana xoog baa lagu guursan,

[ina aadan]

Haye itobiyaan markad maqashaan dabada taaga ileen shabaab wa la bartay e. Walaahi oo bilaahi oo talaahi shabaab iyo itobiyaanka inay itobiyaanku dhamaan boqolkiiba sideetan, saa maxayelay waa niman aan diin iyo dadnimo toona kugusoo gabanayn.Waxaadna ogataa dadkan aad ku dul ciyaaraysid inay maanta indhohoodu faseexyihiin oo aan mardambe diin laguso gaban karin, kolkaasan arkaynaa inaad wax disho iyo inaad caleemo qoyan kusoo dhawayso.