Reuters
IT IS a crushing defeat for the Islamists who had controlled Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south of the country for several months. A lightning attack by Ethiopian-backed soldiers loyal to the (formerly beleaguered) transitional government swept aside the Islamists in just a few days. By the end of December the Islamists were ousted from Mogadishu and cooped up in the southern Somali port town of Kismayo, where they had few supporters. They were never likely to make a stand there. On New Year's Eve residents said that the Islamists stopped firing before midnight and simply “melted into the darkness”. They chose the town as a dispersal point. Approach roads had been mined to slow the enemy, then the fighters slipped into thick malarial bush along the Juba river and into the mangrove swamps. Some probably headed inland and fell in with camel herders heading into neighbouring Kenya. Others may have taken dhows into the Indian Ocean.
The intent of the Islamists was probably to safeguard their remaining assets, which may have included three al-Qaeda operatives responsible for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The prime minister of the Somali transitional government, Ali Mohamed Gedi, wants anybody with links to al-Qaeda captured or killed. “They are the root of the entire problem,” he says. But many of the perhaps 1,000 hardline Islamist fighters now on the run are likely to escape. Some may attempt to launch an insurgency against the transitional government and its Ethiopian backers, and there are fears of possible terrorist strikes inside Ethiopia and Kenya.
It has been an explosive fortnight in Somalia. Late in December moderates in the Islamic courts—then in firm control of Mogadishu and much of the country—were rumoured to be close to signing a compromise deal with the transitional government. This might have seen the deployment of international peacekeepers, as demanded by a UN Security Council, and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somali soil as the Islamists and the transitional government looked at ways to share power. But the putative deal was ruined by hardline Islamist rivals who attacked the transitional government outside its base in the dusty, upcountry, town of Baidoa.
That proved to be a serious mistake. In skirmishes over the previous weeks the Islamists had held the upper hand. This time the response from the transitional government and especially from Ethiopia, its main sponsor, was swift and relentless. Somali government soldiers backed by Ethiopian tanks, artillery, and planes tore through the Islamist soldiers. Young Islamists, many just boys, were shredded by heavy machine gun fire. Clan elders quickly switched to the transitional government, taking their fighters with them. By the time the government forces approached Mogadishu on December 29th hardly a shot needed to be fired. Ethiopia's delighted prime minister, Meles Zenawi, said that thousands of Islamist fighters had been killed and thousands more wounded. Though the Red Cross reckoned the number of injured to be 800 or so, with a few hundred dead.
Ethiopian intelligence agents took pictures fallen Islamist fighters they thought to be Arab, Pakistani, or Eritrean. The Eritreans accused Ethiopia of littering the battlefield with forged Eritrean identification cards. Hardline Somali Islamists and al-Qaeda leaders have called for a new mujahideen to rise up in the country, manned by Muslims from abroad. A few hundred foreign Islamist fighters are probably in Somalia.
The collapse of the Islamic courts is a serious setback for the Islamist cause in Somalia and is possibly an embarrassment for al-Qaeda. But it does not mark the end of instability. Political uncertainties remain much the same as before. The presence of Ethiopian troops on Somali soil is unlikely to be tolerated for long—Ethiopia is considered an old enemy by most Somalis. Leave them too long in Somalia and their presence gives common cause to an Islamist insurgency. [b]But if the Ethiopians go too soon, then Mogadishu risks slipping back into warlordism. Either way it is difficult for the transitional government to claim itself as an independent and national liberator, at least as long as its ministers are ferried around in Ethiopian military helicopters.[/b]
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So the tigre puppet government is even dependent on Ethiopia for transport?A f.ucking disgrace to Somali Independence and Dignity
