Somalis seek US help

By Standard Team and Agencies

Somalis living in America have appealed to the US to help stabilise their country, as concerns continue to mount over insecurity in the capital Mogadishu, and the inability of the government to exert its authority.

Troops from the African Mission in Somalia (Amisom) and the Transitional Federal Government have secured control of 98 per cent of the capital for the first time in four years.

This is a significant development, coming on the back of an operation by the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) in the south and central of the country. The US is not directly involved in the operation, and has expressed reservations over a call by Kenya for a blockade of Kismayu port.

The State Department said the blockade must be supported by the African Union and UN Security Council, and should avoid making the humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa nation worse.

Representatives of the Somali community resident in Columbus, Ohio, expressed their wish for direct involvement of the US in helping restore order in their country when they met Mr James C Swan, the new US special representative for Somalia.

However, the support they sought is more political and humanitarian, to ensure aid flows to those in need and that the TFG is strengthened.

The head of the Somali Community Action Network in Columbus, Jibril Mohamed, said the US cannot dictate the type of government Somalia should get; it can do much to help find a political solution for the war-torn country.

Addressing a later meeting at Ohio State University’s Mershon Centre for International Security Studies, Swan said Somalis should embrace plans for election of a new president in August, next year, when the mandate of the TFG expires.

Swan, who was appointed in August and is based in Nairobi, also met former Somalia Prime Minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who lives in Buffalo, New York.

Amisom and the TFG soldiers have been stretched and cannot prevent Al Shabaab militants from melting into the population and carrying out revenge attacks.

Under the Kenya-led offensive against Al Shabaab militants, liberated regions are to be handed over to the TFG. But the shortage of trained soldiers is cause for worry.

Sprayed with bullets

Yesterday a TFG military official, Col Mohamed Hassan Bule, was quoted as saying Al Shabaab insurgents ambushed and killed three people ferrying a consignment of miraa from Dobley, along the Kenya-Somali border to Qoqani, when they sprayed the vehicle with bullets.


On Wednesday, several armed men assassinated a Somali deputy in front of his house in the capital Mogadishu, witnesses and colleagues said.

Mr Adan Bule Mohamed was killed after being shot several times in the head and shoulder in front of his house in the Dharkinley neighbourhood, in the south of the capital.

"Masked men killed the parliamentarian and disappeared before the police arrived," Mr Abdi Ismail, a witness, told the French-owned AFP news agency.

The Western-backed government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed survives in Mogadishu under the protection of 9,000 Amisom troops, who have spent four years battling the Al Shabaab Islamist rebels. The rebels seek to topple his administration.

Other reports indicated that Mohamed, who died in Madino hospital, was killed on the way to his home in the capital’s Darkenley district, and that government troops may have fired on his car after he failed to stop at a checkpoint. The claims have not been verified and there has been no statement from the TFG, and Al Shabaab has not claimed responsibility.

His death came just hours after hand grenades were lobbed into the home of an MP, Abdirahman Mohamud Farah Janaqow, in Bula-Hubey neighbourhood of Wadajir district. One man was killed, and a TFG guard and a woman were injured.

Last month, Kenya deployed troops into Al Shabaab-controlled southern and central Somalia to battle the Al Qaeda-inspired rebels it blames for kidnapping Kenyans and foreigners on its soil, and conducting cross-border raids.

A major confrontation that has been looming between the KDF forces backed by TFG troops and the insurgents in two key towns of Afmadow and Kismayu is said to be close.

Somalia has been wracked by violence since 1991, when it first spiraled into civil war. Since then, several foreign armies – including US forces, UN peacekeepers, and a 2006 Ethiopian invasion – have failed to create stability.

The Columbus meeting with Swan followed another in August between the US Homeland Security and Somali-Americans in the city. The Somalis complained agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) were unfairly targeting the community.

The FBI has been investigating cases of disenfranchised Somali boys who dropped out of school to join gangs or were recruited by Al Shabaab. The US favours a centralised government in Somalia.

But the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought (Igad), where Kenya’s voice is very strong, favours the modeling of Jubaland along the lines of Somaliland and Puntland, which worries the US and Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who has denounced the operation. The move did not go down well with Kenya.

While President Ahmed was in Kampala two weeks ago explaining his utterances to the man whose troops keep him and his ministers safe, his Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed was in Nairobi reassuring Kenya of his government’s support for ‘Operation Linda Nchi’.

Wedged shut

But Kenya’s move is also opening doors that seemed wedged shut. For some time, the African Union’s attempts to get member states to contribute more troops to Amisom, now protecting the TFG in Mogadishu, has been a total failure.

Uganda and Burundi provide the bulk of Amisom’s 9,000 troops, which are 11,000 shy of the bare minimum needed to spread and stabilise TFG control over Somalia. The Djibouti Peace Process, negotiated under the aegis of Igad, prevents Kenya from contributing troops to Amisom.

However, following its bold (some doubt this venture to subdue the militants, Sierra Leone, which is still recovering from civil war, has announced it would send 850 soldiers to boost Amisom. But the troops will not be available until June, next year, according to Sierra Leone’s military attachÈ to the United Nations, Lt-Col Ronnie Harleston.

Meanwhile more KDF and TFG soldiers have been deployed in Afmadow for what is shaping up to be one of the decisive battles of ‘Operation Linda Nchi’.

Source: The Standard Media