[wvns] Ethiopia Ensnared in Somalia
ETHIOPIA FINDS ITSELF ENSNARED IN SOMALIA
Some Observers See Similarities to U.S. in Iraq
Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602715.html
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- Well after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi declared his own "war on terror" against an Islamic movement in
Somalia, Ethiopia remains entangled in a situation that analysts and
critics are comparing to the U.S. experience in Iraq.
Though Meles proclaimed his military mission accomplished in January,
thousands of Ethiopian troops remain in the Somali capital, where they
have used attack helicopters, tanks and other heavy weapons in a
bloody campaign against insurgents that in recent weeks has killed
more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, and forced half of the
city's population to flee.
Troops patrol Mogadishu on a truck with an antiaircraft gun. The
Somali premier declared heavy fighting over yesterday, even as
explosions continued. (By Mohamed Abdulle Hassan Siidi -- Associated
Press)
On Thursday, the Ethiopian-backed Somali prime minister, Ali Mohamed
Gedi, declared that three weeks of heavy fighting was over, a
statement tempered by the mortar blasts that continued to boom in the
distance, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, a political crisis seems to be worsening, as the Somali
transitional government, steadfastly supported by the United States,
faces a swell of criticism for ignoring concerns of the city's
dominant Hawiye clan, whose militias form the core of the insurgency
and who are motivated not by the ideology of jihad, but power.
"It's just exactly like the Americans in Iraq," said Beyene Petros, a
member of the Ethiopian Parliament and an early critic of the
invasion. "I don't see how this was a victory. It really was a futile
exercise."
The United States, which had accused Somalia's Islamic Courts movement
of being hijacked by extremist ideologues, followed Ethiopia's
invasion with airstrikes aimed at three suspects in the 1998 American
embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, along with certain Islamic
Courts leaders accused of having terrorist ties.
Four months later, however, none of those targets has been killed or
captured, and the U.S. airstrikes are confirmed to have killed only
civilians, livestock and a smattering of Islamic fighters on the run
who were never accused of any crime.
More than 200 FBI and CIA agents have set up camp in the Sheraton
Hotel here in Ethiopia's capital and have been interrogating dozens of
detainees -- including a U.S. citizen -- picked up in Somalia and held
without charge and without attorneys in a secret prison somewhere in
this city, according to Ethiopian and U.S. officials who say the
interrogations are lawful.
U.S. and Ethiopian officials say they have netted valuable information
from some of the 41 detainees, who are being brought before a court
whose proceedings are closed to the public.
Others have been quietly released, however, and human rights groups
are criticizing the joint operation as a kind of "decentralized
Guantanamo" in the Horn of Africa .
Ethiopian officials declined to be interviewed on the subject of
Somalia, and a general blackout of information about the war prevails
in the capital. Opposition members of Parliament complain that they
have not been informed how many Ethiopian soldiers have been killed,
how much the war is costing per day or how the government is paying
for it.
There is also a sense here that while the invasion served Meles's own
domestic interests, Ethiopia was also doing a job on behalf of the
United States and is being left with a financial and military mess.
Supporters of Meles are mostly playing down the trouble, even as they
are scrambling behind the scenes to find a solution. Knife Abraham, a
close adviser to the prime minister, described the situation in
Mogadishu -- where the bodies of Ethiopian soldiers have been dragged
through the streets -- as "a hiccup."
"The victory was swift and decisive," Abraham said. "Now Ethiopia
wants to stabilize the situation and get out."
Troops patrol Mogadishu on a truck with an antiaircraft gun. The
Somali premier declared heavy fighting over yesterday, even as
explosions continued. (By Mohamed Abdulle Hassan Siidi -- Associated
Press)
Photos
Suspicion, Anger in Somalia
As Somalia's interim government attempts to reassert control over the
country, security concerns grow amid angry protests over U.S.
airstrikes and the presence of Ethiopian troops.
But it remains unclear how Ethiopia will manage to do that while
preserving Somalia's fragile transitional government and preventing
more violence.
"The military victory was not complemented by a political victory,"
said Medhane Tadesse, an occasional adviser to the Ethiopian
government who initially supported the invasion. "Long-term stability
in Somalia requires a long-term social strategy, but Ethiopia and the
U.S. only had a military strategy."
Privately, diplomats in the region say the main problem for Meles
comes down to one man: the president of the Somali transitional
government, Abdullahi Yusuf, who has always had close ties to
Ethiopia. Although Yusuf promised an inclusive government, he has
failed to satisfy key leaders of the Hawiye clan, the historic rivals
of Yusuf's Darod clan and the main base of support for the ousted
Islamic Courts movement.
While Yusuf and Meles have continued to wage what they call a war
against "terrorists," experts and even officials close to Yusuf say
the insurgency has been heavily motivated by Hawiye clan business
interests rather than ideology.
Yusuf's chief of staff, Adam Hassan, accused Hawiye leaders of trying
to "hoodwink" Somalis and foreign diplomats into believing that the
Hawiye have been treated unfairly, so they can retain property and
land they took over after the 1991 fall of dictator Mohamed Siad
Barre, who was from Yusuf's Darod clan.
Hawiye leaders said Yusuf wants to assume control of a city they have
in many ways administered, and profited from, for years. They said
their skepticism of the government has been strengthened by the
president, "who labels as 'terrorist' every person or clan who
criticizes his policy and clan-style leadership," according to a
document outlining their concerns to Ethiopian officials.
One diplomat closely involved in the reconciliation process said Yusuf
has refused to meet with Hawiye elders.
In an attempt to breach that gap, Ethiopia has lately been negotiating
directly with Hawiye leaders, while the Hawiye seem to be trying to
untangle themselves from certain Islamic Courts figures in an attempt
to polish their image. This month, the clan asked two of the more
extreme Islamic leaders to leave Mogadishu, saying they were a liability.
While the extremist element was always a factor in the Islamic
movement, the notion of waging a "war on terror" in Somalia was always
an oversimplification of a more complex situation, said Tadesse, the
adviser to the Ethiopian government .
The Islamic movement was diverse, made up of extremist military
commanders vowing holy war against Ethiopia and moderate leaders,
including one, Ibrahim Addow, who taught at American University and
holds a U.S. passport.
It was also always fundamentally a Hawiye movement, and Somalis tend
to be loyal to clan above all.
Ethiopia and the United States made a mistake, Tadesse and other
critics say, by throwing their support entirely behind the
transitional government in the name of fighting a terrorist threat
that involved just a few individuals, and at the expense of alienating
the Hawiye.
This month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer flew to
Somalia in a show of U.S. support for Yusuf's government, a move that
further infuriated Hawiye leaders.
Frazer has expressed "concern" for civilians but has offered no public
criticism of the transitional government or of Ethiopia for using
attack helicopters and other heavy weapons against civilian
neighborhoods that have been reduced to ruins.
In his news conference Thursday, the Somali prime minister, Gedi,
invited more than 300,000 residents who have fled the city in recent
weeks to return to the broken seaside capital, where certain
neighborhoods have lately acquired new nicknames.
In an allusion to sectarian violence engulfing Baghdad, residents now
call the north part of the city Shiite and the south Sunni.
Gedi said that most of the fighting had ended and that Ethiopian and
Somali government troops were merely clearing out the remaining
"pockets" of resistance.
But Mohamud Uluso, a prominent leader of a Hawiye sub-clan called the
Ayr, said that despite Gedi's declaration, fighting will most likely
continue.
"What is worrying for Somalis and the international community now is
the possibility of what happened in Iraq," he said. "The fighting was
under the control of the Hawiye leadership committee, but once that
control disintegrates, then there will be underground leadership. You
don't know who or where they are."
Special correspondent Mohamed Ibrahim in Mogadishu contributed to this
report.
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