It appeared to be the end of two years of bloody Ethiopian intervention in this chaotic nation.

Every time I think of intervention in a place like Zimbabwe, I have to remind myself of interventions such as this one. From the NY Times:

"Ethiopians Withdraw From Key Bases

By MOHAMED IBRAHIM and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions.

It appeared to be the end of two years of bloody Ethiopian intervention in this chaotic nation. Hundreds of cheering Somalis lined the streets to watch the dozens of Ethiopian military trucks rumbling out of Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked capital.

While hundreds of Ethiopian troops still remained at various bases across the city, Ethiopian commanders promised that all troops would leave the country by Tuesday night.

“I am happy they finally left our neighborhood,” said Fadumo Mohammed Jimale, an 18-year-old whose family had been displaced by intense urban street fighting. “They killed my father.”

The Ethiopian troops stormed into Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that briefly controlled much of the country and to help shore up Somalia’s weak transitional government.

It did not go as intended( IT NEVER DOES ). The Ethiopian intervention set off a bitter guerrilla war, killing thousands of civilians and driving nearly one million people out of Mogadishu.

Many Mogadishu neighborhoods are now like ghost towns, while the transitional government’s zone of control has shrunk to a few city blocks in the capital and in Baidoa, a market town where the Parliament meets. And Somalia’s Islamist movement has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.

The Ethiopian troops lost hundreds of soldiers in Somalia, and on Tuesday an Ethiopian commander bid the country farewell.

“We came to Somalia to help the transitional federal government,” said the commander, Col. Gabre Yohannes. “We paid blood and property for that reason. That effort meant that the young generation of Somalis will get peace.”

Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on one another in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions.

On Tuesday, gunmen from one Islamist faction rushed into an old pasta factory in central Mogadishu that the Ethiopians had been using as a base. The Islamists were quick to take credit for the Ethiopian withdrawal.

“We drove the Ethiopians out by means of muscle and bullet,” announced Sheik Yusuf Mohammed Siyad, an Islamist leader. “Today, we got the victory we were expecting. We will restore order in this neighborhood.”

“We are ready to unite with our brothers now, since the enemy is leaving,” he added.

Many Somalis suspect the Ethiopians may stay in the rural parts of Somalia or near the border for some time. Beyond that, there are still more than 3,000 African Union troops in Mogadishu, many hunkered down at the airport and presidential palace. Their job is to protect the transitional government, which is in the process of bringing Islamist leaders into its fold, though it continues to be under withering mortar attacks nearly every day.

American officials, who had supported the Ethiopian intervention, have been pushing to replace the African Union troops with a larger, better-trained United Nations peacekeeping force. So far, though, there is broad reluctance among members of the United Nations to take the lead role in such an operation."

Mohammed Ibrahim reported from Mogadishu, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya."

The answer is reconciliation and compromise, but it won't be easy.

"Islam is a religion of peace and stability. It is not a terrorism religion, and al Shabaab is Somalia's biggest threat,"

A Somalia roundup. From Reuters:

"MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Fighting between rival Somali Islamist groups and hardline insurgents on Washington's foreign terrorist list killed dozens of people north of the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, witnesses said.

An Islamist insurgency has been battling government and Ethiopian troops for the past two years, ever since Addis Ababa sent forces to oust the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu.

More than 16,000( 16,000 ) civilians have been killed in the insurgency, a million people have been forced from their homes and more than a third( 1/3 ) of the population depend on aid.

But an estimated 3,000 Ethiopians are now withdrawing and some Islamist factions appear to be turning on al Shabaab fighters, a hardline insurgent group that wants to impose a strict version of Islamic law traditionally shunned by Somalis( THEY DON'T WANT IT. GOOD. ).

Analysts say while the Ethiopian withdrawal could usher in a new chapter of violence, it may also be a window of opportunity to bring some Islamist groups into the political process and form a broad, inclusive government.

Witnesses said more than 20 people, mostly fighters, were killed in Sunday's battles between Hareka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, or the Mujahideen Youth Movement, and another Islamist group in Gurael, a trading town in central Somalia.

Sheikh Abdullahi Abu Yusuf, spokesman for the Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, said its fighters had killed 30 al Shabaab militants and seized most of their weapons.

Resident Ahmed Ali told Reuters by telephone he had seen two dead, including an al Shabaab leader, and said Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca was in control of the town after repulsing an attack.

A doctor at Istarlin hospital in Gurael said it had received 20 wounded on Sunday and more were on their way.

The fighting followed clashes a day earlier between al Shabaab rebels and moderate Islamists in Balad, 30 km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu, on Saturday.

Al Shabaab, which spearheaded attacks last year to become the face of the insurgency, is also battling Ethiopian and government soldiers elsewhere outside the capital.

While the fighting may be a struggle between Islamist groups jostling for position as the Ethiopians go, local militias angry with al Shabaab's acts are reported to be helping.

Washington accuses the group of having close ties to al Qaeda. Al Shabaab has been imposing strict sharia law on the towns it controls in southern Somalia -- banning drinking or films and beheading suspected government collaborators( WAR CRIMES ).

Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca accuses al Shabaab of hunting down and killing its religious leaders and desecrating graves.( THEY ARE AWFUL )

Somalia's interim President Sheikh Aden Madobe said on Saturday that al Shabaab was the biggest threat to stability in the Horn of Africa nation and appealed for international help to build up Somali security forces."

We should hope that al Shabaab does not take full control of Somalia, for the sake of Somalis."

And:

"Which way will Somalia go?

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Posted by: David Clarke

Tags: Africa Blog, Somalia, AU, conflict, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Islamic, Islamist, Mogadishu, peacekeeping, Sharia, Somalia, UN, violence

The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia has left a nation beset by conflict for nearly two decades at a crossroads.

Ethiopia invaded to oust Islamists from the capital, but insurgents still control much of southern Somalia and more hardline groups that worry Washington have flourished during the two-year intervention.

The United Nations is unlikely to send peacekeepers to replace the Ethiopians. Africa is struggling to send more troops to help the 3,500 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi protecting key sites in the capital.

Some analysts say sending an international force would be counterproductive anyway as it would simply replace the Ethiopians as the hated foreign invader and maintain support for the most militant insurgents.

But without more African peacekeepers deploying soon, it seems unlikely the small and largely ineffectual existing force will remain with a weak mandate to face attacks from insurgents.

While a power vacuum may result in even more violence, some Western diplomats in the region hope it will spur the feuding Islamist opposition groups to settle their differences and work towards forming a broad-based, inclusive government.( YES )

They also hope the departure of the Ethiopians will deflate the insurgency and marginalise hardline groups imposing a strict version of Islamic law traditionally shunned by many Somalis( PLEASE ).

African diplomats pushing hard for some sort of political reconciliation say there are more and more signs of “war fatigue” among the various camps and clans.

They are consistently upbeat about Somalia’s prospects, even more so since President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned, and are reaching out to some of the hardline Islamist groups.

Western opposition to some hue of Islamist administration in Somalia — precisely what Ethiopia invaded to quash — seems to be waning as diplomats take a more pragmatic approach to the political and military reality on the ground( TRUE ).

Is there any reason for optimism after 17 years of violence?( YES )

(Picture: Somali al-Shabaab insurgents arrive in capital Mogadishu, Decemcer 27, 2008. REUTERS/Omar Faruk)"

And more:

1 of 1Full Size

By Abdiaziz Hassan

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A group of hardline Islamist fighters on Washington's list of foreign terrorists poses the biggest threat to Somalia and the government needs more support to avoid a crisis, its interim president told Reuters.

Islamist insurgents control much of southern and central Somalia and the government holds only the capital Mogadishu and the seat of parliament, Baidoa. Some 3,000 troops from Ethiopia are withdrawing after propping up the government for two years.

Western diplomats hope the insurgency will fracture when the Ethiopian soldiers finally go, and marginalise the hardline al Shabaab fighters who are imposing a strict version of Islamic law traditionally shunned by Somalis.

Speaking on Saturday in Nairobi, Somali President Sheikh Aden Madobe said the government and moderate Muslim scholars would never let al Shabaab seize power, but without help things could get worse for the Horn of Africa nation.

"Al Shabaab is supported by enemies of peace and doing something that is not Islam. Islam is a religion of peace and stability. It is not a terrorism religion, and al Shabaab is Somalia's biggest threat," Madobe said.( WELL SAID )

The hardline rebel group Hareka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, or the Mujahideen Youth Movement, is fighting Ethiopian and Somali government forces alongside other Islamist groups.

The completion of Ethiopia's pullout could help al Shabaab seize more ground, unless more moderate Islamists turn against them. The United States fears a takeover by al Shabaab and other Islamist militants it sees as linked to al Qaeda.

Madobe, who is Somalia's parliament speaker and interim president since Abdullahi Yusuf quit last month, said Somalia needed more money to build up its security forces.

"Ethiopia has decided to leave and insists on that, and we have not succeeded in forming the troops supposed to take over," he said. "Somalia is tired of chaos."

ELECTION DATE SET

The African Union said in a statement after a summit in Addis Ababa on Saturday that the international community needed to redouble commitments to help get a 10,000-strong Somali force of government and opposition soldiers up and running to support the political process.

The AU has been desperately trying to beef up its existing force of some 3,500 troops from Uganda and Burundi. But despite pledges of extra battalions from those two nations and Nigeria, they have yet to deploy. ( TOO BAD )

Analysts say unless the African Union force is strengthened soon there is a risk those peacekeepers will pull out as well, leaving even more of a security vacuum.

"The survival of this government depends on how its leadership works together, how the Somali people assist it in its task and how the international community supports it," Madobe said, before flying back to Baidoa.

He said the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) would respect the 30-day deadline in a transitional federal charter for selecting a new president.

The AU statement issued later on Saturday said the TFG and the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia had agreed to hold the election process in Djibouti from January 20-26( GOOD ).

The African Union also said "significant progress" had been made on expanding the parliament to include opposition groups.( GOOD )

Madobe said so far two people had applied for president: Yusuf Azhari, a former envoy to Kenya and adviser to former president Abdullahi Yusuf, and Mohamed Deeq Abdimadar Barqadle, a member of the Somali diaspora who has been living in Sweden."

If the international community focuses on Somalia, there is some hope.

"One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture — but they don’t see what unites them, they only see what divides them"

From the NY Times:

"Somalia’s Fate Still Unclear After Leader Quits

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the cantankerous president of beleaguered Somalia, resigned Monday. The question now is, will it make a difference?

Could it be the death knell of Somalia’s transitional government, whose zone of control is down to a few city blocks in a country nearly as big as Texas? Or will it be the government’s saving grace?

For weeks, Western diplomats, Somali elders and United Nations officials have been crossing their fingers that Mr. Yusuf, widely blamed for trying to block a peace deal with Somalia’s increasingly powerful Islamist insurgents, would step aside.

Mr. Yusuf, one of Somalia’s first warlords, never seemed able to shake his warlord ways. Western diplomats have accused him of favoring his clan at the expense of all others, enabling corruption and too often trying to solve knotty political problems, which called for a little finesse, with the business end of a machine gun.

Kenyan officials even threatened sanctions against him this month, calling him “an obstacle to peace” and warning that unless he changed tack, he would no longer be welcome in Kenya. That was a serious threat because Mr. Yusuf, who claims to be 74 but is widely believed to be several years older, has gone to Kenya several times for lifesaving medical treatment for an ailing liver.

In stepping down, Mr. Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia’s feuding leaders, news agencies reported, and as soon as he resigned, the United Nations’ top official for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said that “a new page of Somalia history is now open.”

But what will be written on it?

The scramble to succeed Mr. Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top Somali officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.

Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists who behead opponents and have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped.( GOOD LORD )

Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, which tracks conflicts worldwide, said Mr. Yusuf’s resignation was “good news” because “it may create the opportunity to put a more conciliatory figure in charge of the government.”

That figure could be someone like Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a well-respected, moderate Islamic cleric who has struggled to walk the tightrope between negotiating with the transitional government and being dismissed as a sellout.

Earlier this year, Sheik Sharif’s faction signed a power-sharing agreement with the transitional government, despite the president’s objections, and many Somalis are hoping the deal will stick.

“If that power-sharing deal is applied, it will help a lot,” said Muhammad Dheere, a pharmacist in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scarred capital. “Then the other problems could finish soon.”

Somalia certainly has a lot of them. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people. Pirates off Somalia’s coast have netted countless headlines and as much as $100 million in ransoms. Violence is rising again and finding new forms, with Islamist factions now fighting one another to take over the areas the government no longer controls.

Over the weekend, in two towns, a moderate Islamist group routed the Shabab, one of the nation’s most fearsome and radical Islamist militias. But the Shabab were fighting back fiercely on Monday, and they also took over a United Nations food distribution office, imperiling a critical lifeline.

The thousands of Ethiopian troops who have been in Somalia for two years are threatening to leave any day now. If they do, the transitional government may have no one to protect it from Islamist insurgents, except a relatively small contingent of African Union peacekeepers( LIKE IN THE CONGO? ) and a few ragtag Somali militiamen.

It will not be easy finding someone qualified — and willing — to serve as president, considering all this. Somalia’s transitional government, created four years ago (with Mr. Yusuf at the helm) as a temporary solution until Somalia could hold elections, is carefully balanced on a formula that divides power among Somalia’s four major clans.

One considerable strike against Sheik Sharif is that he is not only from the same clan, but from the same subclan as the prime minister, who is well regarded and not believed to be going anywhere.

Many people expect that the next president could come from the same clan as Mr. Yusuf, to minimize clan friction. The speaker of Parliament will take over the presidency for one month until Parliament elects a new president.

Yet, after nearly 18 years of unbridled anarchy, many Somalis have lost hope.( WHO COULD BLAME THEM? )

“Somalis are a God-forsaken nation,” said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, a Canadian-Somali who used to work with Mr. Yusuf and is now looking for a job. “They are so oblivious to what is happening. One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture — but they don’t see what unites them, they only see what divides them.

“Maybe on the outside, to the international community, the resignation will matter,” he said. “But not on the inside.”

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia."

This is a terribly difficult and unending situation. How often are we encountering that now?

"Hussein wants to include them and marginalise what he sees as a small rump of hardliners"

From the FT, an expected event in Somalia:

"Somali President Yusuf resigns

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 29 - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned on Monday, ending a deadlock at the top of the interim government and paving the way for a new administration in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Yusuf told parliament that speaker Sheikh Aden Madobe would take over and blamed the international community for failing to support the government. Yusuf flew home to Puntland, Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern region.

A surge in sea piracy in the busy Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean off Somalia has seen some 110 ships reported to have been attacked and 42 hijacked this year. Fourteen of the hijacked vessels are still being held hostage by the pirates, along with 240 crew, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

”As I promised when you elected me on October 14, 2004, I would stand down if I failed to fulfil my duty, I have decided to return the responsibility you gave me,” Yusuf said.

The president of Somalia’s fractured, Western-backed government had become increasingly unpopular at home and abroad and was blamed by Washington, Europe and African neighbours for stalling a U.N.-hosted peace process.

Diplomats welcomed Yusuf’s decision, saying that with his departure, a planned withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and growing opposition to hardline al Shabaab Islamists there was now real hope for political progress in Somalia( PLEASE ).

A two-year Islamist insurgency controls most of southern and central Somalia outside the capital Mogadishu and Baidoa, the seat of parliament, but it is a fractious group.

Al Shabaab, which is on Washington’s list of terrorist foreign groups, has been imposing a strict version of Islamic law in towns it controls, but has faced fierce opposition from moderate Islamists in the past week.

The moderate Sunni Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca has pledged to oust al Shabaab from Somalia, accusing them of killing religious leaders and desecrating graves, acts they say are against Islamic teachings.

ISLAMIST CLASHES

There was fierce fighting between the two groups again on Monday after Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca seized two towns from al Shabaab in central Somalia over the weekend.

”There is a definite groundswell within Somalia against the al Shabaab and with Yusuf taking his militia and troops with him, and the Ethiopeans going, who are the al Shabaab left to fight? said a Western diplomat in the region.

”If the new parliament is persuaded to be made inclusive and selection process stands up to scrutiny, then there is a real hope,” he said, adding that Yusuf should be given some credit for doing the ”right thing”.

Yusuf had been at loggerheads with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein for a while over the government’s composition and the two were also at odds over including moderate Islamists in the peace process.

Hussein wants to include them and marginalise what he sees as a small rump of hardliners( WORTH A TRY ). Yusuf’s decision to sack Hussein this month was not recognised by regional nations and they imposed sanctions on the president for hindering the process.

Analysts said the parliament speaker should remain in place until a new more-inclusive government has been formed, and then a new president should be elected."

This is a hopeful sign, but no more.