Sunday, December 31, 2006
advertisements
MOGADISHU, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Striding through Mogadishu's seaport past the camels and crates on a sunny afternoon several days ago, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi had the Indian Ocean breeze -- and the wind of victory -- at his back.
He hardly seemed a man who had slipped the political noose of a no-confidence vote just a few months ago, evaded two assassination attempts and spent ages at the head of a government whose capital lay beyond its grasp.
Gedi's wide, gap-toothed grin proclaimed him a winner on a hometown victory lap, as he strolled through the port Islamists had re-opened in August to show they were better suited than the government to lead Somalia out of nearly 16 years of anarchy.
Two years after his appointment from obscurity, Gedi and his interim government finally entered a capital that was legally the home of the government but out of reach until Ethiopia helped capture it from a hardline Islamist movement on Thursday.
Now his forces are not only in control of his hometown, but are bearing down on the retreating Islamists, who have chosen to make a stand in a port town 300 km (186 miles) to the south.
"This is the seriousness of the government and of my personality," Gedi told reporters after he raced to a safe house in Mogadishu in an area controlled by his Abgal subclan.
Now the veterinary surgeon-turned-politician has made it back to his hometown, his first task is to stay alive. Diplomats and analysts say he is likely to face more assassination bids.
And before moving from the temporary capital Baidoa, his government must secure a city that has resisted order since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
Then they must unify under one roof a host of self-interested local administrations and factions that have survived and made their money since then by any means necessary.
Thirteen earlier attempts -- 14 if you count the six-month rise and fall of the formerly Mogadishu-based Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) -- have failed.
"What I see in the immediate future is that the Islamists are done. Another failed attempt, like the many before to get a unified Somali state, has collapsed. Somalia is just going to fall back to where it was after 1991," said Michael Weinstein, a professor of political science at Purdue University.
Hoping to avoid that, Gedi says the government will soon set a 48-hour deadline for all citizens and militias to hand over their guns or be disarmed by force. It is a gargantuan task in one of the world's most armed and dangerous cities. And it is likely to be a bloody one if the voluntary offer is refused.
MILLENNIUM OF ENMITY
Even the SICC, which had the most disciplined Somali military force since Barre's army, could not do that.
"How are these people going to do it? If the Ethiopians try it, then you are going to see the uprising the Islamists wanted," said Weinstein.
With more than a millennium of enmity between Ethiopians and Somalis, who view their much larger neighbour as a Christian imperialist power, the question of how long the government will need to keep the Ethiopian troops in the country is tricky.
"The Ethiopians need to have a low profile there. The longer they stay, the greater the chance of violent opposition to them by the local population," said a military expert who follows Somalia and who declined to be named. Gedi declines to give a pullout timeframe for the Ethiopian muscle at his back. Government sources have told Reuters that for at least a few months Somali troops will provide front-line protection and be trained by the Ethiopians, who will remain in the country to respond to any serious attacks. But however the government does it, experts say they have to impose a sense of order quickly to match the Islamist record of bringing security to a nation weary of bullets, especially in Mogadishu where gunfire is as familiar as the sea breeze. "The challenge for these guys is to treat their citizens with respect and to offer the same security they had under the Islamists, but with less deep repression," said a diplomat. That is a key step toward gaining legitimacy among those Somalis who view the government as an Ethiopian tool, especially since Gedi's appointment was pushed so strongly by Addis Ababa, which had already backed President Abdullahi Yusuf.One positive sign for Gedi: the Somali shilling shot up to 10,000 from 14,000 against the dollar on the day he rolled into town, money changers and vendors said. The currency rate is the only true economic indicator in a country with virtually no government or decent infrastructure, but plenty of capitalism.
Source: Reuters, Dec 31, 2006