US warned against lifting Somalia's arms embargo

By Rob Crilly in Nairobi, The Irish Times, 30 November 2006

SOMALIA: The US is risking all-out war in Somalia by pushing for the UN to ease its 15-year-old arms embargo on the fractious Horn of African nation, according to regional analysts and campaigners who believe the decision would add fuel to an already explosive mix.

A resolution authorising an African peacekeeping mission was expected to be considered by the UN Security Council in New York last night. It has the backing of the UK and is seen as a way of protecting the country's government against an Islamic movement that has swept all before it since seizing the capital Mogadishu in June.

But many observers fear the move could provoke a pre-emptive strike by militias loyal to the Islamic Courts Union, plunging the entire Horn of Africa into war.

In a warning issued this week, the International Crisis Group, which monitors the threat of conflict around the world, said: “While its objectives are to strengthen the transitional federal government, deter the Council of Somali Islamic Courts from further expansion and avert the threat of full-scale war, it is likely to backfire on all three counts.”

Several thousand Ethiopian troops are already believed to be in Somalia to bolster the Somali government's defences. “The argument being advanced is that this is to prevent Ethiopian intervention, but you cannot prevent something that has already happened,” a European diplomat told Reuters in Nairobi. “Washington is running against the tide of international and regional opinion.”

It is not the first time that the US has been accused of inflaming Somalia's volatile mix of clan hostilities. The US is widely believed to have funded a loose coalition of warlords in Mogadishu as a bulwark against the rise of the Islamic courts—and as an ally in the global war on terror.

The courts' leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is listed by the US state department as a terrorist with links to al-Qaeda, and the movement is accused of harbouring operatives behind the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Now Washington is backing a plan, first proposed by regional African governments, to send peacekeepers into Somalia.

A statement from the state department's office said: “This force will deter further aggression against the transitional federal institutions; create the required space for dialogue; and stabilise the situation.” It added that the force would be deployed in a defensive capacity and would not engage in offensive actions against the Islamists.

Both sides have stepped up the rhetoric this week, announcing that they are ready for war. For their part, Islamists have warned of a “jihad” against any foreign troops who attempt to intervene.

Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad Indoa’adhe, the Islamist security chief, told a 10,000-strong rally in Mogadishu this week: “If the arms embargo on Somalia is lifted, we will invite all Islamists around the world to Somalia and they will fight by our side.”