ANALYSIS-Somali victors win cheers, but for how long?
Source: Reuters
By Daniel Wallis NAIROBI, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Six months ago, Somalis gave Islamists fighters a jubilant welcome as they chased warlords out of Mogadishu and across the south vowing to restore stability through strict sharia law. Now many have come out of their homes again, this time to cheer the arrival of government troops and Ethiopian tanks who kicked out their short-lived rulers calling them terrorists. So the government cannot take too much comfort from its welcome in a city where power seems to swap hands all too often and it has become safest to applaud that day's victory. Nor can President Abdullahi Yusuf or Prime Minister Ali Gedi rest on their laurels for one second, despite the surprising speed with which the Islamists were routed from Mogadishu, then fled their last stronghold Kismayu overnight on Monday. They remain, to many Somalis, a foreign-imposed government relying on Ethiopia's military muscle for their sudden rise to national pre-eminence. They must also contend with the re-emergence of Somali warlords, who slunk into the background after their militias were thrashed by the Islamists earlier in the year. And they may find the Islamists have a sting in their tail with an Iraq-style guerrilla war drawing in foreign jihadists eager to defeat "Christian invaders". Somalia expert Matt Bryden said the government urgently needed to reach out to the Hawiye clan, which includes the Islamists' top commanders and felt excluded from the Western-backed process that forged the administration in 2004. "The top priority is reconciliation, not pacification ... The issue now is to engage the Hawiye and cut a deal that brings credible Hawiye leadership into the government," Bryden said. "If that is not done, the government risks seeing an insurgency beginning in Hawiye areas which would then create space for radical Islamists and jihadists." The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) returned a semblance of normality to much of one of the world's most chaotic countries, and it is now up to the administration to prove it can do the same. COMING DAYS CRITICAL The idea of re-constituting the government along broader lines has won tentative support from Washington and Addis Ababa. The United States has urged the government to engage all Somalia's political actors, including defeated SICC members who want to cooperate. Whatever Yusuf and Gedi decide, they will have to act fast to dispel the impression among many of their countrymen that they are merely puppets with Addis Ababa pulling their strings. That will be hard until their Ethiopian protectors withdraw, and triumphalist talk in recent days has not helped their case. "After controlling just a few blocks of the country, their Big Brother across the border with one of Africa's biggest armies has swept in," said analyst John Prendergast. "So crowing about their right to lead is deeply insulting to the Somali people and one of the biggest impediments to peace." Another huge challenge will be to muzzle a host of venal warlords who tore the nation apart during 15 years of chaos -- and whose militia resumed their posts at Mogadishu checkpoints within hours of the Islamists fleeing the city on Thursday. But the government may have to look to them for help, analysts say, stoking resentment among the war-weary population. "The government will encounter such hostility in Mogadishu and elsewhere that it will have to turn to the warlords and give them Ethiopian arms to maintain control," Prendergast said. A big fear is that the religious movement will now launch a campaign of guerrilla attacks that could range from hit-and-run assaults on Ethiopian and government troops inside Somalia to suicide bombs targeting civilians in east African capitals. Washington says at least three of the plotters behind the 1998 truck bombings of its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are in Somalia, and says the SICC is controlled by an al Qaeda cell. But the rapid gains by the joint Ethiopian-Somali government force has brought a measure of international relief, and largely laid to rest fears the fighting could expand into a regional war sucking in Eritrea, accused of backing the SICC. The government offered on Monday to pardon any Islamist fighters who laid down arms after abandoning Kismayu. However, Bryden said the fall of Kismayu would not spell the end of the Islamists' most radical wing, the Shabab, which largely groups young militants. "The Shabab will probably go underground and across borders," he said. Unless the government can muster truly national support and silence the guns, Somalis may not cheer them for long.
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