Somalia’s govt accuses Eritrea of arming Islamists
Aug 25, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — Somalia’s weak government on Friday told the African Union that Eritrea was sending troops and weapons to help increasingly powerful Islamists challenge its authority.
Somalia’s envoy to the AU’s peace and security council, AbdiKarim Farah, said Asmara sent shipments of arms and troops to support the Islamic movement that controls much of southern and central Somalia.
“There were arms shipments from Eritrea to Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia and also three ships sailed from the Eritrean port of Massawa carrying 1,500 Eritrean troops that docked” in the Somali ports of Warshika and Merka, he told the council in Addis Ababa.
He claimed that Eritrean activities have blocked the resumption of Arab League-mediated peace talks in Khartoum between the government and the Islamists, whose growing influence is a threat to the national administration based in the south-central town of Baidoa.
“In any case, whatever the emotions may be, the fact is that our neighbouring countries’ freedom and stability is in jeopardy while extremists and terrorists remain dominant on their borders,” he said, referring to the Islamists who have been accused of links with terrorists.
The government charges come as Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the firebrand cleric who heads the Islamists, said that war with Ethiopia is “imminent” over its refusal to withdraw troops deployed in southwestern Somalia to protect the transitional government.
“We call upon the people around regions where Ethiopian soldiers are deployed to start firefights, then the Islamic courts will support them,” he said while opening a Sharia court in northern Mogadishu.
“Fighting between Ethiopia and Islamic people in Somalia is imminent,” he added.
Aweys, who is designated a terrorist by the United States for suspected links to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, warned that Somalia will be littered with “graveyards” of Ethiopian troops.
“They think Somalia is weak and that is what makes them interfere with our country, but I tell Ethiopia not to forget the lessons of 1977,” he added.
Analysts have warned that chronic instability in Somalia, which has been without a functioning central authority for the past 15 years, could become a proxy battleground for Ethiopia and Eritrea with implications for the region.
Similary, the 1977-78 war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the barren Ogaden region was another proxy conflict pitting the communists and the west.
The United Nations has asked the two nations to back off, warning that further meddling could spread the conflict across the war-ravaged region.
More than 14 internationally-backed initiatives have failed to restore peace in Somalia, which plunged into lawlessness in 1991 after the ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre and was then divided into a patchwork of fiefdoms governed by unruly warlords.
(ST/AFP)