African Muslims in fiery reaction to Somalia conflict

Jan 19, 2007 (LONDON) — The war in Somalia began in early December 2006, a period which saw a lot of shuttle diplomacy between Ethiopia, the USA, Somalia’s rival groups – the Transitional Federal Government and the Union of Islamic Courts – and several international organizations including the UN and The Arab League.

The cloud of war had hung on the Horn of Africa nation since November, when the security chief of the powerful Islamic Courts Union, Shaykh Yusuf Muhammad Siyad Indha Ade, invited foreign jihadists to wage war against Ethiopia. Shaykh Indha Ade’s threats came shortly after Al-Qaidah’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had called for suicide attacks against Ethiopian troops fighting in Somalia.

Many Muslims and Islamic organizations saw the war as a veiled attack on Islam as it aimed to unseat a group espousing the hard-line Islamic persuasion. A group that had imposed sharia’h law in areas under its control.

US involvement

Somalia’s pro-Islamist www.qaadisiya.com web site reported on 27 December that the American government was “directly involved in the invasion of Somalia by the Tigrayan [Ethiopian] crusaders”. It added US spy planes had been confirmed to be directly and indirectly involved in “the war Meles Zenawi has launched against Somalia”.

The perception that the war was an attack on Islam was confounded by the involvement of the USA, which earned the conflict comparisons with Iraq. The comparisons were reinforced by US rhetoric that Somalia harboured Al-Qai’dah elements.

One Kenyan Muslim leader put it that “the US destroyed Iraq after claiming it had weapons of mass destruction. It failed to show the world such weapons after the invasion. This may turn out to be the case in Somalia”.

The USA’s involvement convinced the Islamic Courts sympathizers that the war was being instigated by the Americans seeking revenge for the 1993 Black Hawk campaign, which left 18 US soldiers dead.

Eastern Africa

The most opposition in east Africa to Ethiopia’s campaign in Somalia came from Kenya’s coastal and northeastern regions, which are home to the majority of the country’s Muslims.

There has been no recorded opposition from the leading and most vocal of Kenya’s Muslim bodies, Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, to the recent war. However, in November 2006, its national chairman, Prof Abdulghafur al-Busaidy, accused the USA of trying to tarnish the reputation of the Somalia’s Islamic courts, saying: “We, the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, strongly condemn the machination of the government of the USA in brainwashing the international community to support an imaginary terror attack.”

He went on to say: “According to the council, the USA wants to tarnish the image of the Islamic courts, which have succeeded in bringing about security in Somalia.”

The Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) and opposition Shirikisho Party of Kenya denounced the US raids saying: “It is sad and embarrassing that a global giant can descend on peasants, pastoralists and fishermen and kill and destroy them using bombs. Kenya and Ethiopia should not support the US wars.”

The two organizations accused President George Bush of being “bullish on the entire world.” They blamed him for “encouraging terrorism in the world by oppressing the poor”.

The overriding Muslim sentiment was that the USA would be disgraced if it destroyed Somalia and found no Al-Qa’idah elements in the country.

Apart from organizational reaction, some Kenyan Muslims showed their disapproval in their individual ways. Kenya’s Standard newspaper web site reported on 11 January that scores of Kenyan youths of Somali descent had enlisted to fight alongside the Somalia Islamists and that many had been killed in the battlefield, a fact the Kenyan government confirmed.

“Connivance”

Kenyan Muslims were so incensed by the war that they turned to criticizing their government over its perceived inaction, considering that it currently holds the chairmanship of the influential regional body, IGAD.

The Muslim weekly newsletter, Friday Bulletin, even accused the Kibaki government of “connivance” in the Somalia war. The bulletin did not hide its admiration for the Islamists. In an editorial on 12 January, the newsletter wrote: “The popular courts routed the warlords who had turned Somalia into the world’s most anarchic state during a civil war spanning 16 years which left a million people dead.”

On 12 January, it reported that, “after six months of Islamic rule which ushered in a climate of peace, Somalia is now descending to chaos thanks to the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of the country. Fears of a return to anarchy have also been exacerbated by the US, which is now unleashing its deadly war machine on the people of Somalia in the guise of fighting terrorists”.

The newsletter proceeded to offer some advice to the “invaders”: “Somalis have a tendency to fight each other when they are by themselves, but unite and resist any outside force, which automatically becomes the common enemy. It happened to the British in the 20th century and to the Americans in 1993. It is happening to the Ethiopians today.”

Worth noting is that there was no noticeable opposition from the Christian-dominated parts of Kenya to the Ethiopian incursion. The lack of national unity on the issue, helped to crystallize Muslim support for the Islamists.

In Uganda, the Somalia conflict coincided with renewed interest in the peace talks between the Museveni government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army to end the two-decade insurgency in the country’s north. Besides, the Somalia conflict came at a time when leaders of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council, were mired in scandal over claims that they had sold Muslim land in the capital to private investors. This could explain why there was neither interest in nor significant reaction to the Somalia campaign.

The Ugandan government is in the initial stages of deploying troops to Somalia, but this too, has not elicited Muslim comment.

West Africa

There has been very little reaction to the conflict from west Africa; not even from Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria.

However, Hamadou Toure, writing in Burkina Faso’s government-owned Sidwaya newspaper on 11 January said “As things stand, the Somali crisis appears to be one crisis too many. The African Union is overwhelmed. The USA, which does not need any kind of mandate from the UN, is at the borders to hunt down ‘its terrorists’…It is a tough intervention that does not seek to establish a democratic state, but is rather limited to a mere ‘terrorist hunt’.”

Southern Africa

South African Muslims, on their part, voiced great disposal for the war. The Muslim Judicial Council described “Ethiopia’s American-backed invasion of Somalia”, as “criminal and a violation of law”.

In a press statement, the organization said “the lawless and shameful killing and bombing of a large number of ‘Islamic extremists’ suspected of being involved in the bombings of the two US embassies in Africa is criminal and a violation of any legal process”.

The council went on to appeal to the South African government to intervene in favour of the Islamists, saying: “We wish to make the following demand to the South African government that it intervenes immediately on behalf of the Somali people by ensuring that the respected and credible leadership of the Islamic Courts Union be protected.”

Writing in South Africa’s private The Star newspaper, the chairman of the Media Review Network, Iqbal Jassat said, “This [war] is being orchestrated by the Americans via their warlords and neighbouring Ethiopia. My earlier appeal to the African Union, therefore becomes all the more urgent, given that the clock is ticking away. The imperialist agenda pursued by the Bush administration spells disaster if it remains unchecked”

Significantly, though, is that no reactions were registered from Muslims in countries neighbouring South Africa.

(BBC Monitoring)