Somalia's President Laments Lack of International Support

Somalia's president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said his country lacks the international support it needs to prevent powerful Al-Qaeda-backed insurgents from overthrowing his fragile government. Sharif said his government only control pocketful of Mogadishu with the rest including southern Somalia under the hands of Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the two main insurgent groups. "Somalia is facing crisis brought about by foreign groups currently in the country, who are determined to frustrate any peace attempts," he added.We need international support, because the country is ruined and is becoming home to some elements of Al-Qaeda who resolved to clear plans."

Some 5,100-strong African Union peacekeeping troops are currently in the war-torn country to try to shore up the UN-backed government from the powerful insurgents and control strategic sites such as airport and presidential palace. Somali presidents accuse the international community of planning to go back against their pledges, which was to support his Djibouti-formed government both financially and politically. "The enemy prepared itself and wanted to bring down this government before it could accomplish its mission. Surely, that act has its own risks. We are expecting the world to help us fight these groups," he said. Commenting about the piracy menace in the high seas, Sharif said his government is not in the position to tackle at the moment. "Piracy, which is the other major problem, is caused by years of lawlessness in the country. So my government can not do anything about it,"

Sharif's remarks come as his Presidential Palace Villa Somalia comes under heavy mortar attack launched by Al-Shabaab fighters. Heavy exchange of gunfire and mortar shells has claimed the lives of at least four people while five others were wounded.

The Horn of African country is marred by years of civil strife that erupted after the ouster of the regime of President Mohamed Siad Bare in 1991.

Source: All Africa

Dozens killed in Mogadishu fighting

At least 50 people were killed and dozens more injured over the week in intense fighting between government troops and rebels in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, the United Nations said Tuesday.

If fighting were to continue at current intensity, Somalia's humanitarian situation could further deteriorate, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, noting that half of the country's population already needs aid. "Some 75% of the people in need are concentrated in south and central Somalia, where most of the fighting is taking place, causing loss of life and livelihoods and impeding humanitarian access," she said.

North Somalia, meanwhile, is beset by an "alarming deterioration" in the food and nutrition situation due to a drought. The International Committee of the Red Cross underlined the suffering of children in the country. "Somalia's children have never known what it is like to live in peace; armed violence has ravaged the country ever since they were born," said Ahmed Hassan, who heads the Somali Red Crescent. "Although they have adapted their short lives to the situation, they deserve all the support they can get."

The Horn of Africa country has been wracked by almost uninterrupted civil unrest since the 1991 ouster of President Mohamed Siad Barre. Hard-line Islamist rebels launched an offensive in early May to oust the internationally backed government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Source: mail & Guardian

Insurgents Claiming Victory in Somalia

Rebels in Somalia said on Saturday night that they had won control of the capital, Mogadishu, and had forced President Mohamed Siad Barre to flee his palace. The rebels' assertions, monitored over radio about 600 miles to the southwest in Nairobi, were largely confirmed today by a team of French doctors who were treating the wounded in the Somali capital.

Stevan van Praet, a representative in Kenya of a French humanitarian agency, Doctors Without Borders, said his team told him this morning by radio telephone that Mr. Siad Barre had fled the presidential palace in a tank 15 minutes before it was seized. Mr. van Praet said he had no information about the whereabouts of the President, who has held autocratic power in the eastern African nation for 21 years. Looting of Palace Mr. van Praet said his doctors had reported that civilians and rebels had looted the palace, known as Villa Somalia, after the President's escape.

One unconfirmed report in Nairobi said Mr. Siad Barre had fled to his well-fortified bunker at the Mogadishu airport, which the French doctors said was controlled by loyal troops. Another unconfirmed report suggested that the President had fled south toward the Kenyan border. In the broadcast, the United Somali Congress said: "The Government and the responsibility of the Somali people were taken over by the U.S.C. movement. We are addressing you from Radio Mogadishu, the voice of the Somali people."

The United Somali Congress is one of three clan-based insurgent groups that have been trying to oust Mr. Siad Barre, who during the cold war received weapons from the Soviet Union and then the United States. In the last two years, under pressure from Congress, Washington cut off military aid over human rights abuses by the Somali Government.

The French doctors, who are accompanied by an English ecologist and pilot, Murray Watson, are the only independent contact between Mogadishu and the outside world. Soon after intense fighting and looting started at the end of last month, all foreign embassies were evacuated. Two weeks ago, diplomats from Italy, the former colonial power in Somalia, were the last to leave. In a radio conversation this morning with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Watson graphically described the scene in the whitewashed, palm-fringed city on the Indian Ocean. "There are not so many bodies," on the street, Mr. Watson said, "because dogs have eaten most of them." "There are hands sticking up through the sand," he said in an apparent description of bodies still strewn on the beach. He said that in the last few days, the doctors had received about 60 severely wounded civilians and were performing "10 to 15 amputations a day." Mr. Watson told the BBC that shells fired from the area of the presidential palace were "going out 5 to 10 kilometers" and landing in civilian areas.

Last week, Mr. Siad Barre appointed a new Prime Minister, Umar Arteh Ghalib, a nationally known figure from the northern-based Isaaq clan, which has also been fighting the Government. The President also offered to step down if the rebels accepted a truce, but the deal was rejected. A stream of refugees has been pouring out of Somalia into both Ethiopia and Kenya, some of them highly placed military and political figures. With considerable rivalry between the clan-based insurgents, it seemed doubtful that the United Somali Congress would be able to restore stability to the country, both Somalis and Western analysts said. Many predicted that there would be persistent factional fighting.

Coveted by the superpowers during the cold war because of its strategic position on the Gulf of Aden and close to the Middle East, Somalia is a largely rural, Muslim country of six million people. The United States had an access agreement with the Siad Barre Government for use of the port at Berbera, but the internal situation had become so unstable that the port was not used during the build up for the Persian Gulf war.

Source: New York Times

SOMALI LEADER GETS 99.9%

Somalia's official radio announced today that President Mohamed Siad Barre had won a new seven-year term with more than 99.9 percent of the vote in an uncontested election. The Somali radio, in a broadcast monitored in Nairobi, said 4,887,592 people voted for General Siad Barre and 1,486 against him in the election on Tuesday.

The President was seriously injured in an automobile accident in May, and there have been conflicting reports as to the extent of his recovery. But he was nominated for another term last month by the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, the country's only legal political party. Virtually the only overt opposition in Somalia is a sporadic insurgency by two guerrilla groups.

General Siad Barre has governed his East African nation since 1969, when he took power in a military coup. He has presided over a radical shift in his country's foreign policies. His army invaded a disputed area of southeastern Ethiopia called the Ogaden in 1977 when Somalia was allied with the Soviet Union and adhered to Marxist policies. At about the same time, Ethiopia split with the United States and became more closely aligned with the Soviet Union. With the help of Cuban troops and billions of dollars' worth of Soviet weapons, the Ethiopians turned back the Somalis.

General Siad Barre subsequently denounced the Russians and Marxism, and the United States has emerged as Somalia's chief ally. The Government continues to exercise extensive control over the economy, but the private sector has expanded sharply in the last two years. Secretary of State George P. Shultz is tentatively scheduled to visit Somalia next month.

Source: New York Times

Somali Guerrillas Claim Some Advances

Somali guerrillas said today that they had killed 123 Government soldiers and wounded 231 in the last week in northwestern and central Somalia.

The rebels' radio station, broadcasting from Ethiopia and monitored in Nairobi, said the guerrillas had captured four villages in the northwest since the fighting began March 8 and suffered ''only light casualties.''

The guerrillas' said the fighting began after an army patrol killed eight villagers, touching off an uprising. The claims of the rebels, who are fighting to overthrow President Mohamed Siad Barre, could not be verified independently.

Source: New York Times

U.S. FLYING ARMS TO SOMALIA AFTER ETHIOPIAN RAIDS

The State Department announced today that the United States had begun flying weapons and military equipment into Somalia to help that nation repel Ethiopian attacks across the border. No details were given, but Defense Department officials noted that Somalia had ordered air defense radar and antiaircraft weapons such as the Vulcan, which shoots rapidly at low-flying aircraft. A State Department spokesman, Rush Taylor, noting an announcement of the airlift by the Somali radio, said in a statement: ''I can confirm that the United States is airlifting military equipment to Somalia. This is in connection with the recent incursion by Ethiopians and Ethiopian-supported forces.'' As far as could be determined, the weapons and equipment were drawn from a $20 million foreign military sales credit under a security assistance agreement negotiated when Somalia granted the United States access to military bases there in 1980. A radio broadcast from Mogadishu, the Somali capital, said ''the Somali people are grateful for this appropriate response of arms needed to meet Ethiopian aggression,'' according to news dispatches from the region.

The President of Somalia, Mohamed Siad Barre, was also quoted as saying he had received a message from President Reagan expressing the ''hope that we will strengthen our cordial relations in the future.'' The Somali President was in Washington in March seeking an increase in military aid. The talks with President Reagan were said to have gone well, but no new agreements were reported. The Administration, however, has begun to emphasize military assistance to friendly governments to counter the expansion of Soviet military power. In this case, that policy has come into effect immediately because the Soviet Union, according to Defense Department intelligence, has 2,400 advisers in Ethiopia, while Cuba has 5,900 advisers and East Germany 550. The United States ground forces most recently in Somalia were engineering and medical units taking part in an exercise in November. Mechanized infantry units were sent into Egypt, Special Forces to the Sudan, and the marines to Oman in the same maneuvers.

Military assistance to Somalia, which began last year, has always been in dispute in Congress. Advocates have contended that such aid should be extended because that nation is strategically situated on the Horn of Africa with bases that would be useful to the United States Rapid Deployment Force if it had to defend Western oil sources around the Persian Gulf. Opponents have contended that the assistance should be denied because the Somali Government is autocratic and oppressive. A Defense Department publication says the security assistance is related to the agreement giving the United States access to Somali naval and air bases. It says, ''Such assistance will be limited to defensive materials and related training.'' The publication also says transportation, engineering and communications equipment, along with air defense, are Somalia's biggest military needs. ''There are no plans to provide Somalia with offensive equipment, suitable for use outside of Somali borders,'' it says.

Somalia split with the Soviet Union in 1977 when the Russians began supplying Ethiopia with arms and advisers. Ethiopia and Somalia have fought for several years, particularly over the Ogaden area, which is now controlled by Ethiopia but is populated largely by ethnic Somalis. The most recent flareup, according to dispatches from Somalia, started this month when Ethiopian troops and aircraft attacked Somalia on two fronts. Reports from the area said about 9,000 Ethiopian soldiers were involved. The aircraft were said to be Soviet-built MIG's.

Source: New York Times

KISSINGER URGES U.S. POST MIDEAST FORCE

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger urged today that the United States enhance its military presence in the Middle East to counter growing Soviet activity there. Speaking at a news conference midway through what he has repeatedly termed a private visit to the area, Mr. Kissinger said that no regional leader could have confidence in a Rapid Deployment Force, as envisioned by President Carter, that remained in the United States without concrete facilities on the spot.

He also urged that West European and American policies on the Middle East be coordinated; he rejected recent European stands favoring Palestinian self-determination, or statehood, dismissing ''the theory that if we are going to get a Palestinian state, it would quickly or relatively quickly cause the problems in the Middle East to disappear.'' ''The vital interest of the United States and Europe cannot be separated,'' he said. ''Therefore, I consider it impossible that there can be two different approaches that are both correct.''

Although the former secretary has no official standing in the President-elect Ronald Reagan's administration, he is expected to brief Mr. Reagan and his staff and therefore is being received as an important figure. Traveling on the private jet of William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS Inc., Mr. Kissinger saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt last week in Cairo, flew to Somalia for a talk with President Mohammed Siad Barre and during two days in Israel met with a range of Government and opposition leaders, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, leader of the oppostion Labor Party, and former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.

He toured East and West Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek and said the city should remain united but did not specify under whose sovereignty. He flew to the Etzion Airfield, the modern Israeli base in a slice of the Sinai that is to be returned to Egypt next year. That trip, with Israeli military officers, raised excited speculation in the Israeli press that he would recommend to Mr. Reagan that the United States use at least some of the base. But the former secretary appeared to dismiss the idea at his news conference by reporting his impression that Egypt would not allow it.

He did call for an American military role in the region, however. ''If you look at the map,'' he said, ''you see a large Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a large Soviet-supported presence in Ethiopia, Soviet-supported operations out of Libya, and I do not think that the leaders of this area who are concerned about this can visualize the concept of a Rapid Deployment Force that comes from the United States, 8,000 miles away, into what?'' He urged two steps: ''One is to put some visible American presence into this perimeter along the lines of the facilities that have already been negotiated by the Carter Administration, and they should now be given some concrete content. That would at least indicate that we are there, and that attacking key countries is not a matter in which the United States can be disinterested. Secondly, we require for our own country a strategic doctrine that enables us to be relevant to these crises, together with other interested countries.''

Source: New York Times