Home > Carnage in the Somali capital
Confrontations between islamist and pro-American militia made 80 died these last days with Mogadiscio.
The LULL will have lasted only a few hours hardly. Yesterday, as of the raised sun, the combat which make rage since four days in Mogadiscio between rival militia began again. The confrontations, worst than has known the Somali capital for ten years, would have already cost the life 80 people. According to the Red Cross, deaths are for the majority of civil, victims of the exchanges of the salvos of kalachnikovs or the shootings of mortars in the north of the city.
In this city in ruin, where for one decade the anarchy and the despotism of small chiefs of war have reigned, the return of the engagements does not have surprised. Not more than the absence has not astonished by response to the calls to calms launched for three days by the United Nations. In vain, François Fall, the representative of Kofi Annan, entreated the combatants to cease “this war against their own people”.
Islamist nebula
For several weeks, the tension had gone up between the forces of the islamist courts and Alliance for the restoration of peace and against terrorism (ARPCT), a heteroclite grouping chiefs of supported factions, financially and tactiquement, by the United States. This support would be in the middle of the blaze of violence. The implication of Washington in the Somali cesspool was reinforced since September 11, 2001. The United States holds under monitoring this country without State, fearing, not without reason, to see it serving of refuge and new matrix to Al-Qaida.
A few months only after the attacks against the twin towers of New York, an American, strong base today of almost 1.500 men, was installed in Djibouti. It was a question of giving foot in the Horn of Africa, of supporting the friendly countries of the area and of slowing down, by far, the “talibanisation” of Somalia.
The Western services of information ensure that four or five high persons in charge for the islamist nebula, whose principal authors of the attacks against the American embassies in Kenya and in Tanzania in 1998, hide in Somalia. They suspect also certain Somali dignitaries of maintaining the contacts in Pakistan and in the countries of the Gulf, to even take part in the training of foreign combatants.
Remain that for certain American experts, this strategy of “damming up” made long fire. The attack counters a hotel with Mombasa, in Kenya, in 2002, then the implication of an Ethiopian national in the attacks missed by London in July 2005 are as many evidence. Another sign of failure: these last years, far from moving back, the influence of Islamic courts on Somalia, only source of the order vis-a-vis the arbitrary violent one of the militiamans, made only grow within the population.
UNO even estimates that the forces of the courts would control “80% of Mogadiscio”. Even if this figure seems exaggerated with many observers, Washington would have decided, in January 2006, to accelerate the things. “Al-Qaida will be out of control over there and we want to stop them. We pay people”, recently affirmed an American person in charge quoted by AFP.
In February, the ARPCT was born. Mohammed Qanyare Afrah, one of the founders, recognize that Alliance accepts “any material support” while saying that the initiative was “purely national”. The American assistance would have been already assembled to several hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On their side, the Islamic chiefs show the ARPCT to be with the pay of foreign interests. “By forgetting any political approach, the Americans chose most naive and stupid manners of fighting against terrorism. That amounts throwing the inhabitants of Mogadiscio in the arms of the terrorists”, analyzes Roland Marchal, researcher in the international research and studies Center (Ceri) of Paris.
Tanguy Berthemet
May 12, 2006
/Lefigaro/