Somalia’s new Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, who formed his new cabinet on Sunday has vowed to try and open a dialog with the Islamists in an attempt to end the violence that has killed an estimated 6,000 civilians this past year. Hussein Mohamed Mohamoud, a spokesman for the president, told the Associated Press, “The new prime minister will talk with Islamists and other opponents,”
Last December, Ethiopia sent its troops into Somalia to help remove the Council of Islamic Courts. Ever since, the Somali capital has been devastated by gun battles, grenade and mortar attacks as the Islamists wage an Iraqi-style war of resistence.
So far, several attempts at resolving the conflict yielded no results. Hussein, the former head of the Red Crescent Society relief agency, became Prime Minister last month with a promise to pursue the issues of security, reconciliation and humanitarian relief.
Unverified estimates by the Elman Human Rights group peg the death toll at 5,960 since January, this in a country where obtaining an accurate death toll is next to impossible. They also estimate 7,980 wounded and approximately 700,000 displaced. There is no documentation or corroboration from other groups to substantiate these claims. Several humanitarian groups have accused all parties of committing atrocities.
Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991, when warlords overthrew then dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre. After that there has been constant battling among these warlords.
1 Comment
December 13, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Useful piece on a subject Americans need to start thinking about. Keep up the good work.
If I may pick a bone with your concluding sentence, though, the “constant battling” among warlords since 1991 had nearly ended by summer 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union that grew out of local Islamic judicial courts was well on the way to pacifying the country and returning it to the rule of law. The U.S.-supported Ethiopian attack ended that process.