Archivo etiqueta «Somalia»
By Sally Healy. Sally Healy OBE is an associate fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, the foreign affairs thinktank chathamhouse.org.uk (THE GUARDIAN, 27/11/07):
As tens of thousands more frightened and exhausted people fled the terrors of Mogadishu last week, a Somali community leader condemned the international community “for watching the cruelty in Somalia like a film and not bothering to help”. He was mistaken. The international community has barely been watching the cruelty in Somalia at all.Life in Mogadishu has become even more intolerable since Ethiopia intervened last Christmas to install the transitional government of President Abdullahi … Seguir leyendo
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 07/06/07):
Hopes of replacing violence with dialogue in Somalia are focusing on a much-delayed national reconciliation congress now scheduled to take place in Mogadishu next week. But diplomats and officials admit the nascent peace process could be stillborn if what Lord Triesman, Britain’s minister for Africa, describes as “wreckers and spoilers” inside and outside the country prevail.
Speaking after a meeting in London this week of the international contact group for Somalia, Jendayi Frazer, the assistant US secretary of state for African affairs, said Eritrea was leading the pack of outsider ne’er-do-wells, harbouring … Seguir leyendo
By Nuruddin Farah, the author, most recently, of “Knots,” a novel (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 26/05/07):
WATCHING from afar, people find it difficult to understand the intractability of the conflict in Somalia. The cycle of violence, almost mysteriously, remains uninterrupted. Peace breaks out. Victory is declared, as it was a couple of weeks ago when President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s Transitional Federal Government declared its triumph over the rival Islamic Courts Union and the clan-based militia fighting alongside it. And then the violence quickly erupts again.
In Somalia, it has been clan versus clan, Muslim Somalis versus Christian Ethiopians, for … Seguir leyendo
By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/05/07):
“Get it done quickly and get out.” That, says a senior U.S. diplomat here, was the goal of the little-noticed war that Ethiopia has been fighting, with American support, against Islamic extremists in Somalia. But this in-and-out strategy encounters the same real-world obstacles that America is facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Conflict is less the problem than what comes after it. That’s the dilemma that America and its allies are discovering in a world where war-fighting and nation-building have become perversely mixed. It took the Ethiopians just a week to drive a Muslim … Seguir leyendo
By Berhanu Kebede, Ethiopian Ambassador to the UK (THE GUARDIAN, 03/05/07):
A Guardian article last week appeared to represent the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia as a government of national consensus and a “popular” democratic organisation (Thousands flee as shelling by Ethiopian tanks kills hundreds of civilians in Somali capital, April 27).It stated: “The Islamic Courts government was popular in Mogadishu after bringing relative order.” This glorification of the UIC, and claim that they represent Somali society, is highly misleading. The UIC leadership is one sub-clan, bent on protecting its own interests. The leadership can … Seguir leyendo
By Salim Lone, the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq after the 2003 invasion and a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya (THE GUARDIAN, 28/04/07):
This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly … Seguir leyendo
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 03/04/07):
Predictions that the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia last Christmas would hasten rather than halt the country’s political disintegration are proving grimly accurate. In the league of failed states, Somalia is runaway leader. With international attention focused on Zimbabwe and Darfur, it is the hidden shame of the world.
More than 1,000 civilians have been killed or wounded in recent fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, and tens of thousands have fled their homes. The UN says wounded civilians are lying untended in the streets after heavy artillery and mortars pounded residential areas. Since … Seguir leyendo
By Martin Fletcher (THE TIMES, 08/01/06):
My colleague Rosemary Righter wrote last week that the defeat of Somalia’s Islamic courts by Ethiopian forces was the “first piece of potentially good news in two devastating decades”.
As one of the few journalists who has visited Mogadishu recently, I beg to differ. The good news came in June. That is when the courts routed the warlords who had turned Somalia into the world’s most anarchic state during a 15-year civil war that left a million dead.
I am no apologist for the courts. Their leadership included extremists with dangerous intentions and connections. … Seguir leyendo
By Jonathan Stevenson, a professor of strategic studies at the United States Naval War College (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08/01/07):
SOMALIA’S internationally recognized government pulled off a stunning military victory over its Islamist rivals, taking control of the capital, Mogadishu, and the key port city of Kismayo last week. This may appear to bode well for the containment of Islamism on the Horn of Africa. But unless America plays a constructive role in Somalia’s next stage, the conflict could become a regional war and a new field of jihad.
The success of the Transitional Federal Government and its current … Seguir leyendo
By Rosemary Righter (THE TIMES, 04/01/07):
The peremptory ousting of the Islamic courts by Ethiopian forces is Somalia’s first piece of potentially good news in two devastating decades. Ethiopia acted out of national interest, to deny Islamic extremists a base in the troubled Horn of Africa from which they could disrupt the balance in Ethiopia itself, where almost equal-sized Christian and Muslim communities currently coexist in reasonable harmony.
Somalis, who fought two wars with Ethiopia over the Ogaden desert, will not readily see their old enemy as a saviour. Yet by acting when the UN and the African Union could … Seguir leyendo
By Salim Lone, UN spokesman in Iraq in 2003 and is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya (THE GUARDIAN, 30/12/06):
Undeterred by the horrors and disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With US backing, Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.But this brazen US-sponsored bid to topple the popular Islamists who had brought Somalia its first peace and security in 16 years has already begun to backfire. Looting has forced the transitional government to declare a state of emergency. Clan warlords, who … Seguir leyendo
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 15/12/06):
Watching Somalia right now is like standing on a beach, waiting for a category five hurricane to hit. The looming cataclysm threatens to spark a regional war, suck in east African and Arab actors, and create a dangerous new theatre in the polarising, global contest between western power and Islamist jihadism. Somalia has the potential to make Darfur look like a little local difficulty.The cocked trigger for all-out conflict is a deadline set by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a movement of growing military and popular strength that controls the capital, Mogadishu, and … Seguir leyendo
Africa Report N°116. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (CRISIS GROUP, 10/08/06):
Somalia has been drifting toward a new war since the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was formed in late 2004 but the trend has recently accelerated dramatically. The stand-off between the TFG and its Ethiopian ally on the one hand, and the Islamic Courts, which now control Mogadishu, on the other, threatens to escalate into a wider conflict that would consume much of the south, destabilise peaceful territories like Somaliland and Puntland and possibly involve terrorist attacks in neighbouring countries unless urgent efforts are made by both sides and the international community to … Seguir leyendo
Por Borja Bergareche, abogado y master en Relaciones Internacionales por la universidad de Columbia (EL CORREO DIGITAL, 14/06/06):
El guión se repite una y otra vez: se resquebraja la estructura del Estado, el caos y la violencia se apoderan del día a día en forma de clanes y facciones rivales, Estados Unidos interviene del lado equivocado y, mientras la atención mundial se centra en otros menesteres, la población local busca refugio y orden en el Islam. Lejos de los titulares de la prensa diaria española, Somalia se ha convertido ahora en el último episodio del auge global del islamismo … Seguir leyendo
Por Borja Bergareche, abogado y Master en Relaciones Internacionales por la Universidad de Columbia (ABC, 10/06/06):
EL guión se repite una y otra vez: se resquebraja la estructura del Estado, el caos y la violencia se apoderan del día a día en forma de clanes y facciones rivales, Estados Unidos interviene del lado equivocado y, mientras la atención mundial se centra en otros menesteres, la población local busca refugio y orden en el islam. Lejos de los titulares de la prensa diaria española, Somalia se ha convertido ahora en el último episodio del auge global del islamismo y del … Seguir leyendo