EDITORIAL: Sudan re-run in Somalia
The ‘Islamic courts’ militia which took most of Somalia from the internationally recognised government in June is now on the run from Mogadishu, and the hoodlums terrorising the population have taken off their uniforms and are pretending to be normal Somalis. Terrified of yet more violence in a city that has become a byword for chaos, some Mogadishu residents have greeted the arriving government troops, while others have gone into hiding.
The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) fled its base and there are reports of some looting. A number of tribal warlords who had submitted to the SICC or fled from the country are in the process of making a comeback. The clerics who ran the hard-line Wahhabi-Salafi regime handing out tough punishments have also disappeared, not caring to make a stand.
The clerics have had to run away after making the fateful decision to send troops into Baidoa, a Somali city where the former government had fled, but which has become a pretext for Ethiopia to claim that any advance on Baidoa would be a prelude to an invasion of Ethiopia, a Christian state facing trouble with its Muslim minority. The decision was taken in a flush of Islamic faith but not with any careful military planning, with the result that Ethiopia has sent troops into Somalia and is about to win an easy victory. Ethiopia, of course, has the ‘legalising’ advantage of the overthrown Somali government riding on its back.
The SICC was not altogether bad for Somalia. It brought stability after a near total breakdown of governance under the former government run by the warlord General Farrah Aidid, but then the Islamic courts went berserk handing out savage punishments to the local population, one court often going against the verdict of another court. The sharia was imposed helter-skelter without a codified penal code, with the result that the clerical judges began hanging men for watching a soccer match on TV.
Somalia is a stronghold of Al Qaeda since 1992, when Osama bin Laden spent money and sent his warriors to back the warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid who was bent on defying the American troops stationed in Mogadishu under a UN resolution. The battle that ensued killed 18 American troops in 1993. Later, another battle killed 24 Pakistani troops stationed under the UN mandate. At that time Osama was living in Sudan in the same region and was accompanied by many Arab and Pakistani mujahideen from Afghanistan. There was also talk of Pakistani mujahideen having fired at Pakistani troops in Mogadishu.
Once again, unfortunately, it is being said that the SICC is supported by Pakistani warriors together with others from Chechnya and Yemen. In December 2001, Al Qaeda is said to have sent US$3 million to SICC to ‘enable and prepare’ it to create an Islamic Republic which would be founded on the philosophy of Al Qaeda. The United States was greatly humiliated by the 1993 killing of its troops, which led to Washington withdrawing post-haste from the Somali theatre and getting rid of the UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali, who had insisted on the operation. But the American trainers are now in Ethiopia preparing the country for a showdown with Al Qaeda. There is also a UN Security Council resolution which goes against the clerical government of radicals backed by Al Qaeda.
Aware of the new polarity developing in the region, the Arab League countries, backed by the Organisation of African Union (OAU), have asked Ethiopia to clear out of Somalia. Once again we are confronting a situation where the Muslim states are unable to intervene at the right time and are forced to adopt a posture later which looks unreasonable to the world.
A re-run of Sudan is about to happen in Somalia. In Sudan, the government got a militia to massacre hundreds of thousands of non-Arab but Muslim tribesmen of Darfur. But it could not wrap up the operation quickly and allowed the Darfur Muslim population to become refugees in the millions, compelling the neighbouring states to become involved. Sudan is a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). When things got out of hand and the Darfur killing fields began looking like genocide, the OIC should have convened a summit to help the Sudanese government out of its impasse. But nothing was done.
Somalia is facing the same situation today. The country was in a shambles in 1990; it was no better in 2001 when Al Qaeda set up a base there. The OIC should have reached out to impose some order there after applying financial help. But it didn’t. When the mullahs took over in June this year and swore to impose Wahhabism, the OIC should have got in touch with them to warn them about the impending dangers to an extremely divided state. But it didn’t. Now the Islamic judges are on the run and the Muslim states don’t feel so good about it. Worse, they don’t know what to do about it. *
SECOND EDITORIAL: Ruling PML: the split is showing!
The ruling party boss, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, has lost no time in issuing his repartee to the remarks by the minister of state for information, Tariq Azeem, in which he had said that Mr Shaukat Aziz, the sitting prime minister, would also be the PMLQ’s prime ministerial candidate after the next general elections. Chaudhry Sahib has fired back that the “candidate for prime ministership has not been finalised and will only be decided after the next general elections”.
He was apparently greatly put off by Mr Azeem’s attempt to become the government’s spokesman and called his statement his “personal opinion”. He seemed to criticise Mr Azeem when he said that Mr Shaukat Aziz had himself said that he would await the party’s verdict on his candidature for the PM’s job. The information minister, Muhammad Ali Durrani, seemed to offer his correction too by cancelling his deputy’s press conference. Under the circumstances, Mr Azeem immediately hit the ground running, saying he was “misquoted” by the press. If there is a grouping in the cabinet which sings a different tune, Chaudhry Sahib seems so far to have succeeded in putting it down. But why does the split show up again and again? *
Home |
Editorial
|
|