The continuing slaughter in Mogadishu attracts little international attention outside Toronto and other centres of the Somali diaspora, but experts warn that the bloodshed could soon affect the entire region.

Apr 29, 2007 04:30 AM

Starved and terrified civilians fleeing their homes. The stench of death hovering over the steaming streets. Tanks and missiles blasting through the night. Cholera victims dying in the dust.

 A plague of war has descended on the Somali capital, Mogadishu, claiming more than a thousand lives and displacing an estimates 300,000 people, as the country's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, continues to battle for power with supporters of an ousted Islamist regime.

 It's one of those complex regional wars that attract little international attention – but this conflict is closely watched in Toronto and other centres of the Somali diaspora.

 What much of the world doesn't realize is that this little war threatens a humanitarian catastrophe that could have spillover effects in the region, and the West, for years to come.

 "It's a genocide in the making," says Mohamad Elmi, an Ottawa-based partner in Mogadishu's independent HornAfrik broadcasting network.

 "People are fleeing in every direction, but they're being wounded and killed and there's nobody to help them. Now, all the political agendas are merging, and everything we've feared is happening. If it continues this way the whole Horn of Africa will be in flames."

 So far, most of the slaughter has occurred in Mogadishu, which lies on the western shore of the Indian Ocean: a chaotic city of 1 million where a United Nations-backed Transitional Federal Government had been unable to take control since the TFG was set up in 2004.

 Last June, the clan-based Islamic Courts Movement seized the city, imposing order until it was ousted six months later by Ethiopian troops backing the government, with military support from the United States, which feared Somalia would become a beachhead for Islamic extremism.

 Now, as the fires of the Somali conflict burn higher, sparks are spreading to other volatile areas.

 "This brings us right back to the surrogate politics of the Cold War," says University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy, a former UN envoy for Ethiopia and Eritrea. "You have all the same elements: lack of settlement, special interests and international players trying to carve out their own requirements for the region."

Last Tuesday in the eastern Ogaden region of Ethiopia bordering Somalia, an ethnic Somali militia attacked a Chinese energy facility, slaughtering more than 70 people and kidnapping eight Chinese oil workers. Somalia has laid claim to the Somali-speaking Ogaden region since the late 1970s.

 The grandfather of Bashir Makhtal, the Somali-born Canadian being detained incommunicado in Ethiopia, was once a leader of the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front that carried out Tuesday's attack.

Makhtal, a former Toronto resident, was deported from Kenya to Somalia and then to Ethiopia in January. Although his lawyer says Makhtal's has not been in Ethiopia since he was 11, the detention is a sign of the Ethiopian government's concern about unrest within its borders.

 David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and U.S. State Department co-ordinator for Somalia, say the Ogaden attack was the largest the separatist militia has undertaken in many years.

"I think the timing is more than coincidental. They can see that the Ethiopian forces are tied up in Somalia, so it's a good time for them to strike."

 While the Ogaden attack was taking place, suicide bombers targeted Ethiopian troops fighting in Somalia. The bombers were part of theYoung Mujahideen Movement, which has adopted the jihadist tactics of international terrorist groups.

 Although some foreign fighters have joined the Somali war, experts say it would be a mistake to simplify such complex regional conflicts by labelling them religious-based ideological clashes – a view taken by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, which sees them as part of the worldwide "war on terror."

 Analysts who study Somalia argue that fierce clan-based struggles have created something more akin to a gangland state than a battleground for Muslim extremism.

"The current fighting is a combination of the former Islamic Court people and a more important group, the Ayr sub-clan (of the major Hawiye clan), which feels it hasn't been given enough power," says Shinn. "There are a lot of business interests at stake and Somalis are consummate businessmen."

 Those caught in Mogadishu's deadly crossfire see the new conflict as a flashback to 16 years of warlord rule, which ended when the Islamic Courts – formed from the large Hawiye clan and backed by powerful business leaders – restored order in the capital.

The TFG had been unable to get a grip on the fragmented country but kept a foothold in Baidoa outside Mogadishu. When the Islamists took the capital, many people rejoiced, although warily.

 "What most Somalis want is peace and security," says Khadija Ali, a former TFG minister and now a graduate student at George Mason University in Virginia. "But they will never have it unless the parties are willing to solve their problems peacefully."

 The Islamists were at first welcomed for their crackdown on violence and criminality in Mogadishu, but their strict application of sharia law, media censorship and clan nepotism soon caused resentment.

 They also outraged Ethiopia by threatening to seize the Ogaden region.

The Islamic Courts' ouster has brought only more bloodshed to Somalia, in spite of declarations of victory by Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi.

Corpses are rotting the streets of Mogadishu and hospitals have all but collapsed. As the city is reduced to rubble, the impoverished towns to which residents have fled are unable to cope with their needs. Humanitarian agencies have been largely unable to help war victims, and the UN has warned of a disaster if fighting continues.

 "Ethiopia is caught in an unwinnable war, and there's no end in sight unless it and the transitional government have a paradigm shift in the way they deal with each other," says David Mozersky, Horn of Africa project director for the International Crisis Group.

 "But now the fighting has gone so far that neither side wants to make an effort at conciliation."

 Clan and land issues have fuelled an already volatile mix of hostilities, says Andrew McGregor, director of Toronto-based Aberfoyle International Security Analysis.

 "The troops in the TFG are from the large Darod clan. And as far as the Hawiye are concerned, they're simply an occupying army," he says. The clans have fought bitterly in the past, and now the Hawiye "see their old enemies back in the streets."

 Complicating things further, Ethiopia's dedicated foe, Eritrea, has reportedly offered training and support for Ogaden rebels and has harboured Somali fighters opposed to the TFG.

 Ethiopia has accused it of sponsoring terrorism, making the prospects for peace between the two neighbouring, and still warring, countries more remote. Eritrea labels the charges a politically motivated smear.

 As the Somalia conflict rages on, says Axworthy, "this is the seedbed of an entire breakdown in the region. What's happening here will push back into Eritrea, Sudan, Djibouti and the whole region."

 But it is the Somalis who are suffering most, after losing up to 1 million people in more than a decade of fighting. As they pray for an end to the killing, the few overtures for peace between the warring sides have failed.

 Says HornAfrik's Elmi: "Somalis just want to get on with their lives. They say: `Show us the buck, not the bullet.' If as much effort was put into peace as war, Somalia would be paradise instead of hell on Earth."

 Source: Toronto Star