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Cairo Times, Egypt, 27-07-2000
Somalia seems to be heading towards a solution for her nine-year-old civil war. The Somali National Peace Conference being held in Djibouti is the most promising ever, but fears for yet another failure remain, Martin Stolk reports.
Somali clan elders, religious leaders, intellectuals, peace activists, civil society groups, women, businessmen and other interested Somalis from all over the globe have gathered in Djibouti for what may well become a historical occasion. Since May 2, over 900 voting delegates - including 100 women - are deliberating their country's future in a huge tent in Arta, a mountain village some thirty kilometer south of Djibouti's capital, Djibouti City. An additional 1500 observers and lobbyists make the Somali National Peace Conference the most broadly supported Somali peace effort ever. A new National Charter has been approved, and elections are scheduled for 26 July.
Somalia has been a nasty mess for over a decade. After years of cruel dictatorship, a protracted liberation struggle made the late president Mohammed Siad Barre flee to Saudi Arabia in 1991. Originally the armed branches of local clan leaders, the warlords and their militias then turned their guns upon each other. Somalia was divided into small fiefdoms. The fighting was interrupted only for a short while by a botched military-tinted humanitarian intervention by the US Bush administration in 1992. Throughout the 1990s, warlords had the rule of the day.
To the casual observer, nine years later the country is still labeled hopeless. Famine may not be as predominant in Somalia now as during the American intervention days, when around half a million people starved to death. But even now an estimated one million people are threatened with severe food shortages. Though warfare between the clan-based factions has become less intense, still around one hundred people - militia and civilians - are killed every month.
Due to the absence of a government and the pressure of the power of the gun, the country saw a huge growth in civil society groups. In addition, there was a return to traditional African forms of government, while Sharia courts took over the responsibilities of the defunct criminal justice system.
The novelty of Djibouti's current scheme for peace is that, unlike the previous 12 conferences, it takes advantage of this proliferating civil society. It approaches the issue of Somali peace from the bottom-up.
"Standard practice in peace brokering is to concentrate on the adversaries," Djiboutian diplomat Roble Olhaye told the UN Security Council last spring: "Djibouti has reversed the practice and aims at empowering the disenfranchised and unarmed civilians who have been betrayed."
Past conferences were always designed to bring about some agreement between the gun-totting Somali warlords. Beautiful memorandums of understanding and letters of intention were signed but forgotten the moment the warlords returned home.
The Somali economy is basically facing bankruptcy, and warlords have become unable to raise money for themselves and their militias. Last month disgruntled militia members, who had not received their pay for months, looted the doors, windows and furniture out of "Villa Somalia" the residence of their commander Hussein Aideed, one of the more infamous warlords. In 1999, the same thing happened to Ali Mahdi Mohammed, Aideed's main rival for ruling the erstwhile Somali capital Mogadishu.
Clan nevertheless remains the key to the Somali deadlock, as it is the most basic structure of the country's society. At the conference, numbers of representatives have been allotted according to clan size. The first month of the conference was dedicated to reconciliation. In the second phase several committees were appointed to formulate proposals regarding a new National Charter for Somalia as well as a host of more tricky issues such as security and disarmament, economic development, compensation for looted property and the special status of Mogadishu.
With the implementation of the Somali peace plan, the still-green Djibouti president Ismail Omar Guelleh is turning out to be a craftier statesman than expected. Guelleh is only Djibouti's second president since the country gained independence from France in 1977. Chief of Security and designated successor of his uncle, founding father president Hassan Gouled Aptidon, Guelleh had won the reasonably fair elections of May 1999. Before, it was generally believed he was totally inept in politics, as he had not only aired his preference for an alliance with Ethiopia, but even went as far as proposing a federation with its huge but staggeringly poor neighbor.
The ominous threat of Somalia's warlords nevertheless remains looming over the conference. In last week's newly adopted National Charter, the delegates reaffirmed the unity of Somalia, and declared to a goal of achieving a tightly knitted Somali federation. But Somalia nowadays is basically split into three areas: The Republic of Somaliland in the northeast which declared independence in 1991; Puntland in the northwest, which declared itself an autonomous region in July 1998; and the still heavily contested south, including the former capital Mogadishu. And while their rivals are attending the conference, most current power-wielders are boycotting the Djibouti initiative.
The fear that the Somali National Peace Conference will end up in another fight between egos is quite real. Though he has been mentioned as potential candidate to head the Somali Transitional Government, president of the Republic of Somaliland, Mohammed Ibrahim Egal, opposes the conference. A majority of Somaliland’s citizens also support him against the peace effort, as long as it includes their country. But Egal’s rival, former Somaliland president Abdulrahman Tur, has been in Arta since the beginning.
Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, leader of Ethiopia-sponsored Puntland, is the most aggressive opponent to the conference. Voting delegates however include his own Interior Minister and main leadership contender Hassan Abshire Farah, and former US-favored presidential candidate Mohamed Abshire, who claim to represent Puntland. Yusuf faced demonstrations in Puntland against his boycott and in support of the talks. Farah resigned especially to attend the peace deliberations.
Cooperation between Yusuf and Egal - who are engaged in an ongoing border conflict - has on no occassion been as extensive as now while opposing the Djibouti plan. That Egal and Yusuf are hesitant to attend the conference is not strange. The past 12 peace plans have not particularly generated much trust. They are afraid to be drawn back into civil war again. This while they have exerted much effort to stabilize their own regions. Thanks to money sent home by the Somali diaspora, the regions have managed to start reviving their economies, notably in the banking and service sector. Somaliland boasts Internet cafes and Puntland's rates for mobile communications are apparently the cheapest in the world.
Somalia's south, and Mogadishu, is still the most divided area, and warlords here are relatively strong. Well-known warlord Hussein Aideed, an ex-US marine who succeeded his notorious father General Mohamed Farah Aideed after he was killed in 1996, keeps changing his mind whether he will come to Arta. Though last week he send word that he supported the peace talks 100 percent and would soon arrive, he retracted the statement some days later. Allegedly, his change of mind was influenced by a visit of Egyptian ambassador Saleh Halim, though Halim denies the charge.
Egypt has, in fact, come under mounting attack over its role in the peace talks, amid allegations that Halim urged Aideed and other faction leaders not to attend. Djibouti's envoy in Somalia accused Egypt of sabotaging the peace process, and anti-Egyptian protests have been staged in Mogadishu and elsewhere, with angry crowds burning Egyptian flags. Halim denies the allegation and has stressed Egypt's support for the peace efforts.
Regardless of this Egyptian mystery visit, Aideed’s earlier acceptance came as a bigger surprise than the later retraction. His co-chairman to Mogadishu’s Egyptian brokered Benadir administration and main rival Ali Mahdi Mohammed is in Arta, as well as the leader of the Ethiopia supported Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA), 'Shatgadud' (red shirt) Dr Hassan Mohammed Noor, who is not a mere rival but nothing less as Aideed's most fervent enemy.
Moreover in the National Charter Baidoa has been named temporary capital - at least until Mogadishu’s infrastructure has been restored. Baidoa is where Aideed earned his first Somali battle experience in 1995, but the valley was later recaptured by the RRA. With this step it is feared the Transitional Government will be heavily subjected to Ethiopian influence. The RRA receives active military assistance from the Ethiopian Defence Forces, which have occupied the nearby Somali town Luuq for almost two years now.
Though hopes for achieving peace and stability through this civil society process are high and not unrealistic, the talks may soon prove to have been the easy part. The main problem will be whether the warlords, their militias and disgruntled representatives who have not managed to get into the new government will accept the authority of the new Assembly. To achieve this, disarmament is essential as the country is literally flooded by small arms and no such significant shift in the power balance is likely to go unchallenged. It will be up to the new government to contain the expected flare-ups of violence. Until even Somalia's strongest adversaries realize that it is better to have a good neighbor than to have a far-away friend, Somalis will continue to live on the sharp edge between war and peace.
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