Time runs out for Somalia's transitional government as the humanitarian crisis intensifies, writes Gamal Nkrumah Fighting erupted with unprecedented ferocity this week in the southern suburbs of the Somali capital Mogadishu. The Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) headed by the redoubtable Sheikh Hassan Dhaher Aweis who also doubles as the leader of Al-Hizb Al-Islami (Islamic Party), has urged its supporters to wage a jihad (Muslim holy war) against "infidels" of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISCOM). In retaliation, AU peacekeeping troops, predominantly Ugandan and Burundian, have launched an all-out assault on the militias loyal to the Al-Hizb Al-Islami. The distinguishing features of this Islamist movement are its militancy, its explicit and its implicit use of violence, and a tendency to declare anyone who opposes it as an "apostate". This week's violence highlights what a long way Somalia still has to go in building sustainable democratic institutions. Even as the fighting intensifies, foreign vessels are increasingly fishing illegally off the sprawling coasts teaming with tuna and mackerel. The Somali people are incensed because their territorial waters are being invaded by hoards of foreign fishing vessels assisted by foreign naval vessels patrolling Somali territorial waters ostensibly to combat piracy. Meanwhile, one in five Somali children are malnourished and hundreds are dying every week of starvation. Tapping into a sense of betrayal among those Islamists who have previously looked to Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as a national saviour when he served as a prominent member of the now defunct Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Aweis urged his followers to "fight until total victory". He notified them at a press conference in Mogadishu not to accept the ceasefire offered by the Somali president during the holy month of Ramadan. The Al-Hizb Al-Islami is now determined to turf the forces loyal to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of President Sharif out of their strongholds in central and southern Somalia. Al-Hizb Al-Islami, one of the most powerful of military forces in contemporary Somalia, is battling against the Somali president. Sheikh Sharif is playing his hand shrewdly, but the floundering president of Somalia sees his influence wane, as he fights to maintain his diplomatic clout after meeting with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Kenyan capital Nairobi last week. More and more Somalis are switching their affections to the militant Islamists as the already deplorable economic and social conditions in the country deteriorate further. The turgid religious discourse of yesteryear when both Aweis and Sharif were esteemed judges in the Islamic Courts is now translated into a bitter-armed struggle. The Somali people, meanwhile, grew disillusioned with the bellicose nature of their leaders. The UIC is prone to in-fighting and internal splits, and today the antagonistic bickering have come home to roost. Fighting intensified again this week with apparently losing control of the strategic town of Beledweyne, central Hiran region of Somalia. Al-Hizb Al-Islami described its defeat as a "tactical retreat". It is against this grim backdrop that the Somali president has declared a state of emergency that has been enforced since 19 August. The Islamists ignored this latest move insisting that their own Islamist writ extend into everyday life. The worst humanitarian crisis to hit the country for 18 years has rendered 1.42 million Somalis homeless and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. This amounts to a 40 per cent rise in displaced persons in the first six months of this year. According to United Nations estimations, some 3.76 million Somalis are now utterly dependent on foreign food aid as agricultural activity has come to a virtual standstill. Two French aid workers with "Action Against Hunger" were released this week, along with a Bulgarian woman and a Belgian man in the central Somali town of Dhusa Mareb. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner this week announced that the European Union is prepared to train Somali security forces in keeping law and order and in combating terrorism. Ironically, Al-Shabab movement is currently holding two French security advisors. Kenya and certain Arab League nations expressed an interest in assisting the EU train Somali security forces. The Ogaden National Liberation Front insurgency in Ogaden, Ethiopia's easternmost region inhabited by ethnic Somalis. Many Somali factions want to see Ogaden re-united with the rest of Somalia in a Greater Somalia that encompasses not only Ogaden, but also Djibouti, northeastern Kenya which is inhabited by ethnic Somalis, and the breakaway autonomous regions of Somaliland (northwestern Somalia) and Puntland (northeastern Somalia). Ethiopia has long harboured territorial and military disputes with Somalia over Ogaden. In more recent years, Ethiopia also nurtured political and ideological conflicts with armed Somali opposition groups in part because Addis Ababa is seen as interfering in domestic Somali affairs. Ethiopia is also denounced by its Somali critics for its unsolicited and unconditional support for the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, the beleaguered administration of the moderate Islamist cleric turned politician Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a onetime ally of Aweis when they both belonged to the UIC. Ethiopia's rubber stamp parliament has been supportive of efforts of the country's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's untiring efforts to contain the threat posed by militant Somali Islamists to his country's political stability and territorial integrity. "Parliament hereby authorises the [Ethiopian] government to take all necessary and legal steps to stave off a declaration of holy war and invasion by UIC against our country," the Ethiopian parliament recently declared, pledging its full and unqualified backing for Premier Zenawi. The Ethiopian political establishment, government and opposition, appear to be virtually united on this issue. Cross-border clashes between Ethiopia and Somalia are nothing new, and neither are incursions into Somali territory by Ethiopian armed forces, the largest albeit not the best equipped in Africa south of the Sahara. The first incursion by Ethiopian troops into Somali territory since the demise of the Somali strongman Siade Barre and the subsequent dissolution of the Somali state was in August 1996. In March 1999, Ethiopian troops crossed the Somali border in hot pursuit of members of Al-Itihad Al-Islami, the now disbanded militant Islamist organisation with close links to Al-Qaeda. Ethiopia insisted that their incursion into Somali territory be in self-defence as is part of the global war on international terrorism. However, what most Somalis deeply resent is the 20 July 2006 entry of the Ethiopian army in a poignant infringement of Somali territorial integrity ostensibly to safeguard the then beleaguered transitional government of former Somali president Abdallah Youssef. Only with the evacuation of foreign troops from Somali soil will the incessant fighting cease. And, only then will the Islamists' triumph be complete.
