Fighting in Somalia is prompting large numbers of civilians to flee into Kenya. Photo: IRIN

Somalia’s president has declared a state of emergency following weeks of intense fighting between Islamic militants and pro-government forces. Over the weekend, the government requested foreign troops from neighboring countries to help stabilize the troubled nation.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has blamed al-Shabab, a radical Islamist group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, for the surge in violence. Control over the failed state is split between many groups.

The nation has had no effective government since 1991, and one third of the population requires food aid. Read more: Q&A: Answers to lawlessness in Somalia.

Michael Keating is the senior fellow and associate director at the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He writes at Worldfocus contributor World Politics Review about Kenya’s response to the Somali government’s request for intervention.

As the world was riveted to the events in Iran last week, the beleaguered government of Somalia put out an S.O.S. for international military support in its deteriorating fight against al Shabab guerrillas and other radical opposition forces. Thus far, only Kenyan government officials have publicly responded with threats of military intervention.

But there remains the possibility that troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and Uganda might be deployed in a combined warmaking/peacekeeping operation under the banner of the African Union and other international and regional organizations. More than 5,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are currently deployed to protect government operations in and around Mogadishu, but in recent days they have been targeted by anti-government militants who refuse to recognize their neutral status.

The response from Kenya seems to suggest that the profile of the intervention would shift from peacekeeping to combat operations against al Shabab. In response, a spokesman for al Shabab said that any foreign troops “would be sent home in coffins.”

Kenya has many reasons to try to deal with the chaos on its border. The primary one is al Shabab’s close ties with al-Qaida, which put Kenya in the crosshairs of international jihadists. Both the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998 as well as the subsequent Paradise Hotel bombing in Kikambala were coordinated by al-Qaida-backed operatives coming across Kenya’s long and virtually unpoliced border with Somalia. Kenya also has problems with its own homegrown militants, many of whom train and get both financing and weapons from Somali brethren.

Another reason for Kenyan concern is the rapid increase in recent weeks in the number of Internally Displaced Persons arriving at border towns along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. There are already 160,000 Somali refugees in the Dadaab camps on the Kenyan side of the border, most of whom have been living there since the early 1990s.

[...]This is a developing situation that the Europeans and Americans should pay careful attention to. The recent “World War” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which troops from multiple foreign countries ran riot for several years in the name of stabilization, led to millions of civilian deaths. Somalia has far fewer riches than the Congo to plunder, but no matter what happens, civilians are likely to bear the brunt of the fighting. And any survey of Somali history suggests that nothing radicalizes the population like an invasion of foreigners.

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The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was elected by the Somali parliament as the new president. Photo: IRIN

Moderate Islamist cleric Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed became president of Somalia after a parliamentary vote on Saturday, bringing hope to some in a country where no functioning central government has existed since 1991.

Ethiopian troops recently withdrew from the country after a two-year occupation and handed security duties over to a joint force of Somali government officials and Islamic militiamen.

Though Ethiopia drove Ahmed out of power when its army ousted the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) only a few years ago, the two countries have now agreed to work together.

Listen to the Worldfocus radio show and read the Q&A on the background of Somalia’s political and social instability and Ethiopia’s role in the country.

Rob Crilly is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi who has written for The Times, The Irish Times, The Daily Mail, The Scotsman and The Christian Science Monitor. Crilly’s blog “African Safari” appears on the blog network “From the Frontline,” where he discusses Somalia’s new president.

Somalia’s best chance of peace

Funny how things work out. Two years ago Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was on the run from an Ethiopian assault that had snatched Mogadishu from the Islamists who ran the city peacefully for six months. America had given its tacit support to the strike, fearing that Somalia was about to become a haven for al Qaeda. Sheikh Sharif was a wanted man.

Now he is president of Somalia, or at least that part of Somalia controlled by an alliance of the old discredited Transitional Federal Government and Sheikh Sharif’s moderate wing of the Islamist Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia.

He was chosen by the country’s MPs meeting in Djibouti, a result that will be something of an embarrassment for the West. British diplomats in particular were lobbying hard for his rival Nur Adde. Yet for anyone who wants peace in Somalia it has to be the right result.

Nur Adde may be the better politician, with his years of experience as an aid official. But Sheikh Sharif is the man who can unite the country. The new president faces an Islamist insurgency that has wrested control of large chunks of the country. If he can survive the initial onslaught that is sure to come from extreme opposition movements, and start to show momentum, bringing in donor cash and showing that his is the only game in town, he stands a chance of bringing his old allies in the Union of Islamic Courts on board.

The man I met two and a half years ago in a battle-scarred city struck me as a man prepared to talk. He wanted to tell the world that he was not a terrorist or an extremist but a man who wanted to make Somalia a better place. He and the Islamic Courts brought peace and security to a city that had experienced nothing but anarchy for a decade and a half.

He was anything but a cartoon Islamist. With his checked shirt, cargo pants and headscarf he looked more like Islamist by Gap.

His problem was that extremists within his movement went too far. Some of the Sharia courts within the union banned music in their areas of the city, cinemas were shut down and - the biggest mistake of all - stopped the trade in qat, the mild stimulant so beloved of Somali men. With popularity at home ebbing and little support from the international community Sheikh Sharif was unable to sideline the hardliners like Sheikh Aweys and the project was ultimately doomed.

This time around he faces the opposite challenge, bringing al Shabaab - designated a terrorist outfit by the State Department and which controls big chunks of Somalia - and Sheikh Aweys on board. It will be tough but he stands a better chance than Nur Adde, a former prime minister of the hated TFG, which is seen as a stooge of Ethiopia and western powers.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Somalia in four years of reporting (aside from the fact that anyone who tells you they know what they are talking about is a fool) is that nothing will work unless it comes from Somalia itself.

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