13 Jun 2008: ISS Today: Somalia: Dare One Hope?

13 June 2008: Somalia: Dare One Hope?

 

Just as it seemed that the week-long meeting in Djibouti involving representatives of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) had ended in failure, the two sides engaged in direct talks for the first time and on Monday 9 June produced what is essentially a cease-fire agreement.

 

The agreement, a copy of which is posted on the ISS website, commits both parties and their allies to cease hostilities against each other within thirty days, for an initial period of three months. It also commits them to permit unhindered humanitarian access, to refrain from inflammatory declarations or actions, and to establish a joint security committee within the next two weeks, under the chairmanship of the UN.

 

The UN is also to provide the chairman for a high level committee, also to be formed over the next two weeks, to follow up on issues relating to political cooperation between the parties and concerns over justice and reconciliation. These issues are to be discussed at a conference to be held before the end of July.
The agreement also calls on the UN to provide a stabilisation mission to permit the withdrawal from Somalia of the Ethiopian forces within four months. Such a stabilisation force was envisaged in the UN Secretary-General’s latest report on Somalia, though it may be doubted whether he foresaw so urgent a need for its deployment.

 

In recent years, appeals from Somalia for rapid UN military assistance have gone unheeded, but none of these originated from a meeting organised and chaired by the SG’s special representative, and personally encouraged by a visit from the UN Security Council. To have achieved even this in so short a time is a credit to the unfailing energy and diligence of Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, who has long argued the urgency of seizing this opportunity. The UN Security Council will now have to respond with equal haste, the other claims on its attention and resources notwithstanding.

 

There are plenty of other actors in the Somali tragedy who will seek every opportunity to thwart the peacemakers. Not least among these will be the militant youth of al-Shabaab, though there are also elements of the ARD grouping who opposed the Djibouti meeting from the first and who from their base in Asmara may continue to assist Eritrea’s attempts to keep the Ethiopian army committed to an unwinnable and demoralising campaign in Somalia.

 

Scarcely had the news of the agreement become public when Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, recognised as a hardliner in the old Islamic Courts movement, rejected it as irrelevant to the liberation struggle in Somalia, clearly indicating that forces loyal to him would not be bound by the ceasefire. Other senior members of the ARS also speaking from Asmara dismissed the accord as having been signed by individuals who had defected from the organisation and would now be replaced in its leadership.

 

All of this speaks to the necessity of a prompt and favourable response from the UN Security Council on the issue of military assistance if the moment is not to be lost and the peacemakers isolated.

 

There is undoubtedly a massive groundswell of public support inside Somalia for any initiative that offers respite from the horrors of the last eighteen months. The plight of the populations of south-central Somalia is probably as bad now in humanitarian terms as it has ever been. The tentative cease-fire agreement of 9 June gives them at least a brief pause for hope, though experience will have conditioned them to be sceptical.

 

Richard Cornwell, Senior Research Fellow, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)

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