On Monday, President Girma Wolde Giorgis, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia opened the new session of Parliament, addressing a joint meeting of the House of Federation and the House of Peoples’ Representatives. The President outlined the Government's aims for the current Ethiopian year (2002) after briefly looking at last year's achievements, most notably a continued growth rate of over 10%, for the sixth consecutive year, coupled with control of inflation. This, he noted, had been achieved in the environment of a global economic crisis coupled with a power shortage which had put a severe strain on industry. Continued growth in such difficult global and domestic circumstances was a tribute, the President said, to Government policies and strategies designed to speed up development. Exports had been less successful, failing to reach the 25% annual growth of the previous two years, because of the limitations of marketing systems together with falling global trade and commodity prices, and had fallen by about 10%. Imports had continued to grow substantially but government measures, including devaluation, avoided the serious crisis that might have developed from foreign currency shortages. 

This year, the president emphasized, the Government would work to achieve another year of more than 10% economic growth while keeping inflation to less than 10% and lifting exports back to the level of 25% growth or more. With the completion of ongoing power projects within the next few months, the Government was confident the problems of power shortages would be resolved, and industrial development speeded up. The Government would make all-out efforts to speed up infrastructural development, and ensure continued growth in the agricultural sector to alleviate the problems arising from the late start and early end of the kremt rains in some areas. Building on last year's successful policies, the Government would enforce strict control on government budget deficits and balance the growth of money supply to control inflation. Measures would be taken to correct some of last year's market failures and utilize the improved global trade environment to reach export goals. The Government was confident that despite the challenges it would be able to register continued growth.  

In the area of social development, the primary focus would be on ensuring quality education in regular, technical, vocational and higher education, making all out efforts to engage and mobilize those in the education sector, and scale up the expansion of educational services. In the health sector, emphasis would focus on the expansion and improved quality of basic health services. Federal and Regional Governments would continue to implement civil service reform programs as part of the good governance program with special emphasis given to bring about fundamental changes in tax collection and the system of administration of city land, to institute a modern, transparent and accountable system of taxation to help remove such challenges to good governance as corruption and rent-seeking activities. This would provide major economic benefits. The Government would present the bills to achieve these and other Government objectives to the House of Peoples’ Representatives. 

The President said the Government was determined the fourth national election next year would be conducted in a peaceful, democratic and credible manner. It would give the highest priority to getting informed and active participation from the public. All participating parties would abide by an internationally recognized election code of conduct, and a mechanism for dialogue between the parties would be set up to resolve any problems that might arise in the election process. All parties would have the opportunity to use the government media and would be given budget subsidies in accordance with the law. National and international observers would participate in the election process. The Government would make sure the election will be democratic and in accordance with the law. It would also be prepared to take any necessary legal measures to prevent unlawful or unconstitutional acts occurring during the election process.

The President noted that the House of Federation would prepare a new formula for the Federal Government’s subsidy for the regions, as well as the formula for sharing the joint resource revenues for the Federal and Regional Governments. During the year, it would coordinate the Fourth Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Festival. For the first time this would be organized jointly with Regional States. The House of Federation would also be involved in the extensive preparatory works for the Fifth World Federalism Conference to be held in Ethiopia in November next year.

On Somalia: Al-Shabaab, Hizbul Islam and  Ban ki-Moon's latest Report

Fighting between extremist opposition forces in Somalia continued this week. The terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, apparently seized control of Kismayo port last Friday from another terrorist group, Hizbul Islam, with dozens killed and wounded in series of fightings.

There have been a number of suggestions in recent months that Hizbul Islam is somehow a more moderate political organization than Al-Shabaab which has open links to Al Qaeda and international terrorism. Therefore, the argument runs, it might be possible to persuade Hizbul Islam to join in a peaceful political struggle if the right incentives were on offer. Some analysts have even seen the current fighting in Kismayo as a demonstration of these supposed differences, confirming that Hizbul is more indigenous, more moderate than Al-Shabaab. There is, of course, no evidence of this. Less than a month ago Hizbul Islam's chairman, Sheikh 'Aweys', whose record of terrorist activity goes back to the mid-1990s when his previous organization Al-Itihaad Al Islam was carrying out a terrorist bombing and assassination campaign in Ethiopia, was welcoming the suicide bomb attacks on AMISOM's headquarters and calling for more such atrocities. The assaults on the TFG in Mogadishu in May and June this year were the work of an Al-Shabaab/Hizbul alliance which had been armed by plane loads of weaponry sent from Eritrea where Sheikh 'Aweys' has spent the previous fifteen months. The fighting between Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam in Kismayo has, indeed, nothing to do with any ideological or religious differences. It is a conflict over the resources available in Kismayo and over their control, and it has certainly nothing to do with any disagreement over the use of terrorism to which both remain committed. Both Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam remain committed to their terrorist agendas and the overthrow of the TFG.  

The President of the TFG, President Sheikh Sharif, has been in the US over the last two weeks, visiting Somali communities in a number of US cities, including Minnesota where there are over 35,000 Somalis. In the Minneapolis area, from where US authorities believe at least 20 youngsters may have been recruited by extremists to fight in Somalia, he condemned terrorist recruiting, saying it was “wrong [and] ...against our faith, our culture and against religion. He was warmly welcomed everywhere and upbeat in his speeches: “I believe that solving Somalia's problem is not as difficult as it looks. It only requires that we confront it with unshakeable resolve”. Equally, he warned that a solution was also needed with assistance of the international community. This was a point also made by Interior Minister, Abdulkadir Ali Omar in an interview in Nairobi on Sunday when he said Somalia alone was not capable of confronting Al Qaeda-linked militant groups: “We need international assistance to strengthen our security forces....and that aid has to be more than words”, adding that it was important to amend AMISOM's rules of engagement so it could play a more active role.  

President Sheikh Sharif was also interviewed on the Riz Khan show on Al Jazeera this week despite the Deputy Speaker of the Somali Parliament accusing it of continued bias in its reporting on Somalia. Professor Mahammed Umar Dalha said Al Jazeera failed to report accurately on the fighting between Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, and routinely exaggerated attacks on Government or AMISOM bases, placing them as first item in the international headlines even if the attack lasted no more than a few minutes. The President told Riz Khan he thought his job must be the hardest in the world. He said the presence of Al Qaeda was a danger to Somalia and to the region. Somalia needed the international community to stand up with it. He stressed that reconciliation was an Islamic principle, and that the Government had agreed to implement Sharia law, but he also spoke of the need to fight terrorism. There was, he said, no way Al Qaeda could carry out its aims. He saw piracy as no more than an extension of the security problem on land.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, UN Secretary-General, Ban ki-Moon, provided his latest six-monthly report on Somalia to the Security Council indicating, perhaps expressing more optimism than the situation justified, that the Somali Government had made some encouraging progress in political and security areas, in fostering reconciliation and building a national security apparatus. It deserved, he said, continued support from the international community whose sustained backing constituted “a key contribution.” He urged the TFG to “stay the course” and appealed to the international community to redouble its support. The UN, he said, would stand firmly by AMISOM and he noted the UN provision of equipment and support for living conditions as well as planning and operational assistance to the mission.  

“Two particular points arise from the report. One is that despite the phrases used and the progress made, there is still no apparent sense of urgency apparent in UN activities as planned so far. The Secretary-General said the UN was carrying out the first stage of its incremental approach to Somalia's problems through specified mandated activities in the country and more frequent visits by international staff, averaging two visits per week in July and August. He said planning continued for the second stage – the deployment of a 'light footprint' in Mogadishu – though this remained dependent upon the security situation. In the light of the Government's current security problems, this is hardly sufficient. As usual he made only fleeting reference to the possibility of the deployment of UN peace keeping forces to replace AMISOM if the security situation permitted and the Council so decided.

Secondly, and even more surprisingly, the Secretary-General, although referring to both the opposition and criminal activities, says nothing about actions of external 'spoilers' of the Djibouti process, apart from noticing the AU's call for immediate sanctions against all 'spoilers'. The Secretary-General makes no reference to the main 'spoiler', Eritrea, nor does he recommend any endorsement of the AU call, merely expressing his concern over criminal activities including arms smuggling and calling for “the international community to find ways to address illegal activities that threaten peace in Somalia and the wider region.” In light of the suicide bomb attacks on AMISOM headquarters on September 17, which the Secretary-General deplored, this is particularly surprising. In fact, this aspect once again underlined the theoretical elements in the Secretary-General's reports. However, the meeting of the Security Council yesterday created some hope that the Council might now be prepared to consider taking strong measures against those who continued to create obstacles to peace in Somalia.

In the context of Somalia, analysis and analysts have a poor record. It seems never too difficult to find those who have committed sins of omission and commission in their efforts to look at recent events, or tried to twist and select facts to fit a pre-conceived argument, illustrating once again the unfortunate effects of such manipulation. Indeed, there have been three recent efforts which illustrate all too obviously the dangers of attempting to analyse Somalia without genuinely making a real effort to be inclusive, balanced and unprejudiced. All have failed.

Dr. Ken Menkhaus produced his 'Somalia: What went wrong' for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal in August. This is particularly disappointing as Dr. Menkhaus, looking at events over the last year, inexplicably fails to mention the activities of Eritrea, despite its role as the main external supporter of extremism and terrorism in Somalia. Dr. Menkhaus also fails to understand the aims of Ethiopia's military involvement in Somalia between December 2006 and January 2008, though he does accept that one of these was setting the scene and moving the Djibouti process forward to success and revitalizing the TFG. Dr. Menkhaus feels that since January and the election of President Sheikh Sharif, the new TFG leadership has made a number of missteps, making appointments without sufficient consultation, producing an unbalanced cabinet, travelling too much abroad and failing to revive the local administrative structures, including Sharia Courts that appeared in 2006 when President Sheikh Sharif was chair of the ICU. Perhaps more reasonably, Dr. Menkhaus castigates the policies of the UN and the donors for falling short of what was needed in support for AMISOM, for a state-building agenda for the TFG and for reconciliation talks. Indeed, he noted that the international community preferred to concentrate on a response to piracy, useful for grabbing headlines in donor countries but having little impact on events in Somalia. This was, of course, of much less importance than what was, and still is, the more worrisome threat posed by Al-Shabaab and Al Qaeda on shore.  

The problem with Dr. Menkhaus' effort at analysis is less what he includes than what he omits. Crucially, and indeed surprisingly, although he mentions the insistence of Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys' on 'no compromise', he ignores where Sheikh 'Aweys' had based himself before his arrival in Mogadishu in April, and the aid Eritrea provided him for the attempted seizure of power in Mogadishu by Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam a month later. Dr. Menkhaus doesn't even refer to the presence of Sheikh 'Aweys' in Asmara between early 2007 and April 2008. In fact, Dr. Menkhaus , despite asking the question 'what went wrong' in Somalia makes no reference to Eritrea's involvement in Somalia or its efforts to destabilize the TFG which most analysts might consider a real factor in answering any such question. All he does is to suggest that “external actors have a long record of injecting arms and funds into Somalia”, adding that they seldom get the success they hope for.  

That may be the case, but to attempt to analyse recent events in Somalia without any mention of Eritrea can only be described as perverse at the very least. Similarly, although Dr. Menkhaus does notice that Al-Shabaab has growing difficulties with its 'fractious' partners, he fails to identify either Hizbul Islam or Al-Shabaab as extremist, or the latter as terrorist. Missing out such central elements in the current political equation in Somalia today makes it difficult to accept any of Dr. Menkhaus' suggestions, and indeed, renders his efforts at analysis essentially null and void.  

This sort of failure is unfortunately all-too-common in attempts to look at the situation of Somalia and the TFG. Analysts frequently appear to come from a very particular viewpoint, still refracted through the prism of extremism held up by Al-Shabaab supporters whether among journalists in Nairobi or elsewhere, and making no effort to produce balanced analysis. Last month, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Pretoria, published “The Somalia Conflict – Implications for peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts” by Solomon A. Dersso. This is a lengthy, and often reasonable, even detailed effort to look at the root causes and dynamics of the conflicts in Somalia, including the social and political causes of the state collapse, at militarization, clan conflicts, the lack of identifiable political objectives, the emergency of criminality and piracy and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as major factors. It considers internal actors, concentrating on the TFG and on the ICU/ARS/Al-Shabaab, and identifies Eritrean involvement with Al-Shabaab, but then, oddly, does not mention Eritrea under external actors, merely looking at Ethiopia and the US. It does, however, correctly identify Ethiopia's involvement in 2006-2009 as intervention, not invasion.  

There are in fact major lacunae in addition to the omission of Eritrea in the list of the external actors and its role as a 'spoiler' hardly gets the emphasis it deserves. Hizbul Islam is not mentioned at all, and there is no effort to look at the Eritrean-backed attempt by Hizbul Islam and Al-Shabaab to overthrow the TFG in Mogadishu by a coup in May this year. Indeed, the report, although published last month, gives the impression of being written some months ago. The report prefers to concentrate on Al-Shabaab suggesting it “seems determined and capable of taking control of the whole of Somalia”, and claiming Al-Shabaab has demonstrated it will not allow AMISOM to stay nor will it participate in the Djibouti process. This means, according to the report that no military solution is possible and the international community should therefore do everything to stop Al-Shabaab targeting AMISOM and encourage it to negotiate. As is frequently the case, such a call for negotiation takes no notice of Al-Shabaab aims and actions, or indeed of its own statements. Al-Shabaab has not hidden its terrorist agenda and the idea of discussion of any kind is clearly very far from its mind. It is impossible that any functional policy of peace and reconciliation could operate in conjunction with Al-Shabaab. It might be noted that the ISS view of Al-Shabaab does, in fact, seem to be at odds with recent developments. It is also noticeable that the report makes no mention of the extensive moderate Islamic opposition to Al-Shabaab such as Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama'ah, nor of the divisions within Al-Shabaab itself based on its policies of clan recruitment. Al-Shabaab, despite its denials of clan organization, has been operating essentially on the basis of clan recruitment for the last year or more. It might be added that the report does not even manage to make any mention of Hizbul Islam.  

In fact, the ISS report's concluding recommendations bear little relationship to the reality of Somalia today despite arguing that it is necessary to consider all aspects of the Somali situation for an analysis to have meaning. Indeed, this report, and its conclusions and recommendations, unfortunately, fail its own test comprehensively. 

As already mentioned it is not alone in failing to take a wider, balanced, or comprehensive view. Foreign Policy Magazine which prides itself on the authority of its writing and its writers, and its influence in Washington, claims to take its readers beyond the facts to understand how the world works. It's a noble aspiration, and frequently succeeds, but not always and it is regrettable that the concept sometimes outruns factual reality. An article in the most recent issue, September/October 2009 which seriously fails to demonstrate understanding of recent events in Somalia is a case in point. To be fair, none of the three authors (David Axe, Malou Innocent and Jason Reich) are specialists in Somalia or the Horn of Africa, and they are writing essentially about US policy in Afghanistan “Defining victory to win a war”. This is no excuse, however, for some of their comments about the ICU and events in Somalia over the last three years. It is clear that none of the authors has taken the trouble to investigate the reality of events there, to look at the make up of the ICU, its divisions and splits, or the relationship between extremist elements formerly in the ICU and now making up Hizbul Islam and Al-Shabaab.  

Leaving aside their now discredited (and consistently denied) allegation that the US provided key support for Ethiopia's intervention, not invasion, in December 2006, the authors claim: “...the ICU and other insurgent groups fought off the Ethiopians. The resurgent ICU subsequently subsumed a U.S.-backed secular "transitional government" this January. The ICU is now back and in charge in Somalia, albeit under the transitional government's name, and has regained some of the momentum it had before the Ethiopian invasion.” This is a parody of what actually happened. It ignores the Djibouti process launched with full Ethiopian support in 2008 and leading to the election of President Sheikh Sharif in January 2009. It ignores the earlier divisions within the ICU in 2006 (on which current events depend), the takeover of the movement in June 2006 by extremists headed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys', the declaration of jihad against Ethiopia, the appearance of Al-Shabaab and its links with Al Qaeda, the creation of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia from hard line ICU elements by Eritrea, and the setting up of Hizbul Islam and Eritrean support for it and for its attempted take-over of Mogadishu in May. Almost everything of relevance is simply left out.  

In fact, the references to Somalia in this article amount to a classic case of externally-based analysts ignoring the realities of the situation in Somalia and the Horn of Africa in the interests of pushing specific criticisms of US policy in Afghanistan. This is, perhaps, understandable, if hardly useful or helpful to analyses of the situation in Somalia. It might be noted that any alleged parallels between US policies in Afghanistan and in Somalia, where there are no US troops, can scarcely be obvious to any objective observer. More serious, the inaccuracies involved often have an impact, even if unintended by their authors. They can be dangerous, and used to make dangerously fallacious claims which can only weaken the search for peace and reconciliation in Somalia, and the efforts to defeat terrorist organizations like Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.