CIVPOL Web Site - Somalia Is ‘Back From the Brink,’ Has Peace to Keep, Envoys Say

Anonymous writes "Somalia, plagued by factional fighting for almost 20 years, has achieved a level of stability that allows for economic growth and deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, UN and Somali officials said.

“Somalia is back from the brink,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top UN envoy to the African nation, told reporters today at the UN. “State legitimacy is established and the legality of the new institutions is recognized regionally, internationally and indeed by the vast majority of Somalis.”

The election in January of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, have created a peace to keep by a proposed UN force of 22,500 soldiers and civilian police, Ould-Abdullah said.

Somalis have been plagued by factional fighting among warlords and clans, and haven’t had a functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. The war has forced 3 million people into exile and displaced at least 800,000 internally.

“People have had enough of war,” Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar said. “Today you don’t have warlords, political factions fighting as factions, clans that are fighting as clans. All that used to happen. It does not happen now.”

Piracy Threat

There is still armed conflict, as well as a major problem with piracy offshore in the Gulf of Aden. About 17 people were killed in a battle on March 18 between government forces and al- Shabaab militant Islamists in Somalia’s Rabdhure district, officials said.

Pirates seized a Greek-owned freighter today in the Gulf of Aden, the first ship to be taken in the region in almost a month.

“The nature of the incidents” has changed, Omaar said. “It is no longer a scenario where you have frontal attacks on the government. The opposition has been reduced to a situation of roadside bombs. They are no longer capable of opposing the government militarily.”

The Security Council agreed on a statement today that welcomes the “positive political developments,” including “reestablishing security and the role of law in the capital Mogadishu and the rest of the country.”

Still, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his top peacekeeping officials haven’t agreed that a mission can be deployed this year. The Security Council has set a June 1 deadline for authorizing such a force.

“The view of Somalia is way behind the times,” Omaar said. “People are conceptually and psychologically held by the past.”

He said the government has taken over the Mogadishu airport and seaport and begun collecting customs duties. The nation’s economy is “not the worst” in Africa, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net Last Updated: March 20, 2009 17:24 EDT

Note: Source: http://www.bloomberg.com"