Deaths mount as fighting rages in Mogadishu

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Bombs, shelling rock Somali capital

By SALAD DUHUL, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago

Car bombs exploded in Somalia's capital Tuesday and fighting raged for a seventh straight day, with Ethiopian and Somali government troops making a final push to wipe out an insurgency ahead of a peace conference.

Several large shipments of food for the tens of thousands of people who have fled Mogadishu have been turned back because there was no clearance from the Somali government, aid workers and diplomats said. The government has demanded to inspect all aid deliveries despite the worst humanitarian crisis in the country's recent history.

Islamic insurgents clashed with Ethiopian troops backing Somali government forces, using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades against tanks and artillery positions in the north of the battle-scarred coastal city.

A car bomb exploded outside the Ambassador Hotel, which is used by government lawmakers, said Somali presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamoud Hussein. Seven people were killed, said eyewitness Abdu-Kadir Mohamud.

A suspected suicide car bombing injured three civilians outside an Ethiopian military base 18 miles from the capital, said resident Mayow Mohamed. Troops opened fire on the minibus as it sped toward the base, he said.

The last seven days of clashes have killed 358 people, including at least 29 civilians and 36 insurgents who died Tuesday, according to Somalia's Elman Human Rights Organization.

Bodies lay rotting on the streets for days — too dangerous to retrieve.

Most of the fighting was around front line positions and weary Mogadishu residents said it was not as fierce as in previous days.

"The sides have got tired so they need breathing space to replace their men and repair their damaged equipment," said Abdi Ahemd Shoma.

The latest fighting flared seven days ago after Ethiopian and Somali government troops made a final push to wipe out the insurgency, Western diplomatic and Somali government sources told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Facing international pressure over the mounting death toll, the government and its Ethiopian appeared determined to bring order before a national reconciliation conference in June. Clan and warlord militia have also joined the fight against the Ethiopians and government forces.

A bid earlier this month to wipe out the insurgency left more than 1,000 people dead, many of them civilians.

More than 320,000 Somalis have fled the capital since February, streaming to squalid camps with little to eat and no shelter. Tens of thousands of others remain trapped by the fighting.

In a letter obtained by the AP on Tuesday, Somali Interior Minister Mohamed Mohamud Guled told the World Food Program that the government must inspect any goods being sent to Somalia.

Soldiers at a military checkpoint outside Mogadishu turned back a World Food Program shipment that would have benefited 32,000 people because the government had not given clearance, Graham Farmer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said in an April 12 letter to Gedi.

In a letter to President Abdullahi Yusuf last week, U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger called on the government to stop "halting distribution of food aid for unspecified inspections."

He also said at least one government-appointed regional governor "required payment for the transit of relief goods on top of payments already made to militia checkpoints. These practices are unacceptable and undermine the legitimacy of your government."

The letters were provided to the AP by an aid official who asked not to be named for fear of being fired.

Somalia's transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, but has struggled to extend its control over the country.

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Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy and Mohamed Olad Hassan contributed to this report from Nairobi, Kenya.

Somalia facing humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands flee capital

By Salad Duhul and Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Associated Press Writers

Published: 24 April 2007

There are no more hospital beds available in this bloodstained capital, and barely enough bandages to patch up the wounded. Even the bottles of medicine are running dry.

But still the patients keep pouring in - and they are the lucky ones, having survived another day of gunfire and mortar shells as Islamic insurgents battle troops allied to Somalia's fragile government.

"Even the shades of the trees are occupied at this point," Dahir Dhere, director of Medina Hospital, the largest health facility in Mogadishu, said yesterday. "We are overwhelmed."

Battles rocked Mogadishu for the sixth straight day Monday as Somalia heads toward one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history, with civilians getting slaughtered in the crossfire. A local human rights group put the death toll at 1,000 over just four days earlier this month, and more than 250 have been killed in the past six days.

More than 320,000 of Mogadishu's 2 million residents have fled since heavy fighting started in February.

Ahmed Mohamed, 32, was not one of them. A mortar shell hit him over the weekend, crushing his right leg.

"The doctors told me I would die unless they cut off my leg," Mohamed said, tears streaming down his face in the city's Keysaney Hospital, which was packed beyond capacity with nearly 200 people. "So I have to let them do it."

Somalia Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said Monday his interim government was winning the battle against the insurgents, but called for greater support from the international community.

"If we do not get international support the war may spread throughout the region and Africa," Gedi said. "These terrorists want to destabilize the whole region."

The government and its Ethiopian backers have been facing mounting pressure from the US, European Union and United Nations over the mounting civilian death toll and appear determined to bring order to the city before a planned national reconciliation conference in June.

But the fighting has decimated Mogadishu, already one of the most violent and gun-infested cities in the world. At least 18 civilians were killed Monday, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, the chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization group. A 6-month-old baby was among those wounded, said a witness, Khadija Farah.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned against each other. The western city of Baidoa, where the Somali Parliament is based, was dubbed "City of Death" in the 1990s during a searing drought and famine there. Mogadishu, once a stunning seaside capital, is now a looted shantytown teeming with guns, with no functioning government or institutions.

A national government was established in 2004, but has failed to assert any real control.

Last month, troops from neighboring Ethiopia used tanks and attack helicopters to crush a growing insurgency linked to the Council of Islamic Courts. The movement had controlled Mogadishu and much of the country's south for only six months in 2006, but those were the most peaceful months since 1991.

The group was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by US special forces, who have accused the group of having ties to al-Qaida. The militants reject any secular government, and have sworn to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic emirate.

Meanwhile, the capital and its surrounding towns have become scenes of ghastly despair. Women and children flee on foot with little more than their clothes and some cooking pots, then sleep by the side of the road. In Afgoye, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the capital, fights were breaking out over a spot of shade beneath a tree.

"Everyone wants to sit in the small area under the tree," said Asha Hassan Mohamed, a mother of seven who reached Afgoye last week but returned to Mogadishu because she couldn't find any food.

"It's so crowded because there is no shelter."

The United Nations said the fighting had sparked the worst humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged country's recent history, with many of the city's residents trapped because roads out of Mogadishu were blocked.

Catherine Weibel, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, said many of those who haven't fled the capital are simply too vulnerable to do so.

"All the people who are sick, in wheelchairs, disabled," she said, "they cannot leave."

A Paradigm Shift: America as Proxy

The US orchestrates proxy wars. Israel is now adopting a similar scheme.

Friday 13th of April 2007

By RAMZY BAROUD

Conflicts in the Middle East are often orchestrated from afar, using proxies -- the least risky method to fight and win a war. Despite its geopolitical fragmentation, the Middle East is loosely united insofar as any major event in any given locale can subsequently be felt throughout the region. Thus Lebanon, for example, has been a stage for proxy wars for decades. And it is not just Israel and the United States that have laboured to penetrate and further fragment Lebanese society. The intelligence services of various Arab countries, as well as Iran, have used Lebanon as a hub for their invariable interests, the outcome of any conflict -- be it internal or external -- directly affecting the image and political positioning of this or that country.

Palestinians have often been used as, and in some cases have presented themselves to play the role of, a proxy force. The rationale, in some cases, was personal interest; in others, lack of a platform that would allow them to organise. In the two most notable instances in which they tried to exert control over their host domains -- the cases of Jordan in the 1970s and Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s -- the cost was horrendous, leading to unprecedented bloodshed. After Arafat's forced exit from Beirut in 1982, Palestinians were forced to exchange the physical space they obtained for overt allegiance to various regimes. Arafat mastered the art like no other Palestinian leader. The supporters of the Oslo Accords argued that the agreement's key success was freeing the Palestinian political will from pandering to host countries for survival, which proved untrue. A Hamas leader in Syria told me, off the record, during a telephone interview recently: "We have no doubt that Damascus will dump us the moment we are no longer of use, but we have no other option but to play along."

Proxy politics is strategically significant for it helps take the battle to someone else's physical space, create distractions and circumvent internal crises. Both Israel and Iran, despite the colossal chasm that separate their political and military intents, are currently involved in such a manoeuvre.

President Ahmadinejad, backed by or directed by the instrumental forces in his country -- Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council -- is well acquainted with the fact that if Iraq is subdued by US forces, it will be Iran's turn to bear the brunt of obtrusive US imperial designs, cheered on, if not largely facilitated by Israel's neo- conservative allies in Washington. Accordingly, Iran is involved in trying to shape a political milieu in Iraq that will keep the Americans at bay. This is not to suggest that it was Iran, as opposed to the unwarranted American invasion, that engender the current chaos in Iraq; however, Iran, like other Middle Eastern countries involved in Iraq, wishes to manage and manipulate the outcome to suit its own interests. From Iran's point of view, this action makes perfect sense.

While Iran's prime objective is to discourage an American military assault against it, Israel seeks regional hegemony, where it is left only with "moderate" neighbours. According to this vision, conceived and promoted publicly by Israeli leaders and their friends in Washington and emphasised to the point of boring repetition by every relevant US official at every possible opportunity, the Iranian "threat" must be eradicated at any cost. Israel's fears of Iran are not nuclear in essence. What worries Israel is that Iran is militarily strong, politically cohesive and economically viable, enough to allow Iran opportunity to challenge Israel at every turn. The Israelis, as their country's history illustrates, simply despise such contenders. Israel's attempt to demolish Gamal Abdel Nasser's national regime in 1956, only eight years after the establishment of the Israeli state, is a poignant example.

Yet a paradigm shift has occurred since the US invasion of Iraq four years ago. While the US was the major power that often orchestrated proxy wars through clandestine tactics, as it did in Central America and various parts of Asia, Israel is now adopting a similar scheme. In most instances in the past, Israel managed to sway US administrations to behave according to the misleading mantra: "What's good for Israel is good for America." But a clash of interests here is unavoidable. While Israel's heart is set on a war against Iran, it is elementary knowledge that a war against Iran would bring irrevocable disaster for the United States. Prolonged political hostility with Iran is equally dangerous, for it will further complicate the American task in Iraq.

But Israel is still cheering for war. Former director of Mossad, Uzi Arad, told the British Guardian that, "A military strike may be easier than you think." He outlined what targets were to be bombed -- not just nuclear, but security and economic centres. "Iran is much more vulnerable than people realise," he stated casually. Arad, like most Israeli officials, wants war, even if such a war would complicate America's regional involvement and cost it innumerable human lives, notwithstanding a foreseeable large number of dead Iranians. It would matter little to Israel, however, for a chaotic Iran, like a chaotic Iraq, is just another opportunity to be exploited, and another "threat" to be checked off Israel's security list.

While proxy relations are part and parcel of Middle East politics, even arrogant superpowers can find themselves exploited, wittingly or not.


Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is available from Amazon and other book vendors.