Desperate Somalia

Washington Post
November 27, 2007


DARFUR has engendered less international attention but no less misery in recent months: Violence is still rampant, and aggression by the Sudanese army continues. But there is at least the hope of relief in the planned deployment early next year of 19,000 more peacekeepers under a U.N. mandate. That can't be said for nearby Somalia, a failed state where another nasty war is escalating, another major humanitarian crisis is building -- and the United Nations, together with most of the rest of the world, has written off any rescue.

Some international aid officials are arguing that the suffering in Somalia is now greater than in Darfur, and they may have a point. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the capital, Mogadishu, to live in camps along roads, where they have little food. A failed harvest has brought the rest of the country close to famine. In the capital there are regular bombings and ambushes by insurgents and occasional flare-ups of all-out combat; more than 80 people were killed in one week this month. Hundreds have drowned in recent months trying to flee the country by boat.

A year ago there was hope that Somalia could be stabilized for the first time since 1991, after Ethiopian troops routed the forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which had installed a fundamentalist administration in Mogadishu and harbored terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. But the Western-backed coalition government that the Ethiopian forces carried into Mogadishu proved incapable of broadening its base to include powerful clans whose support was needed to pacify the capital. A plan to transfer security from the Ethiopians, who are widely disliked in Somalia, to an African peacekeeping force fell through. The remnants of the Islamic Courts force regrouped to wage war against the Ethiopians, with the help of allied clansmen. Ethiopian forces have been guilty of indiscriminate shelling of neighborhoods where insurgents are based.

Not only Somalis stand to suffer in this crisis. The war could escalate into a conflict between Ethiopia and its bitter enemy Eritrea. If the Islamists win, Somalia could become a base for al-Qaeda and a staging point for attacks in East Africa and Europe. Yet the will and resources for an international intervention seem nonexistent. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, struggling to manage nine peacekeeping operations in Africa, recently said there was little chance of one in Somalia. The United States, which was driven out of Mogadishu in 1993, has unsuccessfully sought to act through surrogates -- first local warlords, now the beleaguered and undisciplined Ethiopians.

If there is a chance for improvement, it may lie with the 68-year-old humanitarian who last week was named prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. Since Somalia descended into chaos 16 years ago, Mr. Hussein has worked for the Somali Red Crescent, helping to provide health services and build hospitals. Encouragingly, he said in his first speech that "consultations will be my first priority." If Somalia is to be saved from another catastrophe, the solution will have to begin with a home-grown political bargain