Somalia , the UN and all-too-brief international visits.

Salim Lone is a columnist for the Nation in Nairobi . Formerly an official for the UN in Iraq , the UN and the US are the usual targets of his criticisms. Last week it was the turn of John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs to face Salim Lone’s wrath. Salim Lone often writes about Somalia using it as a peg on which to hang his attacks on the UN, and John Holmes was in Mogadishu May11-12.

In his column on May 18, Salim Lone finally accepted, if only in a brief and rather reluctant aside, that “some [civilian atrocities] have been committed by the insurgents [in Mogadishu ] as well.” Equally, he still continues to argue, against the evidence on the ground, that the Ethiopian army and the TFG are the principle perpetrators of atrocities against civilians. This was why he was attacking John Holmes in this piece for what he called "a very low-key and bland presentation" to journalists about the humanitarian challenges in Somalia , for his failure to criticize the TFG or Ethiopia , and “even more amazingly” for Mr. Holmes’ failure to meet the Ethiopian commanders or the elders of the Hawiye in Mogadishu . One might pertinently, ask Mr. Lone in this context if he has met these people either. It seems clear from his own comments that he has not.

Nor does Salim Lone himself appear to have any clear or accurate idea of the situation in Mogadishu since the fighting to all intents and purposes actually stopped on April 27, though there have, of course, been some scattered incidents since. His description of a city “gripped by unspeakable carnage and [which] has been leveled like Grozny by bombs and heavy artillery raining on heavily populated civilian areas and with victims of the war still dying primarily because of restrictions placed on humanitarian access by the authorities” is absolute rubbish. And Mr. Lone must know it if he has been following events in Mogadishu at all closely.

Everyone must entirely deplore civilian casualties, but as is now becoming clear most of those who died in the fighting in Mogadishu in late March and mid April were al-Shabaab fighters. Civilian casualties were much lower than the 1400 claimed by the Hawiye committee; their figure appears to include the fighters killed. And many, perhaps a majority of civilian casualties, were caused by random shelling from al-Shabaab. There were a few days during and immediately after the end of the fighting on April 27, when there were problems of access for international aid, but since then there have been no difficulties using the port or airport, the roads have all been open, and there has been no restrictions on the movement of food aid except of the most temporary nature.

Mr. Lone is concerned to use Somalia , and thus Mr. Holmes, as an attack on the UN system, and on what he calls an unprecedented monopoly of power and control within the UN exercised by the West. Western powers currently hold the three most important positions in the UN Secretariat, Political Affairs, Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Affairs. This may all be unfair on Mr. Holmes personally, but certainly some of Mr. Holmes comments do appear open to dispute. It is difficult to see how Somalia can really be a worse crisis than Darfur , where over 2 million have been displaced in the fighting. In Somalia , the UN agencies have been claiming up to 400,000 people displaced by the fighting and needing aid. Ethiopia ’s Prime Minister Meles has suggested up to 80,000 might be a more accurate figure, while the Somali authorities (probably in the best position to know) have claimed 30-40,000. Part of the difference lies in the fact that everyone is talking of different groups. The lower figures relate to the numbers actually displaced by the fighting in March and April and which was essentially limited to three or four districts of north-west Mogadishu . Many people also took refuge with their families and clans, some going from as far away as Bay and Bakool regions, in Galdegob and Lower Shebelle towards Kismayo, to find clan support. Larger figures relate to those who do actually need assistance, many fleeing from earlier flooding and famine which led to huge numbers heading towards Mogadishu as the potential centre for food distribution. These population movements preceded the fighting in Mogadishu by several months; and several of the IDP camps around Mogadishu date back to last year.

Mr. Holmes’ visit was important as the first high level UN visit since the UN left Mogadishu in 1995, but it only lasted two days, May11-12, and was even briefer than intended, cut short by security considerations. Even shorter was the visit of the deputy foreign minister of Italy on May 19. It’s never clear what such brief one-off visits can actually produce, and understanding is seldom a result. Brevity, however, did not prevent Patrizia Sentinelli, like John Holmes, from sounding off over what she felt should be the way forward for the TFG. She categorized the TFG as having violated its own constitutional laws several times, and claimed that it did not enjoy the popular support of the population. As so often with outsiders, the deputy minister appeared to confuse Mogadishu with Somalia . Her comments displayed a failure to understand the political situation or clan structures in Mogadishu itself let alone elsewhere in Somalia .

The Italian deputy foreign minister did, however, indicate support for the National Reconciliation Congress, planned for next month, and said that Italy would partially fund the AU’s mission to Somalia , AMISOM. The EU Commissioner for Horn of Africa Affairs, Michele Cervone, who had traveled with Sentinelli’s delegation, made a similar promise. The AU and AMISOM have, of course, yet to see the results of earlier promises of EU funding for AMISOM, and it remains to be seen if these latest promises will be any more effective in providing for the build-up of AMISOM forces needed to allow for Ethiopia to withdraw its troops. Sentinelli stressed she wanted to see this soon; Ethiopia has repeatedly said it wants to do this as soon as possible. One obvious answer might be for the EU and the International community to actually provide the necessary funding for AMISOM rather than continuing to just talk about it.

Abdulkadir Younis

22.5.2007