• Title: [SW News](Reuters) Somalia Still Riven 10 Years After S. Barre 
• Posted by/on:[AMJ][Sunday, January 28, 2001]

By Adrian Blomfield

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ten years after the overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre plunged Somalia into chaos, the newly established administration seems incapable of asserting its authority over a nation torn apart by civil war.

Cabinet ministers attempt to rule the country from locked and heavily guarded hotel rooms, as government offices still lie in ruins.

The transitional administration, which last year formed the first centralized government in Mogadishu since Siad Barre fled the city 10 years ago this weekend, still does not control the sea port or the airport.

With the new administration struggling to compete with four militias opposed to the new administration, the city has effectively been divided into five fiefdoms and there has been little attempt to regain control of the rest of the country.

``It's a stalemate at the moment,'' one security source said. ''The TNG (Transitional National Government) does not control the seat of power in the city. There has been not one move forward.''

``The government has tried to send teams to other parts of the country to try and establish control but without particular success because its base is built on sand.''

Optimism Wanes

Optimism ran high when Somalia's new president, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, made a triumphant first entry into Mogadishu after his election in August last year. Around 100,000 people thronged a soccer stadium to welcome him.

After a decade of civil war in which up to a million people died in fighting between rival clans and a series of famines that resulted, many hoped that a new era of peace and stability had finally dawned.

U.N. officials and diplomats say they are disappointed that it is taking so long just to begin the process of getting Somalia back on its feet.

``Things have been a little slow,'' David Stephen, the U.N. secretary-general's representative for Somalia told Reuters. ''That's one of the reasons why the situation is strained. Somalis think something is cooking.''

Abdiqassim Salad's task has certainly been a huge one -- building up a successful administration in a country which did not have a government for the best part of decade was never going to be easy.

But when the lack of government was combined with a civil war so brutal that a U.N. task force including 30,000 Americans withdrew ignominiously in the early-1990s, his task is seen by many as little short of impossible.

``The new administration is moving forward and it's important not to expect too much,'' Stephen said. ``They are starting from zero. Everything was destroyed since Siad Barre went.''

Federalism Only Way Forward

To have any hope of keeping Somalia intact, diplomats say the administration needs to have a federal constitution in place when its term of office ends in a little over two and a half years.

But the breakaway republic of Somaliland, a former British protectorate, has already ruled out a reunification with the once Italian-ruled south from which it broke in 1991, taking advantage of Siad Barre's demise.

Neighboring Puntland is also opposed to the new government, but more crucially for the new administration's survival is opposition from militias elsewhere in the country, not least in the capital.

Security sources say attempts to buy the opposition out have recently failed because not enough money has been offered. A reported backup plan to use force looks like it too could fail because the government simply does not have sufficient military strength.

Also causing concern is Ethiopia's increasingly belligerent stance toward Mogadishu.

The Ethiopian government is distinctly nervous of neighboring countries which are overly influenced by Islam and accuses Somalia of having a glut of fundamentalist Muslims with too much power in its cabinet.

Although Ethiopia claims to have no troops in southwestern Somalia, independent sources say it has at least one battalion stationed in three towns on the Somali side of the border and is arming factions opposed to the government in Mogadishu.

Mogadishu has also accused Ethiopia of sponsoring talks by faction leaders this week to establish a break-away administration in southwestern Somalia.

For Somalia not to sink back into the morass from which it has just emerged, the country's war-weary people must hope that their desire for peace will be enough to silence the guns of the warlords for whom war has been a profitable business.

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