SOMALIA: Somaliland records drop in landmine accidents
HARGEISA, 26 December 2008 (IRIN) - The self-declared republic of Somaliland recorded a sharp drop in landmine-related accidents in 2008 compared with 2007, a mine clearance organisation official has said.
Hassan Ahmed Kosar, operations officer for the Halo Trust, the only international mine clearance organisation currently operating in Somaliland, said 15 accidents - down from 45 in 2007 - were recorded in Somaliland in 2008.
"Most of the accidents were caused by unexploded ordnance [UXO] and anti-tank mines planted in roads during the confrontation between the SNM [Somali National Movement - the liberation organisation in Somaliland between 1981 and 1991] and [former Somali President] Siyad Barre's regime in the late 1980s, as well as during the Ogaden war between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s," Kosar told IRIN on 22 December in Somaliland's capital, Hargeisa.
Kosar said Somaliland was one of five unrecognised nations to have signed the international landmine ban treaty, adding that the government had destroyed 3,014 anti-personnel mines in its stores in 2003.
He said the Halo Trust had destroyed more than 3,614 landmines or UXO, 90,694 small arms, and 37,760 anti-tank mines since 1999.
According to the Somaliland Mine Action Centre (SMAC), a government body, over two million mines were planted in Somaliland between 1964 and 1990.
Abdirahman Yusuf, a SMAC operations officer, said: "According to the last survey - conducted in collaboration with international mine clearance organisations, particularly the Halo Trust - over 600 roads were mined during the war; there are also 300 minefields scattered throughout the country."
International demining efforts
Demining operations have been going on in Somaliland since 1991.
Rimfire, a UK-based mine clearance organisation, began its first demining project in Somaliland in 1992-1993, clearing over 64,000 landmines and UXO.
“We are much bigger than Rimfire in terms of manpower and we also use modern demining equipment," the Halo Trust’s Kosar said.
In 2003 the Danish Demining Group (DDG) cleared landmines from 300 roads. Santa Barbara, an international mine clearance organisation, was also active in Somaliland 2000-2002.
The Halo Trust is carrying out a new landmine survey due for completion in late 2009. Kosar made a plea for more international funding to speed up mine clearance operations.
Source: IRIN
Radical Islamists linked to al-Qaeda set to take control of Somalia
Fears are growing it could become a new al-Qaeda stronghold two years after a failed US-backed Ethiopian invasion.
The country's weak transitional government, its 14th in 17 years, looks likely to fall once Ethiopian troops pull out at the end of December after failing to stamp out a growing Islamist insurgency.
The Ethiopians are the last line of defence against a total takeover by a radical Islamist group linked to Osama bin Laden's terror organisation.
The group preaches strict Sharia law and approved the stoning to death of a 13-year-old girl in October.
Al Shebab, the fanatical armed wing which broke from the Islamic Courts Union which ran Somalia for the second half of 2006, now holds more than 80 per cent of the country – more territory than the Courts controlled during their reign.
Rashid Abdi, Somalia analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said: "They may be forced to moderate their radical line once they take over just to stay in power.
"But there are those who predict al Shebab turning into some kind of Frankenstein's monster taken over by, or at least sympathetic to, foreign elements who have ambitions outside Somalia, to spread radical Islam or mount terror attacks, in northeastern Kenya or eastern Ethiopia."
The group, listed as a terrorist organisation by Washington, has been accused of sheltering the al-Qaeda cell which bombed the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and blew up an Israeli-owned hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002.
Last month, the US embassy in Nairobi warned that it continues to receive indications of potential terrorist threats aimed at American, Western, and Kenyan interests in Kenya including threats of "suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings, attacks on civil aviation, and attacks on maritime vessels".
There are fears that al Shebab, whose stronghold is the Somali port of Kismayo just north of the border with Kenya, could launch an attack on coastal resorts popular with Western tourists over the Christmas holidays.
The United Nations office in Nairobi has warned staff of a "heightened level of alert along the coast".
Al Shebab's chief military commander, Muktar Robow, said earlier this year that he was ready "to take orders from Sheikh Osama bin Laden".
His forces were swelled by foreign fighters who answered a call to jihad when the Ethiopians invaded, in December 2006, to crush the Islamic Courts Union.
That intervention, heavily encouraged by Washington, is widely seen to have prompted the radicalisation of Somalia's Islamist movement and to have launched its Iraq-style insurgency which has killed thousands of civilians and forced 1.1 million people into desperate squatter camps. Two-thirds of the population of Mogadishu, the capital, have fled.
This has created a humanitarian disaster where 3.2 million people, half the population, now needs handouts, but where international aid staff cannot work and food shipments must be shepherded by warships to ward off pirates.
"I think it is finally starting to sink-in in Washington, two years too late, that sending in the Ethiopians as a proxy force to deal with the Islamists was just madness," said Andrew McGregor, terrorism editor at the Jamestown Foundation, a right-wing think tank in Washington.
There is some hope that once the Islamists seize control – and few doubt that they will – they will curb their insurgency, which largely targets the Ethiopians, and that Somalia might enjoy a level of stability as was seen under the Islamic Courts Union.
But there are concerns whether al Shebab, whose name means "the youth" and whose forces are largely illiterate and disaffected young men, can peacefully consolidate their power once they are in charge.
"Unless they can reach out and form some new alliances, which is not an easy thing to do among Somalia's clans, they will fail and we will see the start of yet another civil war," said Mr Abdi.
"I'm not optimistic. The future looks bleak and is likely to be bloody."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Japan PM orders preparations for Somalia mission
TOKYO (AFP) — Japan on Friday moved a step closer to sending its navy to piracy-plagued waters near Somalia, with Prime Minister Taro Aso instructing his cabinet to speed up preparations for a possible deployment.
Aso "told me to accelerate studies so that the Self-Defence Forces can take measures against piracy as soon as possible," Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters, referring to Japan's military.
A growing number of nations are sending navy ships to fight pirates near the lawless East African country, with Japan's neighbour and sometime rival China dispatching three vessels on Friday.
Japan has been pacifist since defeat in World War II. Under domestic law, the navy can only protect ships flying the Japanese flag or carrying Japanese passengers.
Aso, speaking with reporters late Thursday, called for Japan to revise the law so it can also guard foreign vessels but held out the option of sending ships that for now have a limited role.
"Japan should take action in a hurry," Aso said.
"We had better consider revising the law, but that will take time. If we have to hasten things, then we should take a defensive posture on the sea."
Japan's opposition controls the less powerful upper house of parliament and has repeatedly held up legislation in hopes of forcing the unpopular Aso to call early elections.
Kyodo News, quoting unnamed sources, said the government hoped to send a destroyer in February.
Japanese forces have not fired a shot in combat since World War II. But the country has tried to take on a larger role in international security, notably through a reconstruction mission in Iraq.
China's dispatch of two destroyers and a supply ship mark the first time in recent history that Beijing has deployed vessels on a potential combat mission well beyond its territorial waters.
The UN Security Council has given nations a one-year mandate to act inside Somalia to stop the rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden, part of the Suez Canal route from Europe to Asia.
Some shipping companies have chosen to travel around Africa, a longer and more expensive route, to avoid the increasingly brazen pirate attacks.
Source: AFP
