Published On: Wed, Jan 30th, 2013

Somali President wins new boost with high-profile EU visit

Somalia-EU

We stand behind this strong President who is committed for better Somalia

BRUSSELS – Somalia secured promises of an economic and political “new deal” during a high-profile EU visit by its leader Wednesday that comes days after the government in the Horn of Africa nation formally won US recognition.

Taking Somalia an extra step forward in its return to the international fold, new Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud met top European Union officials at the start of a two-day visit that includes talks with the EU’s 27 foreign ministers on Thursday.

Announcing the EU would host a global conference in the autumn to set out a “new deal” for Somalia, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton hailed “the beginning of a new era”.

“Somalia has come a long way,” said Ashton, pointing to a 95 percent drop in piracy off the Somalia coast and the beating back over the past two years of Islamist Shehab insurgents.

EU has funnelled 640 million euros of aid into Somalia over the last five years as part of a three-pronged approach of defence, diplomacy and development, a formula that the bloc is likely to try on beleaguered West African state Mali in the coming weeks, likewise under attack from Islamist fighters.

But Mohamud said the nation now needed to move from being a country “in relief” to one in recovery.

“Somalia is where Europe was in 1945,” Mohamud said. “Everything is zero, everything has to be started from scratch. And we cannot do it alone.

“We need the support of the whole international community and in particular the support of the European Union.”

At the bloc’s headquarters in Brussels, Mohamud met EU president Herman Van Rompuy and Ashton and was to meet later with the head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.

A university lecturer, Mohamud was elected in September after eight years of transitional rule by a corruption-riddled government, raising hopes of an effective central government after more than two decades of chaos and war.

Recent months have seen a 17,000-strong African Union force, fighting alongside government forces — many of them EU-trained — and Ethiopian soldiers remove Shehab insurgents from the capital and from key towns.

Last week, EU ministers agreed to extend an EU mission to train Somali soldiers for another two years at a cost of around 11 million euros. Launched in 2010 it has trained some 3,000 Somali troops.

The EU’s anti-piracy mission off the Somali coast, EUNAVFOR, has also been extended until December 2014. And the EUCAP Nestor mission assists Somalia and other countries to improve maritime security.

A senior EU official said the visit “symbolises a highly significant shift in the way the world sees Somalia and Somalia sees the world.”

“We want to encourage Somalia, say we are with them, that we take them seriously,” he added.

He said next steps for Somalia will necessitate a new deal with its global partners to clear its huge financial arrears and put in place international aid programmes to help establish the government’s legitimacy.

Mohamud’s administration too will need to continue extending control over the territory and improving security while easing testy relations with its neighbours.

Less than two weeks ago Mogadishu took a crucial step on launching a new era in its ties with the United States, which recognised its government for the first time since 1991.

“Today is a milestone. It is not the end of the journey, but it is an important milestone towards that end,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after meeting Mohamud.

Middle East Online


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There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part of the country. The world’s only fully “failed state” may finally be starting to return to normality.A failed state is a horrendous thing: no government, no army, no police, no courts, no law, just bands of armed men taking what they want. Somalia has been like that for more than 20 years, but now there is hope. So much hope that last month the United Nations Security Council partially lifted its embargo on arms sales to Somalia in order to let the new Somali government buy arms, and last week the U.S. government followed suit.The new government replaces the “Transitional Federal Government”, another unelected body that had enjoyed the support of the UN and the African Union for eight pointless years. Then last year a World Bank report demonstrated the sheer scale of its corruption: seven out of every ten dollars of foreign aid vanished into the pockets of TFG officials before reaching the state’s coffers.Fully a quarter of the “national budget” was being absorbed by the offices of the president, the vice-president and the speaker of parliament. The fact that after all that the TFG still only controlled about one square kilometre (less than one square mile) of Mogadishu, the capital, while the rest of the shattered city was run by the Islamist al-Shabaab militia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, also contributed to the international disillusionment.That tiny patch of ground, moreover, was being defended not by Somali troops but by thousands of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Unisom). More than 500 of them had lost their lives defending the useless TFG, and the foreign donors were losing faith in the mission. But the Unisom soldiers did achieve one major thing: they fought al-Shabaab to a standstill in Mogadishu.In August 2011 the Islamist militia pulled its troops out of the capital. That created an opening, and the international community seized it. It ruthlessly initiated a process designed to push the TFG aside: Somali clan elders were asked to nominate members for a new 250-seat parliament, which was then asked to vote for a new president and government.It was obviously impossible to hold a free election in a country much of which was still under al-Shabaab’s control, but this process also had the advantage that it allowed the foreigners to shape the result. The corrupt officials who had run the old TFG all re-applied for their old jobs, but none of them succeeded.The new president who emerged from this process, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is a former academic and human rights worker who only entered politics in 2011. No whiff of corruption clings to him, and he has worked tirelessly to bring about national reconciliation. And he has the wind at his back: just after he was chosen last September, a Kenyan force evicted al-Shebaab from Somalia’s second city, Kismayo.That still leaves about 95 percent of the country’s territory and three-quarters of its population beyond the government’s direct control. Al-Shabaab still rules in most rural parts of the country, and Ethiopian troops and their militia allies control much of the western border areas. Pirates with a lot of guns and money effectively dominate much of the north.One whole chunk of the country, calling itself Somaliland, has declared its independence (and runs its affairs much more peacefully and efficiently than any other part of Somalia). No other country recognizes its independence at the moment, but it used to be a British colony, quite separate from Italian-ruled Somalia, and in principle it can make exactly the same case for independence as Eritrea did when it broke away from Ethiopia.The worst problem facing President Mohamud is the venal and cunning politicians who have exploited the clan loyalties that pervade every aspect of Somali life to carve out their own little empires. Some are frankly and unashamedly warlords; others, including all the senior officials in the defunct TFG, masquerade as national politicians but work for their own interests.They have not gone away, nor have the clan rivalries that kept the fighting going for 21 years. Drawing up the rules and sharing out the power for a new federal Somalia (none of which has yet been decided) will give them plenty of opportunities to make trouble for the new president and regain their former power. Mohamud definitely has his work cut out for him.Nevertheless, he has strong UN and African Union support, and he now has a chance to create a spreading zone of peace in the country and start rebuilding national institutions. So last week the United States declared that it was now willing to provide military aid, including arms exports, to Somalia. Weirdly, that actually means that thing are looking up in the world’s only failed state.Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.