In this issue:
* HOWE LONG MORE?
* VICIOUS TONGUES...
* SOMALILAND: PROBLEMS AND PROMISES
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S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E
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Vol 2, No 29 October 20, 1993. ISSN 1103-1999
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Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and
fax. Questions can be directed to
[email protected] or
to fax number +46-18-151160. All SNU marked material is free to
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HOWE LONG MORE?
(SNU, Uppsala, October 20) Jonathan Howe, already under pressure to
cancel the arrest warrant he issued to Aideed, could soon be replaced
as the United Nations special envoy to Somalia, a western diplomat
told IPS on Saturday. The diplomat, who preferred anonymity, said
Howe, who also posted a 25,000-US.-dollar reward on Aideed's head
following the June ambush in which 24 Pakistani peace-keepers were
killed, 'is the one man to blame'. The diplomat's feeling is shared
by a widening sphere of observers and veteran Somali expert John
Drysdale recently cut short his contract with UNOSOM frustrated of
having his advice ignored by Adm. Howe. According to an article in
the Independent, October 18, Drysdale claimed that the primary
objective of the mission on June 5 when the Pakistani troops were
massacred, was to silence Aideed's radio-station and not to search
for weapons in its vicinity.
Howe flew to Djibouti Friday for a meeting with the head of the
UN peace keeping operations, Koffi Annan and the UN under-secretary
for political affairs James Jonah. The latter diplomat has recently
surfaced as Boutros-Ghali's own but most unlikely candidate as a
replacement for Howe. According to UN sources Jonah is said to be
"sufficiently weak and controllable". Jonah last week staged a
meeting between Boutros-Ghali and OAU officials in Cairo. The
aftermath of that meeting must appear bitter-sour for the circles in
the vicinity of Howe; According to a news comment in the leading
Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Aideed's alliance (the SNA) stand out as
"the only political movement in Somalia with a solid programme". The
OAU has organised a new meeting of African and Arab leaders in Addis
Ababa on October 20 which will also be attended by the secretary-
general whose brother, Yusuf Ghali, has now assumed the position of
Egyptian minister for African Affairs that Boutros Boutros-Ghali held
until his appointment as head of the UN.
An African diplomat told IPS that if the appeal made by the UN
secretary-general, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the
Arab League as well as the Islamic Conference Organisation (ICO) for
a political settlement in Somalia Friday 'bears fruit', Howe will
keep his job.
Others, however, have pointed to the desirability that the next
special envoy is an African, hinting that Lassane Kouyate, who is
currently the deputy special envoy, would fit all the requirements.
According to The Independent Kouyate had negotiated a deal with
Aydiid on cease-fire already on September 3 only to have this turned
down by Howe. The Independent also reports that when Professor Tom
Farer, who was appointed by the UN to investigate the June 5
massacre, wanted to hold a meeting with SNA leaders this was vetoed
by Howe.
The leading authority on Somali politics and social affairs,
professor I. M. Lewis of London school of Economics in an article in
The Guardian October 7 provides sums up the reasons why Howe should
be replaced: "with only one appropriately qualified expatriate social
scientist on its staff, UNOSOM is handicapped by lack of
understanding of the local clan system. Also with very limited Somali
advice, and the erratic counsel of state department officials like
the former US ambassador to Iraq, Adm. Howe and his team of US
military psychological operations staff are isolated and poorly
informed". The role as a new special envoy for Somalia "urgently
requires a high profile, politically experienced negotiator, probably
from the Third World, and with the requisite knowledge of and
sensitivity to Islamic societies".
With Al-Ahram's seeming rehabilitation of "fuguitive war-lord
Aideed" it would appear that Howe will have to withdraw the recently
pronounced ban on four British journalists. Sam Kiley of the Times,
Mark Huband of the Guardian, Paul Watson of the Star and Scott
Peterson of the Telegraph were denied access to US facilites after
letter, signed by them and urging Aideed to hold a press conference,
had been found on a suspected Aideed aide.
VICIOUS TONGUES...
(SNU, Uppsala, October 20) A more light-hearted approach to Adm.
Howe's Somali record is represented by a former employee of the
Somali National Museum who suggested to SNU that "the bottle used by
the Admiral to attend to calls of nature should be handed over to the
museum and put on display. We used to have some very curious personal
belongings of the Sultan of Zanzibar in that museum so why not have
Howe's bottle there as well?"
SOMALILAND: PROBLEMS AND PROMISES
(SNU, Uppsala, October 20) Two years after the unilateral declaration
of its independence, the Somaliland Republic has achieved a
remarkable level of relative stability. Somaliland's successful
attempt to mend its divisions by discussion rather than conflict has,
however, received lukewarm international support and no single
country has recognized the independence of the former British colony.
Last month a senior UNOSOM official allegedly recommended that it was
"time to dismantle Somaliland and bring this nonsense to an end".
This prompted a sharp response from the recently elected president,
Mohammed Egal, who ordered the temporary expulsion of all UNOSOM
officials from Somaliland territory.
Demobilisation of former guerrilla-fighters is one of the top-
priorities. "We must put all our efforts into security", health
minister Mahamoud Suleiman said in an interview with The Guardian,
October 16. "Some of these boys are threats to security today; some
are potential threats. We must ease them back into productive
civilian life". Egal's government were recently rejected UNOSOM
support for the demobilisation camps that are now being established.
The vice-president Abdirahman Aw Ali remarked bitterly to The
Guardian: "How much is being spent on forcible demobilisation in
Mogadishu -- 1.5 billion US dollar -- and we are asking for 25,000
dollars a month..."
Ironically, the meagre international support afforded Somaliland
may also be one of the factors that account for its stability, at
least at the early stages of the formation of the country. In a
report to be published soon by the UK NGO Action Aid, it is pointed
out that "the cessation of relief supplies (in 1992) denied the armed
clan-based militias of a major cause of contention -- access to
valuable relief goods." However, the most crucial factor responsible
for the peaceful developments, the report argues, is "the bottom-up
approach to the restoration of peace and stability that has been
pioneered in Somaliland by genuine clan leaders of hostile clans. TO
contain clan wars, the legacy of the tyrannical military rule...clan
elders initiated a sustained grassroots reconciliation effort." The
report, which provides a detailed account of the very mechanisms that
have facilitated reconciliation, goes on to describe how "the elder's
peace endeavour progressed to district and regional levels (and)
reached its height at the Borama conference where 150 delegates
comprised of clan councils representing all the groups in Somaliland
managed to produce separate national and peace charters".
In conclusion the authors -- two experienced anthropologists --
argue that "the slow local Somali diplomacy is the most effective
process of peace-making and that external 'conflict resolving
techniques' should be tried on a pilot basis before being widely used
in Somalia. The ethnocentric assumptions which underlie these exotic
procedures may make them less effective than existing local
techniques. To facilitate and strengthen the expanding circle of
inter-clan understanding, it may be preferable to extend the range
of existing local facilities...our conclusions also point to the way
in which aid resources, unless distributed in ways which local groups
consider equitable, are apt to stimulate conflict".
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SNU is an entirely independent newsletter devoted to critical
analysis of the political and humanitarian developments in Somalia
and Somaliland. SNU is edited and published by Dr. Bernhard Helander,
Uppsala University, Sweden. SNU is produced with support from the
Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden.
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