Uniformed and heavily armed Somali soldiers stormed the United Nations compound in Mogadishu today, arresting Idris Osman, the head of the UN World Food Programme for Somalia.
The UN has been given no explanation for the incident and is halting food distribution in Mogadishu.
However, spokesmen for the program have in the past praised the former government of Somalia, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), whose supporters are fighting a guerilla war against the current government.
Nine people were killed elsewhere in the capital today in fighting between these insurgents and government troops.
The ICU was a confederation of conservative Muslim judges that had set up some social services in the early 1990s when Somalia lacked any central government.
They also set up Sharia law.
With Eritrean help, the ICU formed powerful militias that in the summer of 2006 took over Mogadishu and surrounding areas from the secular warlords that had ruled it.
The US funded the warlords, saying that the ICU was affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The World Food Programme has contradicted this view, saying after the ICU’s victory last year, “There may be extremists among them, but overall they’re providing relief for suffering people.”
Last December, the ICU was driven from power by Ethiopian soldiers encouraged by the US government. Many Somalis feel that they are now occupied by Ethiopia.
Since being driven out, ICU supporters have been fighting an Iraq-style insurgency in Mogadishu against the current government.
In the north of the country, Somaliland has its own militia, which is locked in battle with semi-autonomous Puntland.
Puntland is the home of Somalia’s president, Abdullahi Yusuf. It has huge potential oil reserves in the Nogal and Darin basins. Mr. Yusuf led it to quasi-independence in 1998.
Mr. Yusuf is currently wrangling with his prime minister over which foreign investors to give Puntland’s oil exploration rights to, among other disputes.
Transparency International says that along with Myanmar and Iraq, Somalia is the most corrupt country in the world.
- The Australian: Range takes punt on oil in Somalia
- Reuters: Threats and death stalk Somali journalists
- BBC: Somali gunmen storm UN compound
- Townhall.com: Attack in Somali Capital Kills 9
- Reuters: Somali legislators debate move to oust PM
3 Comments
I’m surprised that Somalia has enough of a state apparatus to be corrupt.
This Puntland stuff is interesting… I must investigate further.
They also set up Sharia law.
one of the things I have picked up in Spy School is a sense of there being a so-what quality to Sharia Law, in that it is not a precisely codified legal system but something about which scholars can endlessly argue; in effect you could take the legal system of any country and announce that it is being run on Sharia principles without actually changing anything about it, if you have the right scholars onside. So the OMG SHARIA LAW thing is all a bit overstated… those Islamic Courts fellows might have introducued Sharia Law, but that does not necessarily mean they were chopping off hands or stoning people to death left right and centre. Although they might have been, it’s not like I closely follow Somali politics.
That’s true. The phrase “Sharia law” is itself inflammatory.
The judges themselves were very proud of instituting what they considered the “old, best and right” ways to do things. And in some cases in Somalia, this did include stonings and the chopping off of hands.
However, I think these things amounted to little more than example-settings — gimmicks — a bit like the electric chair or lethal injection.
And by anyone’s measure, the population was happier once the ICU was in power.
Which tells you a little something about how bad things had been.