Analysis: Ethiopian pull out tests peace

With Ethiopian troops leaving and foreign peacekeepers not yet on the ground, Somalia's acting government, warlords, Islamic leaders and clan elders will determine if the 14th attempt to re-establish central authority succeeds, or if the country slides back into chaos.

So far, it doesn't look good. That is a concern for the United States and other governments whose officials are working to keep Islamic extremists from gaining a haven in the Horn of Africa nation.

After Ethiopian forces defeated Islamic militants threatening to take over Somalia, European, U.S. and U.N. officials urged interim President Abdullahi Yusuf to build bridges with opponents. Diplomats told him international support depended on broad reconciliation talks.

But Yusuf doesn't appear to have listened at the Jan. 5 meeting in Nairobi. Within days of arriving the Somali capital Mogadishu, his government intimidated the media by shutting down independent outlets for 24 hours. It also declared three months of martial law.

Then on Jan. 17, Yusuf engineered the impeachment of Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, a popular rival who has close ties to Somalia's fundamentalist Islamic movement.

The moves reinforced Yusuf's reputation as a dictator, an image he first earned as the president of the semiautonomous region of Puntland.

Adding to his problems, Yusuf's role during the warlord years of the early 1990s after the toppling of Somalia's military dictatorship made him deeply unpopular in Mogadishu, and his Darood clan has little or no presence in the capital, leaving him with no local allies.

The majority of Mogadishu residents are from a rival clan, the Hawiye, which is itself riven with factions whose warlords in the past divided up the capital among themselves.

Even though Yusuf's government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, he could not enter Mogadishu because he feared the warlords. But the warlords lost control of the city to the Islamic militia last June when key businessmen and clan elders switched their allegiances.

Earlier this month, Ethiopian troops drove out the Islamic movement and brought Yusuf to Mogadishu, along with the warlords. For now, Yusuf has persuaded warlords and clan elders to cooperate with his government, but its unclear how long the uneasy arrangement will hold now that Yusuf's Ethiopian muscle is leaving.

There has already been rumbling among some warlords unhappy with what they see as the government's highhandedness.

The departure will also test whether the remnants of the Islamic movement really are ready to talk to the government. Islamic leaders have said they are willing to talk to Yusuf, but only after Ethiopian troops leave the country.

At least one Islamic leader called The Associated Press to support the Ethiopian pullout.

"The withdrawal of Ethiopia would be the end of our ongoing insurgency," said Sheik Ahmed Muumin, a member of the Islamic militia. "I hope peace will prevail in Somalia after we solve our differences in a peaceful manner."

But a mortar attack on the main Mogadishu airport Wednesday morning threw that commitment into doubt.

All eyes are on one cleric who is perceived to be a highly influential moderate leader in the Islamic movement. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed was taken into Kenyan custody Sunday when he left Somalia and surrendered.

Kenyan officials have kept him under wraps. U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger met with him Wednesday to ask him to renounce violence and join the reconciliation process in return for a role in Somalia's future, but the results of the discussions were not made public.

If Ahmed accepts, then the pressure will shift to Yusuf, who so far has made no public plans for his promised broad-based talks.

Diplomats are trying to put together a force of 8,000 African peacekeepers that many hope will deploy in the next few weeks to protect those taking part in negotiations.

The mission is modeled on one in the central African nation of Burundi, where peacekeepers protected rival faction leaders so they would feel safe serving in a power-sharing government.

But the proposed Somali peacekeeping force will not deploy if the violence in Mogadishu continues, nor will it take responsibility for bringing stability to Somalia as a whole. That will depend solely on whether Somali leaders keep their promises and work together.

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Chris Tomlinson, Associated Press bureau chief for East Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya, has visited and reported on Somalia since 2000.