In this issue: * MEAGRE DISARMAMENT RECORD * HAWAADLE AND HABAR GEDIR IN ARMED CLASH * AIDEED'S KHARTOUM CONNECTION ____________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ Vol 2, No 22 September 11, 1993. ISSN 1103-1999 ____________________________________________________________________ Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and fax. Questions can be directed to Bernhard.Helander@antro.uu.se or to fax number +46-18-151160. All SNU marked material is free to quote as long as the source is clearly stated. ____________________________________________________________________ MEAGRE DISARMAMENT RECORD (SNU, Uppsala, September 11) The last two days of resumed fighting in Mogadishu should come as no surprise to those within UNOSOM who have been responsible for implementing the Addis Ababa-agreement on disarmament. Admiral Howe, in an address to the Somali people last month, described the disarmament record so far: "Since May, UNOSOM II has confiscated almost 1300 small arms, and more than 750 machine guns and other heavy weapons such as rockets launchers and mortars. UNOSOM II also disabled nearly 50 armoured vehicles; more than 400 artillery pieces; almost 600 other weapons and over 87,000 pieces of ordnance". In any other country in the world these confiscated weapons would have constituted a tremendous success. However, for the Somali factions it constitutes a mere skimming of the surface of their holdings. A large number of the weapons have also turned out to be out of order and had been voluntarily surrendered by the factions. Some of the vehicles had actually been abandoned. Very little of the confiscated weaponry appears to have been collected in Mogadishu. In his address, Admiral Howe went on to say that "UNOSOM will soon target Mogadishu in its disarmament campaign". HAWAADLE AND HABAR GEDIR IN ARMED CLASH (SNU, Uppsala, September 11) Tension has been mounting between the Habar Gedir and Hawaadle clans in Mogadishu for a long time. Before the arrival of the UNITAF in December last year the Hawaadle clan controlled Mogadishu's airport. Politically they straddled somewhere in between Abgaal's Ali Mahdi and Habar Gedir's Mohammed Farah Aideed. Some elders within the clan has for a long time sought to act as mediators between the two wings of the USC militia. When the youngest brother of the current Hawaadle ugas (chief) took up employment with UNOSOM as an advisor to Admiral Howe, some Habar Gedir felt that they could no longer deal with members of a clan who was actively engaged in what Habar Gedir sees as a war against them. At the same time UNOSOM has fired a number of their locally hired staff that were suspected of leaking information to Aideed. It cannot be ruled out that Thursday's ambush on the UNOSOM troops originally had been intended as a trap for Hawaadle. At any rate the clash between Habar Gedir and UN at the former cigarette- factory, which left more than 100 Somalis killed, rapidly was transformed into fighting between Habar Gedir and Hawaadle forces. AIDEED'S KHARTOUM CONNECTION (SNU, Uppsala, September 11) Throughout the past few months it has repeatedly been alleged that Sudan has been smuggling arms and weapons into Somalia to the USC militia of General Mohammed Farah Aideed. Last month the United Nations force in Somalia closed down two small airstrips outside Mogadishu, claiming that they were being used to smuggle arms and weapons to General Aideed. Observers generally held that the real reason of the close-down was to inflict a serious blow for the economically vital qat-imports that is largely in the hands of Aideed's Habar Gedir clan. According to an article in this month's edition of the Sudan Democratic Gazette, however, the UN report on the airstrips omitted to mention that the arms are being supplied by Iran and then transported to Somalia via Sudan. The Khartoum regime does not have the capacity to supply such weaponry from its own stocks and so is using this opportunity to win back favour with Teheran. "Both Sudan and Iran have similar objectives for helping General Aideed in Somalia" says the Sudan Democratic Gazette. "Firstly, they believe that by helping him they will endear themselves to his supporters and win their support for their long term Islamic agenda in the region. Secondly, both Khartoum and Teheran wish to use Aideed to embarrass the Americans in Somalia and to discredit them throughout the region". Khartoum is believed to have supported Aideed for a considerable time, dating back to when Khartoum was the only regime in the region which opposed UN intervention in Somalia. It has been thought that Khartoum's opposition was purely a practical one, with the regime suspecting that after Somalia, Sudan would be next on the UN's agenda. However, the Gazette argues, "it now seems as if the opposition was in fact far more ideologically based than at first thought". From the initial UN involvement in Somalia, the Khartoum regime has pressed the case for allowing only Islamic relief agencies to operate in the Moslem country. In particular, Khartoum would have liked the Islamic world to only support Sudanese Islamic relief agencies to operate in Somalia. There is some evidence to suggest that Khartoum was behind the difficulties experienced between the UN and the secretary general's first personal representative to Somalia, Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun of Algeria. The ambassador eventually resigned his position amid a public disagreement with the secretary general. The Gazette claims that "rumours abounded at the time that Mr. Sahnoun had been invited to Khartoum by the regime and that he travelled there without first clearing the visit with UN headquarters in New York". It is possible, however, that the Gazette have confused Sahnoun's Khartoum visit with the meeting in Seychelles, at which Sahnoun did receive a fax from the UN HQ pointing out that he lacked clearance for that trip. However, at the time of Sahnoun's Khartoum visit last autumn, it was rumoured that the leader of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement in Sudan (the Akhiwaan Muslimen), Dr. Hassan Abdalla El Turabi -- a former minister in Ali Mehdi's government -- had asked the Algerian diplomat to permit only Islamic relief agencies to work in Somalia. Just a week ago it was believed that Aideed was in Khartoum meeting with the leaders of the regime, in spite of UN announcements in Somalia that they are close to arresting him. "This", says the Gazette, "is just one of many visits that the general has made to Khartoum. On two previous occasions the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has revealed the presence of the Somali warlord in Khartoum, only for the story's accuracy to be brought into question. On both occasions the UN in Somalia eventually confirmed the accuracy of the SPLA's stories." Given the frequency of Aideed's Khartoum trips, it is not unlikely that an additional reason for closing down the airstrips near Mogadishu is to try and restrict Aideed's potential for moving in and out of the country undetected. The Gazette confirms that "the weapons being supplied to Aideed all originate in Iran". Despite that transports by truck would seem more rational, the arms "are flown to Somalia on small planes which are capable of landing on any of the numerous small airstrips which dot the country. Most of the weaponry comes through the Sudanese Red Sea port of Port Sudan. The smuggling is proving very difficult for the UN forces to stop". There is also, the paper claims, "additional evidence that some weapons have been transported from Sudan via Ethiopia. Marked as relief supplies, the Ethiopian authorities have allowed such small plane cargoes to pass through in good faith". The Khartoum regime have not sought to help Somalia in any appreciable way but have merely added to the troubles of that disturbed land and the difficulties of its people. The Sudan Democratic Gazette concludes: "It is well known that the Sudanese Islamic Fundamentalists have tried in various trouble spots of the region, with differing degrees of success, to offer aid to needy people with a view to ideologically converting the unsuspecting and overwhelmingly Moslem people to the Fundamentalist cause". ____________________________________________________________________ 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, Sweden. ____________________________________________________________________