Somalia: Ethiopia’s pull out to bear violent struggle for power

The Ethiopian forces that rolled into Somalia to defend the feeble Transitional Federal Government against the powerful Islamic Courts two years ago now began to go back home under the UN-sponsored deal at first reached in Djibouti last June between the secular government and Alliance for re-liberation of Somalia as there is no love lost between the divided Islamists.

Hundreds of heavily armed Ethiopian soldiers vacated their military bases in Mogadishu which gave much pleasure to thousands of people who spent several months in make shift houses outside the capital during the war but yet some fear that the current struggle for power between the Islamist hardliners known as ‘Al-Shabab’ and the ARS might cause another bloodshed.

Few hundreds of Somalis in happy mood gathered around vacant military bases in the neighborhoods singing and dancing but no one knows what is next; to slip back into fresh violence over country’s power.

There is a strong distrust and rivalry between these rebel Islamists; ARS which is now involving in efforts aimed to build a unity government believes that the radical Al-Qaeda linked Muhajideens of Al-Shabab are on the wrong path and conducting anti-peace activities which Al-Shabab leaders who had refused to join process deem that ARS are off the Jihad road and dealt with Allah’s enemy and vowed to continue the war even after the Ethiopian departure.

Already Al-Shabab kicked off new fronts with Islamic Sufi groups known as ‘Ahlu-Suna Wal-Jamea’ and ARS supporters in some parts of the country. The fighting with Sufis broke out when Al-Shabab rebel fighters began to destroy graves of much respected Sheikhs in the areas under their control.

“The war with the Ethiopian troops seem to be finished but what I am worrying about is the possibility of new warfare to go off because there is no good gesture here in Mogadishu according to the variety among the Islamists,” said a local journalist in anonymity of condition. “The effective and working intelligence is that there is no reason to fight anymore but should hold peace by the time the Ethiopians are leaving,”

The Ethiopia’s poll out marked the end of two years long detested military presence in the war-wrecked capital of Mogadishu but will this stop the ongoing political wrangling for power and clan discrepancy that has long been running in Somalia since the fall of former president Siad Barre in 1991.