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Standing along with our neighbors
Bereket Gebru
Up until recently, armed groups that claim to represent a region and function in it worked tirelessly to win the support of people there. Regardless of the tactics the groups use, targeting the same people they claim to defend is out of question. Even groups that use bombings as a means of struggle such as ETA and IRA make sure that their attacks are inside the enemy’s territory.
That age old obvious fact has, however, changed with the rise of extremist groups who claim to have religious agenda. Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is one of such groups. The group started out in Northern Uganda but later expanded to roam over a handful of central African countries. Joseph Kony, the group’s founder and leader, made his child recruits kill their parents to bear within them the feeling that they have no home to return back to. The group committed atrocities in all kinds of places as they had no clear political motives.
Other major examples are the extremist groups that claim to defend Islam and even form Islamic caliphates. Most of these groups that operate in the Middle East and other Islamic states all around the world have for years orchestrated attacks targeting Muslims. These groups have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Muslims in various countries. Until very recently, with some attacks in Europe, they seemed to only target Muslims.
One of such extremist groups using the Islamic camouflage is Al Shabaab. Some sources indicate that Al Shabaab killed 4,281 people with attacks that usually target civilians. Although not specified in the information, it is safe to assume that most of the victims are Somalis. I really do not get how a group that indiscriminately kills innocent members of the social group it considers its power base can expect to garner support from the same group of people.
In another one of its brutal acts of violence, the group carried out a bomb attack in Mogadishu that claimed the lives of over 300 people and injured another 400. The truck bomb blast is one of the biggest explosions by Al Shabaab as can be seen from the large number of atrocities. The carnage from the bomb attack is an equivalent of some days of warfare.
By officially taking responsibility for this inhumane act, Al Shabaab has clearly demonstrated to the Somali people that it is a group that stands against them. For anyone who analyzes the attacks by the group, it looks as though the group is intentionally backed by an enemy of the people of Somalia to inflict the maximum damage upon them. A pragmatic consideration of the facts indicates that Al Shabaab is a group that recruits and trains young Somalis to attack their fellow Somalis. As though this absurdity is not enough, it claims to have set out to teach the Somali society that has practiced Islam since a few years after the days of Prophet Mohammad, the right form of Islam. That does not look like a group working for Somalis against foreign powers; rather it seems like a group using Somalis to advance a foreign agenda.
Suppressing the activities of the group is thus a huge task that saves the lives of Somalis and avails the peaceful environment needed to pursue developmental goals. Considering the repeated attacks by the group and the increase in the scale of these attacks, it would be reasonable to question the capacity of the Somali government to ensure security and stop Al Shabaab in its tracks.
Apparently, the Somali government has been open about its shortcomings as reports indicate that the Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo paid an official visit to Addis Ababa seeking support to fight Al-Shabaab. Whether it is for the mere reason that our brothers next door need our help or the spillover effect that such violent trends have, Ethiopia needs to stand in unison with Somalia. Now that they have formally asked for Ethiopia’s support, it is Ethiopia’s duty to discharge its responsibilities of ensuring regional security by standing firm against a group that has time and again sought to attack neighboring countries as well.
Even before the Somali President’s visit, Ethiopia extended its support by sending eight tons of medical consignments to Somalia. The aid of pharmaceutical plays a constructive role in Somalia’s attempts to deal with such a horrible carnage. After the solicitation of support by the Somali President though, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn was quick to express his country’s willingness to extend its helping hand. In a statement he made after holding talks with his Somali counterpart, Hailemariam said:
“We believe that Al-Shabaab did this inhuman act of terror on innocent civilians of Somalia thinking that it will conceal the problems that are from within itself and we are set to act upon it. Setting a strategy to urgently and solidly response to this act in a more strategic way and never letting it happen again was the issue of our focus.”
The Ethiopian army obviously pushed Al-Shabaab to the brink of extinction a few times. The latest of such campaigns came in 2015. Al Shabaab was in disarray and weak until the beginning of 2016 as a result of extensive military campaigns by the Ethiopian forces under AMISOM since mid 2015. The operations that freed the towns of Baidoa, Awedele, Hirkut, Bourkaba, Dirsur, Gebrehare, Wajid, Gofgoid, Kensahadere, Algen and other important Al-Shabaab strongholds left the group scattered all over the country’s Southern part. The Kismayu and Beledeweyne ports that had been under Al-Shabaab control were also seized by the Ethiopian contingent of AMISOM.
With the Ethiopian forces beside it, the Somali armed forces are going to be a formidable power to hunt down Al-Shabaab. Upon its encounters with the Ethiopian military forces, Al-Shabaab has clearly understood what it is up against. Even when relatively unprepared, the Ethiopian defense forces under AMISOM responded by killing 248 Al-Shabaab militants in response to their surprise attack on the Halgan base in Hiiraan region. Once again, it seems like the Ethiopian defense forces might be deployed against Al-Shabaab. That is indeed the worst news to Al-Shabaab in years and thus a sigh of relief to the Somali people.
As has been the case with its colorful peacekeeping endeavors and its regional economic cooperation schemes, Ethiopia needs to once again stand along with its neighbors.
