Turbulent games

Somalia and Sudan are both embroiled in decisive domestic, regional and international political entanglements, writes Gamal Nkrumah

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The Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has had a rough ride since the swift rise to power of the Islamic Courts Union. But the TFG's problems have not only come from militant Islamists. The TFG is plagued by much bickering, infighting and defections. Somali President Abdullah Youssef is under intense pressure to hold the TFG together, an almost impossibly difficult task.

Militant Islamist militias captured Somalia's third largest city and main southern port of Kismayo Sunday. The move was a pre-emptive strike to halt international peace-keepers from using Kismayo as a bridgehead into Somalia. Kismayo is Somalia's southernmost port and is equidistant from the Somali capital Mogadishu to the north and the Kenyan border to the south. The beleaguered TFG, besieged in the central Somali city of Baidoa, a city 200 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu, desperately needs the deployment of UN peace- keeping troops.

"I would appeal to the governments of the region to join our efforts and protect the region from the expansion of this Al-Qaeda network, these terrorists," Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi -- regarded as the country's most influential secularist leader -- told reporters in Kenya Monday. Gedi said that the capture of Kismayo was a "violation of the ceasefire agreement". In effect, Gedi was appealing to Somalia's neighbours to intervene on his government's behalf.

"Ethiopia has been rather concerned about the presence and activities of Al-Qaeda in Somalia. Not only Ethiopia, but all of Somalia's neighbours," Ethiopia's Ambassador to Egypt Ibrahim Idris told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Ambassador Idris said that it was of critical importance at the moment for the Somali government to coordinate its actions closely with neighbouring countries and regional and international forums, such as the UN and the African Union.

Meanwhile, militant Islamist militiamen have been emboldened by their military successes. They are more disciplined, better armed and more professional than their adversaries across the country. Their fighters are most certainly not losing heart.

Perhaps more tellingly, the Islamists adamantly refuse to contemplate the presence of foreign troops on Somali soil. The capture of Kismayo by the militias is naturally a grave disappointment to the TFG, but scarcely a surprise. It weakens the negotiating position of the TFG significantly. Somali peace talks are scheduled to resume in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Monday. The TFG is now left with pitifully few bargaining cards. But not all support for the Islamic Courts Union is coerced or opportunistic.

Troubled clouds are not lifting from the Sudanese political scene either. Observers can quibble for as long as they want about the Darfur crisis; what is certain is that the rule of law has completely broken down.

Like in Somalia, the deployment of foreign peace-keeping forces is the main bone of contention between the government and armed opposition forces. But in the case of Sudan, it is the government that is opposed to the deployment of UN peace-keeping troops while armed opposition groups welcome foreign intervention. The armed opposition groups of Darfur remain obdurate.

Khartoum has sent out signals that it wants to tighten up its act. "It is easier for the international community to assist financially and technically an AU force which is already on the ground, rather than starting from scratch with other forces like those of the UN," Sudanese Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Al-Sammani Al-Wsila Al-Sammani told reporters in Khartoum.

The fragility of the Darfur truce makes many nervous. But the resilience of armed opposition groups in Darfur should come as less of a surprise to the international community.

There is a glimmer of hope; not all the news is bad. The Darfur peace talks are stalled but not yet dead. For how long they are stalled, however, appears thus far indefinite.

So far Khartoum has found it relatively easy to fend off Western attacks. It was bowled a full toss by Washington and a host of other allied Western capitals at the UN. The Sudanese government, nonetheless, is in a far more powerful position than Somalia's TFG.

It has long been clear that Sudan will only become a harmonious democracy when it recognises and overcomes its ethnic inequalities. To bring development to neglected reaches, the Sudanese government must take marginalised non-Arabised ethnic group interests into account. Instead, it has sought to quell the Darfur insurrection with air strikes and occasional infantry sweeps by the Janjaweed and allied Arabised militias.

Most of the indigenous inhabitants of Darfur are subsistence farmers eking out a meagre living in harsh mountainous terrain. The Sudanese government needs to assert control, but not at the expense of the people of Darfur.

It would be naive to expect a dramatic turning point in either Somalia or Sudan. Hyperbole in both East African countries is often misplaced. The road ahead is difficult. Playing the nationalist card for domestic political ends, however, is a dangerous game.

Until now, Sudan's future is as clear as a desert storm. But one thing is certain: there can be no going back to the hegemony of the ruling clique in Khartoum. Somalia's fate, on the other hand, seems to be sealed in the whims of militant Islamists.