Somalia

Heavy fighting in Mogadishu is entering its third day; the violence has already killed 40 people in the Somali capital, and the Shabab militia is apparently trying to surround the Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeepers who support it.

Militants attacking from the north on Wednesday reached to within a mile (2 kilometers) of the presidential place in the heart of the capital, Mogadishu, before African Union peacekeepers in tanks reinforced government troops, residents said.

Hard to tell, as ever, what's really happening in Mogadishu, but it sounds like both sides have basically fought to a stalemate. Shabab can't advance the final mile to the presidential palace -- the one area of Mogadishu that's legitimately under the TFG's control -- and the government, despite launching a barrage of artillery fire at Shabab's positions, can't force the rebels out of the capital.

Alex Thurston over at the excellent Sahel Blog flags Simon Tisdall's weirdly optimistic comment about the "turning tide" in Somalia.

As Alex notes, there's not much evidence to back up Tisdall's claim. The humanitarian situation is dire: More than half of Somalia's population relies on food aid, and more than half of Somalia's aid doesn't reach its intended recipients, according to a new United Nations Security Council report. Shabab still controls most of the country. President Sharif Ahmed's Transitional Federal Government is broke and poorly-equipped. (Recent US, EU and African Union training efforts are slowly reversing that, though much of the aid they've promised hasn't materialized yet.)

Somalia's Shabab rebel group says it will no longer allow the World Food Programme to operate in Somalia -- and will retaliate against any local contractors who work with the WFP.

"The contractors working with WFP must avoid collaborating ... anyone working with the agency will be seen serving the interest of WFP," the group said in a statement.

Shabab says the WFP delivered food that made people sick (probably not true); that WFP aid causes market distortions (probably true, but also unavoidable); and that the group's work in Somalia is "political."

Grumpy week for United Nations aid workers. U.N. officials in Kabul complained yesterday about the militarization of Afghan aid (Joshua Foust has a good take on the subject). In Somalia, meanwhile, they complained that U.S. aid rules make it impossible to help the population.

Humanitarian co-ordinator Mark Bowden said the US was trying to ensure that aid was not diverted to Islamist insurgents fighting the government.

But he said this had politicised their work in a country where hundreds of thousands of people rely on food aid.

The issue here is whether U.N. contractors divert food aid to the al-Shabab militia, which sells the food to buy weapons. U.S. officials say it happens regularly; the U.N. denies that charge.

Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the embattled head of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, is preparing to strike a blow against Shabab Islamist militants in Mogadishu, the country's capital, according to news reports over the weekend.

The offensive could lend Ahmed, the former head of the Islamic Courts Union but now the enemy of Shabab, some much-needed legitimacy, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Yet the planned attack has been marred by delays and demoralized, unpaid troops, according to the Washington Post. (Thanks to Alex Thurston's Sahel Blog, an outlet I've just now discovered, for flagging these links.)

We haven't checked in on Somalia in a few weeks, but it's worth a post: Tensions are rising between Somalia and Kenya, and also between two rival militias within the country.

Earlier this week, authorities in Kenya arrested roughly 300 Somalis living in Nairobi. Police say the group was involved in a Shabab-sponsored protest in the capital. The Kenyan government also warned Somali MPs to "stop hiding" in Nairobi and return to their own country.

Kenyan authorities reportedly arrested two officials from the autonomous Somali state of Puntland, though that report can't be confirmed.

As Brian O'Neill said over the weekend: we have entered very strange times, indeed. First, Saturday Night Live parodied Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

And today, we learn that President Barack Obama discussed his plans for Yemen and Somalia in an interview with... People Magazine. When was the last time Yemen made an appearance in People?

Evan and I tend to be skeptical of anything written in Kuwaiti newspapers -- hence the "Conspiracy Theories" label.

There's a report today in Al-Qabas that claims al-Qaeda is planning to attack targets in the Arabian Sea (عربي). The report, attributed to unnamed Kuwaiti security sources, says al-Qaeda will take advantage of the "deteriorating security situation" in Somalia and Yemen to launch seaborne attacks.

Jon Lee Anderson has an article about Somalia -- specifically, about Somali president Sharif Ahmed -- in this week's New Yorker (sub. required).

As a profile of Ahmed, it's decent, though if you're familiar with Somalia's recent history much of it will be a rehash. Anderson's central question is whether Ahmed is a "viable ally" for the United States; he explores Ahmed's history with the Islamic Courts Union, and his transition from American target to American ally.

Tired of hearing about faulty Iraq-Afghanistan analogies? Somalia's prime minister, Omar Sharmarke, wrote to the Times of London pushing a Somalia-Afghanistan analogy.

The letter, excerpted after the jump, calls Obama's Afghan strategy a "sea change in international support to troubled countries" and urges a similar approach to Somalia.

Al-Shabab has denied responsibility for yesterday's deadly bombing in Mogadishu. Instead, they blame it on a government conspiracy:

"We declare that al-Shabab did not mastermind that explosion ... It is not in the nature of al-Shabab to target innocent people," [al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud] Rage was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying. "We know that some so-called government officials left the scene of the explosion just minutes before the attack. That is why it is clear that they were behind the killing."

Reuters has more details on Rage's conspiracy theory. Al-Shabab seems to recognize that yesterday's attack was a public-relations disaster: Whatever Somalis might think of the Sharif government, there's no popular support for blowing up college graduation ceremonies. So al-Shabab is trying to distance itself from the attack -- much like the TTP does when its attacks in Pakistan kill civilians.

Adam Serwer posted a short item on the American Prospect's blog this morning, calling the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, and the subsequent deposal of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a "national security disaster."

The removal of the ICU empowered its radical wing, Al Shabaab, led by the al-Qaeda-trained Aden Hashi Ayrow, which has now taken over terrorizing the country with suicide bombings, assassinations, and the killing of civilians. The ICU weren't what you might call "good guys" by any means, but they also weren't as bad as Al Shabaab.

That prompted a long and somewhat disjointed Twitter argument (redundant, I know) between Serwer, the Washington Times' Eli Lake, and a few other interlocutors (including us).

Somalia is a bit outside our normal coverage area, but some interesting points came up in the discussion, and I wanted to expand on them (in more than 140 characters).

Somali pirates attacked the U.S.-flagged shipping vessel Maersk Alabama for the second time in seven months early this morning somewhere in the Arabian Sea. Four mean in a high-speed skiff came within 300 yards of the ship, firing automatic weapons "in an attempt to board it," according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Alabama was steaming 600 miles off the northeast coast of Somalia, heading for Mombasa, Kenya, the New York Times reported. A private security team on board the Alabama fired back at the pirates, likely wounding a number of them, while the ship's crew also used painful acoustic devices to drive them away.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that al-Shabab militants in Somalia are threatening to attack Israel over what they call an Israeli plot to destroy part of the al-Aqsa mosque.

I'm not sure how seriously to take this story. On the one hand, Mogadishu is a long way from Jerusalem. It's sort of like if Mullah Omar threatened to attack Israel: Nasty rhetoric, yes, but very hard to put into action.

That said, East African immigrants regularly find their way to Israel. It's obviously a dangerous trip: a long slog across Sudan, Egypt and the Sinai desert, ending with the very real possibility of being shot by Egyptian guards at the Israeli border. But thousands of them make the trip each year.