Reports from Somalia indicate that the security situation there remains precarious and that Islamic insurgents are controlling more territory than the transitional government forces backed by the African Union.
This is bad for a country that has not known peace for close to two decades. The insurgents’ control over Somalia is worrying largely because of their links to terrorism and Islamic fundamentalists.
East African states have already experienced terrorism firsthand with the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and have every reason to worry when terror groups organise in their backyards.
With the proliferation of guns in the country, Somali warlords have recruited idle youth who are eager to earn money by any means possible to cause mayhem on the waters off the Somali coast. Yet the Gulf of Eden is a key transit route for goods from Europe and Asia to East Africa.
But with piracy thriving almost as a business, and warlords demanding huge ransoms for ships they seize, this problem takes on even greater proportions. Apart from insecurity, there is the threat of economic instability in the recipient countries, the producing countries, and to the shipping lines and vessels.
This piracy has gone on for many years now with very little attention paid to the problem but the hijacking, earlier this year, of a ship carrying tanks shows how easily it is for this problem to take on geopolitical dimensions.
It is precisely why this problem should not be left to the under-facilitated African Union peacekeeping force or the conflict-ridden Intergovernmental Authority on Development.
Military force, such as that provided by the Ethiopian forces, might bring about a temporary solution, and help defeat the gangs of pirates, but there is an urgent need to solve the underlying problem of the political crisis in Somalia which is the collapse of the notion of a nation state in Somalia.
Only a stable Somalia can guarantee security and resurrect the economy, which can get the population, particularly the youth, back into productive employment so that they are not tempted by the allure of quick and easy money, which is now the cheapest means of survival.
Unless a concerted effort is made by the international community to return stability to Somalia, it will continue to supply the small arms that perpetuate crimes in the region, while helping to provide cover and sanctuary to the much bigger problem of global terrorism.
EDITORIAL
source: Daily Monitor, Uganda.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment