Tuesday - January 02, 2007

Operation Crushed Nuts: Mopping Up

After 15 Years, Someone’s in Charge in Somalia, if Barely
_{ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (NY TIMES) - January 2, 2007}

After Somalia’s Islamist forces abandoned their final outpost on Monday, the transitional government moved aggressively to assert control, setting a three-day deadline for all weapons to be turned in and calling for international peacekeeping troops to be sent immediately.

Somalia was already a place where military-grade weaponry was casually flaunted on its streets, but the Islamists’ swift collapse has created such a surplus of guns that the average price of a Kalashnikov assault rifle, one of the world’s most popular killing machines, has dropped to $15.

Ali Mohammed Gedi, the former veterinarian who is the transitional prime minister, said at his daily news conference that he would not tolerate the situation and gave instructions for turning in the weapons.

“Individuals or groups of people who have trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns, known as ‘technicals,’ should bring those battlewagons to Mogadishu’s old port,” he said.

Clan leaders were skeptical about whether he would succeed, and many Somalis seemed dead set against it. “They’re trying to neuter us,” said Muhammad Duudo, an unemployed car mechanic. “And it’s not going to happen. Just wait until the full moon passes and the darkness comes.”

Whatever lies ahead, encouraging or ominous, most Somalis seemed to agree that after a week of fast-moving events, the rough outlines of a new reality were emerging. For the first time since the former dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the country in 1991, casting Somalia into 15 years of anarchy, there is a credible government based in Mogadishu, the capital, with serious outside support and no organized military threat from within.

True, countless gunmen still roam the streets, heavily armed warlords still command authority and the seeds of a possible guerrilla movement may be taking root.

But so far no major force has emerged to challenge the authority of the transitional government. The only rival, the Islamists, lost their last conventional military battle on Monday. The Islamists had steadily lost ground since Dec. 24, when Ethiopia unleashed a punishing series of airstrikes and pushed ground troops deep into Somali territory.

Ethiopian officials justified their intervention in Somalia’s messy, violent internal politics by saying the Islamist movement was a regional threat with terrorist connections and ambitions to invade their country. Ethiopia commands one of the most powerful militaries in Africa, and within days of its entrance into the war, Burhakaba, a pivotal inland town, fell from Islamist control — then Jowhar, another key town, and then Mogadishu, the Islamists’ former stronghold.

By Sunday, the last remnants of the Islamist forces, which just a few weeks ago controlled a large swath of Somalia, were cornered in Kismayo, a port city on the south Somali coast. Thousands of Ethiopian and transitional government troops were closing in on them, and on Sunday night, the Ethiopians began pounding away with heavy artillery.

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U.S. Trainers Prepare Ethiopians To Fight
_{DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia (STARS AND STRIPES) - Saturday, December 30, 2006}

As soldiers of Ethiopia’s Christian government continued to rout Islamist militiamen in southern Somalia this week, 2nd Cpl. Wonderfraw Niguse celebrated his own victory on the parched scrublands of eastern Ethiopia hundreds of kilometers to the north.

With the sporadic barking of baboons or braying of donkeys in the distance, the 25-year-old squad leader led two successful ambushes against simulated enemy forces here as his fellow trainees charged through thickets of needle-sharp thorn bushes and down dried river beds.

The feat, which Wonderfraw and his fellow soldiers cheered with songs of victory and courage, was accomplished during a three-month basic infantry skills course offered by the U.S. military at the sprawling Ethiopian Training Academy in Hurso.

“They are very good, these techniques that they are teaching us,” Wonderfraw said through an interpreter. “I appreciate everything they are teaching us, especially the ambush. They instruct us on how to establish it and provide security. The ambush is very interesting for me.”

Troops attached to the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa have been training Ethiopian soldiers in basic infantry tactics, officer logistics and maintenance since 2003, when the U.S. government identified the East African country as an ally in its global war on terror. Similar training programs are ongoing in Djibouti and Kenya.

In Hurso, the so-called military-to-military training has taken on a new urgency in the days following Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia on behalf of that collapsed nation’s embattled, albeit U.N.-sanctioned, government.

“Depending on whether things really kick off, it’s a very real possibility that some of these guys could find themselves using these skills very soon,” said Sgt. 1st Class Bill Flippo, an instructor based at Camp Hurso.

“You want to make sure you cover everything thoroughly,” the 27-year-old Winfield, Kan., native said. “The stuff you teach them could result in things working out really good for them, or really bad.”

Flippo is one of a handful of instructors here who belong to Company A, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. The instructors, who are three-quarters of the way through a yearlong deployment, are currently training more than three dozen Ethiopian army officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted from throughout the country.

“The majority of these guys are trainers themselves,” said 1st Lt. Ben Daughters, 24, of Chillicothe, Ohio. “The idea is that we train them and they go back and train their own.”

Roughly 60 U.S. personnel reside at Hurso, most of them soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 294th Infantry Regiment of the Guam Army National Guard. The guard unit is now on its third, yearlong rotation in the Horn of Africa, and is scheduled for a fourth.

“They love us here because we interact a lot with the locals,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Noel Camagaganacan, 40, of Dedeo, Guam.

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Posted by The Skipper     on 01/02/2007 at 04:27 AM   
Filed Under: • Africa •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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