allAfrica.com: Somalia: Islamic Courts Fracture in Middle Shabelle (Page 1 of 2)

A closed source on the ground in Somalia,who is conversant with the country's political dynamics, reports a marked shift in its power configuration, as sub-clan loyalties increasingly supplant broader alliances and coalitions in the face of an expected and imminent withdrawal of Ethiopian occupation forces.

The source says that despite the apparent gains by the Islamic Courts movement, to the point at which it nominally controls several of Somalia's regions and is making headway in all of them in its "re-liberation" struggle against the occupation and the country's notional Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), the movement has entered a process of splintering into clan-based militias that are often at odds with one another. The source describes the developing situation as a "free-for-all" that is replicated outside the movement with the proliferation of free-lance criminal gangs, rearming by business interests and a general retreat to sub-clan self-protection. According the source, devolution to the sub-clan level is complicated by cross-cutting allegiances to different tendencies in the Courts movement, creating rapidly shifting coalitions and

radical uncertainty among all of the players:"There is huge apprehension as to how coalitions will form and sustain themselves, as traditional clan structures are now divided across ideological and profit lines."A separate source in the United Arab Emirates confirms the preceding description, reporting that Somali businessmen in the Gulf states have redirected their financial support away from umbrella organizations to their specific sub-clans.

The dynamic of accelerated devolution that is noted by both sources has been precipitated by the broad consensus among Somali political actors that Ethiopia has reached the end of its tether in Somalia and will remove its forces from the country whether or not they are replaced by an unlikely United Nations stabilization mission and despite Western pressure to remain in the absence of such a mission.An Ethiopian pull-out would leave the powerless T.F.G. incapable of sustaining itself, setting the stage for a scramble for power among the fragmented factions, forcing each of them into a posture of pro-active self-defense. Should such a situation transpire, the greatest likelihood for Somalia would be a period of civil warfare preceding the emergence of a more stable configuration of power, the design of which is at present unpredictable.

Signs of an Ethiopian withdrawal have already been reported in Somali media during late September and early October.On September 27, Ethiopian forces withdrew from their major base in the Hiraan region on the outskirts of its capital Beledweyne, leaving the region under the control of the Courts movement, which announced plans to form an administration based on Shari'a law. Hiraan, which borders Ethiopia's restive Somali Regional State (Ogaden region) and is the gateway to central Somalia, held the third largest number of occupation troops in the country after the official capital Mogadishu and the transitional capital Baidoa. Local media also reported that Ethiopian forces were heading for the border in the southwestern Gedo region, where the Courts movement already holds the capital Bardhere,but faces opposition from local clans. Other reports indicate that Ethiopian forces are concentrating in the Bay region, where Baidoa is located, to make a last-ditch effort to dislodge Courts militias, led by the internationalist-jihadist al-Shabaab group, from the control of towns surrounding the provisional capital.

With various factions of the Courts movement dominant in every region of Somalia

south of the autonomous sub-state of Puntland, Ethiopia is playing an increasingly diminished role in the country's power configuration, regardless of whether or not it intends to withdraw. All the actors are aware of the looming power vacuum, which is why they are in the process of continually positioning and repositioning themselves.

Further indications of weakness in Addis Ababa came at the end of Sept when Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, met with United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and told her that his forces could not remain in Somalia for an "indefinite period of time." Sensing Zenawi's failing resolve, the fractious and divided parties forming Ethiopia's political opposition found common ground in agitating for a pull-out when the Ethiopian Democratic Party, which had backed the occupation, called for a timetable for withdrawal, joining the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces and the Unity for Democracy and Justice, both of which have demanded an immediate end to the occupation.

The Case of Middle Shabelle

description of the situation in the Middle Shabelle region, which has been administered by the Courts movement for several months. Beginning with the observation that "what we see on the ground is the perpetual fracturing of the Islamic groups," the source reports that after the Courts movement took control of the region, there were four factions present: a group linked to al-Shabaab, two clan-linked groups operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.) and an I.C.U. group affiliated with the diplomatic wing of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (A.R.S.), to which administrative control had been provisionally "ceded." Currently, says the source, there are at least four new factions, three of which are clan-based and nominally affiliated with the I.C.U., and one or more of which have splintered from the A.R.S. along clan

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