Somalia calls for foreign peace plan

Published on Saturday 5 December 2009 18:53

SOMALIA's government last night called for an international peace plan like President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy.

The hard-pressed UK-backed administration barely controls half of its capital and is fighting a bitter war with Islamists linked with al-Qaeda.

But prime minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said: "We accept that... the situation in Somalia will appear beyond repair, but the reality is very different."

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since 1991 and is home to insurgents and pirates, who prey on shipping in the Indian Ocean despite international naval patrols. Sharmarke's UN-backed administration controls only part of the capital, Mogadishu.

President Obama's plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan marked a "sea change in international support to troubled countries", said Sharmarke.

"What is so startling is that all the conclusions are as true about Somalia as they are about Afghanistan. Piracy and the growth of Islamic extremism are not the natural state of being. They are but symptoms of an underlying malaise – the absence of government and hope.

"The irony is that it would cost only a quarter of what is being spent right now on the warships trying to combat piracy to fund our plan and actually solve the problems rather than simply chasing them round the Indian Ocean."

The Horn of Africa was hit by a suicide bomber attack last week at a medical graduation. At least 22 people were killed, including three government ministers, several doctors, students and their relatives.

Western security agencies say Somalia has become a haven for militants, who are using it as an alternative base to Afghanistan.