By Somalilandtimes network

Baidoa, Somalia, March 4, 2006 – Finally, enough members of Somalia’s “parliament” showed up in Baidoa to meet for the first time in over a year. But in order to avoid the mayhem that took place the last time they met in Nairobi, it was decided that the meeting should be immediately postponed for a week so that the participants would have a cooling off period before they started facing each other. Although, as usual, there has been much talk about reconciliation, Abdillahi Yusuf “the president” appealed to the UN to lift the arms embargo on Somalia. Abdillahi Yusuf’s request was not only rejected by his opponents but also by Muhammad Habeeb (Mohammad Dheere) who was until recently Abdillahi Yusuf’s ally and the man who gave him refuge in Jawhar. Despite the drum-beat about reconciliation and the reconstitution of Somalia’s dysfunctional government, the main result of the Baidoa gathering, so far, has been to further splinter the existing uneasy alliances between various warlords and the creation of new factions. To cite some of the recent splinterings:

- The Mohammad Dheere and Abdillahi Yusuf split is now public knowledge, especially after Mohammad Dheere’s radio interview in which he confirmed what was already documented in the UN Report on Somalia, that Abdillahi Yusuf received arms shipments from Yemen in violation of the UN arms embargo, and that he gave those weapons to his own clan militia.

- The Mogadishu warlords and the Islamic courts split. Although the breakup between these two groups had more to do with jockeying for power in Mogadishu, the Baidoa gathering may have been a contributing factor.

Reports indicate that the security situation in Baidoa is not reliable. Both armed and unarmed militias freely roam the streets. In addition to the militias belonging to the various indigenous warlords, militias from outside Baidoa, such as Abdillahi Yusuf’s militia are in Baidoa.

The UN is, as usual, footing the bills for this gathering in the name of helping Somalis. UN staff and a handful of Nairobi diplomats showed up at the opening of the gathering but only stayed for a few hours before flying back to Nairobi. The abduction of a UN worker in Afmadow has had a dampening effect on UN involvement in this meeting.

There are reports that the octogenarian warlord Abdillahi Yusuf is sick and is going to Britain to have a medical check up on his transplanted liver. According to some news accounts, he had difficulty reading his speech in Baidoa and dropped the text on the floor more than once.

The organizers of this meeting are so inept and so dependent on handouts that they could not come up with enough chairs for the meeting, and as expected, the UN had to import chairs for them, from Nairobi.

Source: Somaliland Times