ETHIOPIA-SOMALIA
Ethiopian troops take control of Somalian airport
07/22/2006
Residents said the Ethiopian troops did not meet any resistance when they took over the airport. Later Saturday, the troops barred people from approaching the airport area.
Related news Islamist leader calls Somalis to defend nation against Ethiopia
Ethiopian troops trying to protect Somalia's weak, U.N.-backed government moved into a second Somali town before dawn Saturday, seizing control of an airport, witnesses and aid workers said.
About 200 Ethiopian troops with at least five pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and other vehicles moved into Wajid, about 75 kilometers (46 miles) southeast of the Somali-Ethiopian border, at about 3 a.m. (0000GMT), several witnesses said on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals. The soldiers took control of the town's airport from a militia
serving the local administration, they said.
The town is the base for southern Somalia operations for U.N. agencies and other aid organizations.
Residents said the Ethiopian troops did not meet any resistance when they took over the airport. Later Saturday, the troops barred people from approaching the airport area, but elsewhere people went about their business in Wajid, residents said.
Ethiopian and Somali government officials have denied Ethiopian troops are in the country. “There is not a single Ethiopian solider on Somali soil. I deny that the Ethiopians have taken control of Wajid. Our troops control there,” Deputy Information Minister Salad Ali Jeeley told The Associated Press in Baidoa, where the fragile transitional government is based.
Residents are able to identify the Ethiopian soldiers because of their green, black and gray uniforms. Ethiopian vehicles are green. Vehicles used by militias have their original colors, residents said.
Aid workers and U.N. staff in the town also said there were Ethiopian soldiers in Wajid. They, too, asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Wajid, which has experienced relative peace compared with other southern Somalia towns, such as Baidoa, is run by a clan-based administration that has not allied itself with the transitional government or with the Islamists.
The U.N. food agency has its largest presence inside Somalia in Wajid, with seven international staff based there, said a spokesman for the agency, Said Warsame. Its airport is relatively good because aid agencies have spent money upgrading it, he added.
Ethiopian troops first moved into Somalia on Thursday to protect the government, which has been challenged for power by Islamic militants. A force of more than 400 Ethiopian troops entered Baidoa, 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, which the Islamic militia controls.
The militia, which also took control of most of southern Somalia over several weeks of fighting last month, deployed some of its fighters to within striking distance of Baidoa on Wednesday. But they pulled back as the Ethiopian troops moved in.
The Islamic militia's leader responded to the Ethiopian incursion by calling on all Somalis to wage holy war against Ethiopia, a largely Christian country that is Somalia's traditional enemy.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, in a radio broadcast on Friday, said Ethiopia was seeking to bolster what he described as a puppet regime. He said President Abdullahi Yusuf, his longtime rival, has “been a servant of Ethiopia for a long time.”
“I am calling on the Somali people to wage a holy war against Ethiopians in Baidoa,” said Aweys, who the U.S. government says has ties to al-Qaida.
Strict religious courts
Residents of Baidoa reported seeing hundreds of Ethiopian troops, in uniform and in marked armored vehicles, entering Baidoa on Thursday and taking up positions around Yusuf's compound. The troops were seen at the airport and a Somali military base on Friday.
Somali government leaders may be reluctant to acknowledge that Ethiopian troops have come to their aid because they do not want to appear to be beholden to the country's traditional adversary. Anti-Ethiopian sentiment still runs high in much of this almost entirely Muslim country.
Ethiopia's move could give the internationally recognized Somali government its only chance of curbing the Islamic militia's increasing power.
But the incursion could also be the pretext the militiamen need to build public support for a guerrilla war.
The Islamic militia has installed strict religious courts, sparking fears it will become a Taliban-style regime.
If the competition for power should become violent, there is little doubt that Ethiopia has the superior fighting force. Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia in 1993 and 1996 to quash Islamic militants attempting to establish a religious government.
The United States on Thursday urged Ethiopia to exercise restraint and said the European Union, the United States, the African Union, the Arab League and others in an international contact group on Somalia will meet soon to consider the volatile situation.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, carving much of the country into armed camps ruled by violence and clan law
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