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Hope and fear as Somalia marks 30 years of civil war
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Somalia is marking 30 years of conflict. Specifically, it s marking the moment the government of President Siad Barre collapsed in January 1991, setting Somalia on a rapid path to fragmentation and anarchy.
In recent years a federal government has begun to make some progress in rebuilding the country and Islamist militants have been pushed out of most major towns.
Our Africa correspondent Andrew Harding has been covering Somalia s troubles for over two decades and has just been back to the capital Mogadishu to see what hopes people have for peace.
THE STANDARD By
Editorial |
January 27th 2021 at 00:00:00 GMT +0300
Tension runs high in Somalia’s Bula Hawa region as government soldiers engage their Jubaland counterparts. The fighting, that first broke out in March 2020, has resulted in casualties and intensified diplomatic tension between the Federal Republic of Somalia and Kenya.
In spite of the critical role that Kenya has played in ensuring Somalia becomes politically stable, the Somalia government has accused Nairobi of taking sides with Jubaland in their internal dispute. Kenya has, however, denied the claim. However, despite the denial, Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi aka Farmaajo went ahead and severed diplomatic ties with Kenya in December 2020.
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European judges ruled on Wednesday that Britain could not deport a Somali man who had served a prison sentence for burglary because his family could not be relied on to protect him from persecution.
The man, aged in his 50s and identified only as O.A. in court documents, says he fled Somalia after he was shot, and his wife raped, in the capital Mogadishu during vicious clan-based violence in the 1990s.
The east African country collapsed into anarchy after the military regime of President Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. Brutal fighting continued between rival clan leaders for decades that resulted in millions of Somalis fleeing to other African nations and Europe.
The year 2020 was one that many people across the globe will pray never to witness again as it will be remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant casualties it wrecked on the world.
Many high profile deaths were recorded both in Africa and the world at large, but the announcement of death of prominent African leaders every other month was to a greater dimension as they played a big role in news coverage across the continent in 2020.
In this Year in Review series, we take a look at prominent African leaders who passed on in the year 2020.
Daniel Arap Moi – Kenya’s second president
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