Danger of war on the Horn of Africa

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) gave an urgent warning on Wednesday of a new large-scale war on the Horn of Africa. If the intervention of foreign troops in Somalia is not brought to an end there will be a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands, said the GfbV Africa expert, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen. More than 32,000 people have fled from Somalia to neighbouring Kenya since January 2006. 80,000 more refugees are expected in the next two months and this is only the beginning of the impending humanitarian catastrophe. Troops from Ethiopia and Eritrea, which are hostile to each other, are now conducting their war inside Somalia. The EU can no longer permit this to happen without taking action.

The EU must insist on the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops from Somalia. This was the demand made in a letter to the EU Commission and the Finnish EU President. For these foreign soldiers are only stirring up anti-Ethiopian feeling. Ethiopia´s military intervention is playing into the hands of radical Muslim forces, which are now calling to the "Holy War" against the neighbouring country. "Ethiopia’s military involvement in Somalia is irresponsible, as up to twelve states could become involved in a war", warned Delius.

The GfbV expressed massive criticism against the EU. By contrast with the US government, which has has several times in the past few days called on Ethiopia to withdraw its troops, Brussels has taken no action of any kind. It is true that the EU Commission produced a new strategy paper on the Horn of Africa. However there has been no mention of concrete measures serving the peace process. Neither has the EU taken any action to reduce the tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

United Nations experts estimate that there are at present at least 6,000 Ethiopian and up to 2,000 Eritrean soldiers operating on Somali territory. While Ethiopia places itself on the side of the powerless moderate provisional government as a partner in the battle against terror and is anxious to bank up its insecure frontier with Somalia, Eritrea is only in interested in causing damage to Ethiopia by its support of radical Muslim forces. So there is in Somalia the threat of a continuation of the frontier war between Ethiopia and Somalia, which between 1998 and 2000 cost more than 100,000 lives.