Saturday January 1, 2022
MOGADISHU (HOL) - Three days ago this day in 2006, then Prime Minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi announced that Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government troops had entered Mogadishu heralding a two-year bloody war in Mogadishu.
Zenawi told a media conference on December 30, 2006, that the Ethiopian army and TFG troops were in the outskirts of Mogadishu after capturing Beletweyne town on December 25.
In his address to journalists, Zenawi boasted of an ambitious plan to clear Mogadishu of elements of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and stabilize the TFG within days.
“We will not let Mogadishu bury. We will help the Transitional Government to do whatever it can to make sure Mogadishu is stabilized quick,” the Ethiopian leader said. “ Utmost it will be a few weeks, hopefully, it will be a few days before we leave but utmost it will be a matter of few weeks.
However, that ambitious plan would turn out into two years of war as the ICU morphed into a terrorist group in the name of Al-Shabaab that outlived the Ethiopian forces stay in Mogadishu.
LONG-DRAWN WAR
Zenawi’s plan was clear but largely failed to appreciate the very fluid dynamics in Mogadishu.
“We plan to pursue the remnants of Eritrean troops, international jihadists and the hardcore elements of the Islamic Courts who are fleeing towards Kismayo and other port areas.” “I will continue to pursue them; that is our primary agenda. Forces of the Transitional Government and Ethiopia are in the outskirts of Mogadishu now.”
While top ICU leaders including Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Sheikh Abdirahman Janaqow resigned on 27 December 2006 and their forces left towards Mogadishu and into the Kenyan border by the end of December 2006, the war for the heart of Mogadishu was not over, if any, it had just begun.
Prime Minister Ali Ghedi entered Mogadishu on December 29, 2006, and the TFG had a brief reprieve in Mogadishu before an all-out war with Al-Shabaab, an offshoot of the ICU kicked off.
The last Ethiopian convoy exited Somalia through Baidoa on December 25, 2009, after two years of heavy fighting that left approximately 16,000 people dead in Mogadishu according to media reports.
Zenawi’s spokesman Bereket Simon told journalists the mission had been successful.
“The major task to get rid of the extremist threat was accomplished in a swift way.”
The Ethiopian troops left Al-Shabaab alive and strong in Mogadishu and it was only until August 2011 when the group was ejected from the city by a combined AMISOM and Somali National Army campaign.
About two years after leaving, Ethiopian forces returned to Somalia in December 2011 and subsequently joined AMISOM alongside Kenya as new entrants into the AU force.