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Somalia Considers to Bring Inside Foreign Troops
The National Transitional Parliament of Somalia Sunday had serious talks for the first time over the possibility of bringing foreign troops inside the country so as to help the improvement of the national security.
Thirty-seven members of the parliament have forwarded to the council a motion suggesting that the transitional government should ask for foreign troops from friendly countries. In their session on Sunday, which is the second day in which the members of parliament (MPs) were talking about this motion, many of them agreed upon the call for foreign troops.
Mohamud Faarah Good, one of the MPs, reiterated that it is now time that the government should ask for foreign troops. "It is now one year already and no security or disarmament has been carried out," he said.
"Still clannish armed confrontations are taking place here and there and it is affecting the parliament as some MPs seem to be sympathizing one side or another," he added.
However, many others are still cautious about the whole affair. Ahmed Dualeh Ghelleh Haf, another MP, said they should first set up a technical committee to make a real assessment of the situation, while Abdi Ahmed Dhuhulow said he would only endorse foreign troops if they would become subordinates to the government norms and regulations.
Hassan Dhimbil, a very cautious MP, characterized such troop intervention as a knife that cuts two ways. "Who can guarantee me that these troops will not topple this government?" he asked.
Parliament speaker, Abdalleh Derow Issak, whom many of the MPs asked that a vote should be cast for the motion, could not handle the job. After the hall in which the MPs had been meeting became very noisy, Issak immediately concluded the meeting by adjourning the session till Monday.
Even though the MPs did not mention the "friendly" countries, still it is understood that they would like troops from the Arabian and neighboring countries with the exception of Ethiopia, which the government has all the time been accusing for intervening into Somalia's internal affairs.
Ethiopia has reportedly been out in the open for supporting the Somali Reconciliation and Reconstruction Council fighting against the government and its supporters in the Lower Jubba and Middle Jubba regions.
It seems that Somalia has since last month been sinking back to the civil war of the past 10 years after serious armed confrontations broke out in Middle and Lower Jubba regions and the northeastern region known as Puntland.
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