A United Nations expert panel has warned that a surge in weapons being sent to Somalia in violation of a 13-year-old U.N. arms embargo risks sparking broader conflict in the lawless, war-shattered Horn of Africa nation.
Amid new charges and counter-charges about acquisitions of military hardware by bickering factions in Somalia’s transitional government, the panel said it was alarmed by a “dramatic upswing” in weapons deliveries to rival camps.
“The dramatic upswing in the flow of arms into Somalia is a manifestation of the highly aggravated political tension between the (transitional government) and the opposition,” according to the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia.
“This has correspondingly given rise to the increasing militarization of both sides, which has resulted in the severely elevated threat of widespread violence in central and southern Somalia,” it said.
The report, seen by Agence France-Presse on Oct. 11, was sent to the U.N. Security Council late last week by the panel that is charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy a year earlier, following the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.
In it, the experts said neighboring Ethiopia, Yemen and an unnamed third country in the region are violating the embargo with increased weapons shipments to the increasingly hostile factions within the transitional government.
Private Yemeni arms dealers and Ethiopia’s rebel Oromo National Liberation Front (ONLF) also are fueling instability by smuggling arms to the profit-driven weapons market in the lawless capital of Mogadishu.
The report accused Ethiopia and Yemen of supplying weapons to the government faction allied with transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who has incurred the wrath of a rival camp by refusing to base himself in Mogadishu.
It did not identify the third country involved in the illicit shipments, but aides to Yusuf have repeatedly claimed that Eritrea is channeling weapons to the president’s foes in retaliation for arch-foe Ethiopia’s support of him.
Yusuf is opposed by some members of his government, lawmakers and the warlords who control Mogadishu, who insist that the administration should be based in the capital.
Since Barre’s ouster, a plethora of well-armed clan-based factions have been in an almost constant state of low-level war, hindering effective monitoring of the U.N. arms embargo.
In July, the U.N. Security Council rejected Yusuf’s pleas to ease the arms ban to allow the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force in the East African nation, warning that such a move would exacerbate fighting.
In its report, the panel recommended “strengthening” the ban “by adopting an integrated arms embargo for the purpose of reducing the financial capacity of individuals in charge of local administrations to buy arms.”