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A Kenyan Catholic bishop has criticised international backing for Somalia's warlords, while a Somali bishop warned that his country was in danger of becoming a battlefield for foreign interests. "The direct intervention of foreign troops complicates an already confused situation and threatens to transform Somalia into a battlefield for interests totally foreign to the nation," said Bishop Giorgio Bertin, the apostolic administrator of Mogadishu. He said that the fighting in the country "will never end unless the international community makes more effort and the Somalis put aside the clan mentality once and for all". American involvement in the country increased dramatically this week when US forces launched an air strike on areas near the town of Afnadow and the nearby village of Hayo in southern Somalia. Islamists had been driven to the south after being forced out of the capital, Mogadishu, by Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces. The US said the targets of the air strikes, approved by Somalia's interim president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, were al-Qaida cells. Bishop Martin Kivuva of Machakos in southern Kenya told The Tablet on Tuesday: "Some countries have taken sides in the Somali conflict. They supply arms to Somalia this time and supply food aid the next time.They keep on exchanging arms and aid. This is unfortunate. People are being killed. They keep supplying arms to them and wait to supply bread." Bishop Kivuva said the international community had a responsibility to help the people of Somalia, but added, "We know there is a solution called dialogue ... It has worked in other places where war has not been the solution." The bloody defeat of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) - accused of having backing from al-Qaida - by the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government has pushed UIC fighters into mountainous and forested areas near the Kenyan border. Some Kenyan church and political leaders have asked the Government to re-open its border with Somalia, so that thousands of Somali asylum-seekers - including women and children - will be able to cross.  |
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