Ethiopia hands over security of Somalia

By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR, Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Ethiopia on Tuesday handed over security duties in Somalia to a joint force including Somali government officials and Islamic militiamen — a shift some fear will leave a power vacuum in the lawless African nation.

The Ethiopian troops have been propping up Somalia's weak government for two years, but said they would end their unpopular presence as demanded under an October power-sharing deal signed between the U.N.-backed Somali government and a faction of the country's Islamists.

"It is time Somalia stands on its own feet," said Ethiopian commander Col. Gabre Yohannes Abate, as he handed over security operations during a ceremony at the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

"So we are saying goodbye to all Somalis and their dignitaries," Abate said.

The pullout has received wide support from ordinary Somalis, officials and diplomats. Many had seen the Ethiopians as occupiers, and their two-year deployment has been a rallying cry for the insurgents to gain recruits even as the militants' strict form of Islam terrified people into submission.

"The insurgents have been fighting for the withdrawal of Ethiopians all this time," Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said during the handover. "When the Ethiopians have begun withdrawing, there is no need for fighting again. I urge all Somalis to become peace-loving people."

It was unclear when all of the thousands of Ethiopians will have departed; they were pulling out in stages, rather than all at once, and gave no exact dates for security reasons.

Some feared their departure would allow the strengthening Islamic insurgency to take over.

On Monday, Islamic insurgents attacked the presidential palace, resulting in heavy fighting with government troops, during which at least 11 civilians were killed.

The U.N. envoy to Somalia welcomed the Ethiopian withdrawal as the honoring of a commitment made with the power-sharing deal signed last year in Djibouti.

"The ball is now in the court of the Somalis, particularly those who said they were only fighting against the Ethiopian forces, to stop the senseless killings and violence," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said in a statement issued Tuesday in neighboring Kenya.

An official from Somalia's splintered opposition, Hussein Siyad Qorgad, urged all to "come together and make a unity government."

"We are happy to see Ethiopian troops withdraw from Somalia ... we need to see them off, but we do not need to see them off with mortars or fighting," said Qorgad, deputy chairman of a faction of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.

The government called in the Ethiopian troops in December 2006 to oust an umbrella Islamic group that had controlled southern Somalia and the capital for six months.

The Ethiopians' decision to then stay on, despite resentment from many Somalis, became a reason for Islamists to launch an insurgency during which thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands fled the capital.

Fadumo Wehliye, who lost three of her eight children during the violence, described the Ethiopian pullout as "great" and said she would go back to home in Mogadishu.

"For the last two years ... I have been living in a makeshift house in the outskirts of the capital," she said. Now "I will return to my home."