Washington – Africa specialists criticized the Bush administration Wednesday for not paying more attention to the increasingly volatile situation in Somalia, saying that senior officials were consumed by their efforts to stop the fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan.
In Somalia, Islamist militias have taken one town after another in the south-central part of the fractured nation since capturing the de facto capital, Mogadishu, in June.
Now, they appear poised to attack the small town of Baidoa near the country’s western border with Ethiopia. Baidoa is the base of the increasingly powerless Somali transitional federal government, which is backed by the United States and Ethiopia.
Analysts predict that if the Islamists attack the town, which appears likely, the conflict could evolve into a wider war with Ethiopia.
“We’re completely distracted by Sudan,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and a State Department official during the Clinton administration. “We should be engaging the Islamists … and find out what their intentions are.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a major speech Wednesday on Sudan before the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, calling on the government in Khartoum to end hostilities immediately and accept a U.N. peacekeeping force.
Rice talked about Somalia only in response to question from Melvin Foote, president of Constituency for Africa, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Rice said, “We have been trying, despite the difficulties there, to support a transitional government that might be able to … help the country come together.”
