MOGADISHU, Somalia — Ethiopia announced Friday that it is pulling its forces from Somalia by year’s end, leaving the ravaged capital vulnerable to the Islamic militants who have seized nearly all of the country.
The decision ends the unpopular two-year presence of the key U.S. ally much as it began — with the militants in near-total control of a failed state with a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Ethiopia has sent thousands of troops here since early 2007, when it launched a U.S.-backed operation that drove the militants from Mogadishu after six months in power.
Since then, the Islamists have waged a ferocious insurgency, attacking U.N.-supported Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies nearly every day.
The United States worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, particularly because Osama bin Laden declared his support for the Islamists. It accuses a faction known as al-Shabab — “The Youth” — of harboring the al-Qaeda- linked terrorists who allegedly blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Ethiopian forces have remained almost entirely in the capital, along with a small African Union force that has just 2,600 of the intended 8,000 troops and has largely been confined to urban bases.
The militants, meanwhile, have taken control of towns within miles of the capital and move freely inside Mogadishu.
Ethiopia and the Somali government have called without success for a United Nations peacekeeping force to help pacify the country and boost the weak government. The U.N. Security Council has said it would consider sending peacekeepers to replace AU forces if Somalia can improve security and achieve political reconciliation.
A U.N. peacekeeping operation in the early 1990s saw the downing of two U.S. Army helicopters and the killing of 18 American soldiers. The U.S. withdrew and U.N. peacekeepers were gone by 1995.
