Baidoa
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Baidoa (Somali: Baydhabo) is a city in south-central Somalia. It is the capital of the Bay Region, which is historically inhabited by the Digil and Mirifle clans.
Various factions of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) struggle for control of the city. On 30 May 2005 forces loyal to Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigudud, former RRA chairman, and Shaykh Adan Madobe, former first secretary, attacked the town, which is controlled by the forces of Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade. This had been preceded by months of building tensions as the various militia groups built up their arsenals. In the immediate aftermath of the fighting, both the Shatigudud/Madobe and Habsade militias were seen to be preparing for further clashes. The fighting was seen as another sign of a faltering transition.
The Transitional Federal Government, of which Shatigudud and Madobe are ministers, wishes to move a joint national capital from Mogadishu to Baidoa and Jowhar. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has little support in Mogadishu and wishes to avoid the influence of the capital's powerful warlords. Habsade, who is aligned with the warlords of Mogadishu and sees President Yusuf as a pawn of Ethiopia, wishes to keep the capital from moving. The Transitional Government was able to convene a parliamentary sittings of 275 members in Baidoa in February, 2006, inside a grain warehouse that had been temporarily converted. Despite the symbolic importance of the occasion, there have been no additional moves to establish government bodies or agencies in the city, beyond simply maintaining a militia presence there.
In mid-2006, following the Second Battle of Mogadishu which ended with a victory of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and the disbanding and disarming of most of the warlords' troops formerly in Mogadishu - most of which fled to Jowhar -, there are concerns among Baidoa's residents that the ICU, which now ist the most powerful faction in Somalia by a substantial margin, will attempt to take this town too. However, the recent alleged deployment of 500 troops from Ethiopia to Baidoa is may stymie the ICU's ambitions for the city, as it is unlikely that the ICU would be able to prevail against regular forces in the open, desert topography of the city. There are fears that this intervention may escalate if Ethiopia's traditional rival, Eritrea intervenes in turn on behalf of the ICU, although this is considered improbable.
External links
- [Somalia warlords clash in Baidoa], BBC, 30 May 2005
- [Uneasy calm after five killed in Baidoa], IRIN, 30 May 2005
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