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Faction leader abandons talks

    NAIROBI

    One of Somalia’s long-standing faction leaders, Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess, has left the Djibouti-hosted peace talks. Jess left after his clan, the Ogadeni, sidelined him over the apportionment of seats on the proposed Transitional National Assembly (TNA), sources close to the conference told IRIN on Tuesday. The Ogadeni, a sub-clan of the Darod, refused to reserve part of the quota of seats assigned to it for some of Jess’s militia, the sources said. Conference chairman Hassan Abshire Farah said Colonel Jess “thought the conference offered little to warlords” but still supported its work, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

    When the Somalia civil war took off in 1991, Jess allied himself to powerful faction-leader General Mohamed Farah Aideed. Under former president Mohamed Siad Barre, Jess was a rebellious colonel stationed in Hargeisa, northwestern Somalia, and refused to participate in government killings. In 1989-1990 he defected and briefly fought alongside the rebel Somali National Movement, during which time Hargeisa was seized and “liberated”. During the civil war in the early 1990s, he moved freely inside the Ethiopian Ogaden region, and made numerous attempts to decisively control the contested port of Kismayo, southern Somalia.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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