The war in Somalia, 2006–2009: Ethiopia, the Islamic Courts and the insurgency

In short

In June 2006 the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took control of Mogadishu. In December 2006 Ethiopian forces, invited by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and backed by the United States, drove the ICU from the city "in a matter of days" (Human Rights Watch, Shell-Shocked, August 2007).

An insurgency began almost at once. Two years of fighting followed in Mogadishu and the south, until a peace deal signed in Djibouti in June 2008 led to Ethiopia's withdrawal in January 2009 (UN Secretary-General, report S/2009/132, para. 13). For the Courts themselves, see the Islamic Courts Union, 2006.

Before the war, 2006

• The Courts. In December 2004 clan-based sharia courts in Mogadishu joined to form the ICU, chaired by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a schoolteacher (HRW, Shell-Shocked). In June 2006 they took Mogadishu after forcing out the armed groups that had held it.
• The TFG. The government sat in Baidoa. Human Rights Watch wrote in 2008 that in 2006 it "had a physical presence in only two towns" (HRW, So Much to Fear, December 2008).
• Kismayo. The ICU took Kismayo in late September 2006, "allegedly" with Eritrean advisers and fighters of the ONLF and OLF, armed groups opposed to Ethiopia's government (HRW, Shell-Shocked).
• Ethiopia's concerns. Human Rights Watch wrote that "leading figures associated with the ICU had openly threatened war on Ethiopia and talked of annexing the whole of Ethiopia's eastern Somali region" (HRW, So Much to Fear).
• 6 December 2006. UN Security Council resolution 1725 authorised an African protection mission for Somalia, and said that states bordering Somalia would not deploy troops in it (UN Security Council, resolution 1725).

December 2006 to January 2007

• Late December 2006. Ethiopian forces, with tanks and air power, attacked ICU positions. Ethiopia's prime minister said on 24 December that his country had been "forced into war" (Reuters, as cited by HRW, Shell-Shocked).
• 26–28 December 2006. The ICU leaders left Mogadishu on 26 December and moved south. Ethiopian and TFG troops entered the city (same source).
• 1 January 2007. Kismayo fell to Ethiopian forces (same source).
• January 2007. Ethiopian troops pushed the retreating fighters toward Ras Kamboni on the Kenyan border. US ships patrolled the coast and Kenya closed its border (same source).
• 8 January 2007. US AC-130 gunships attacked several places in southern Somalia, reportedly to kill suspects in the 1998 embassy bombings (CRS report RL33911). Oxfam said about 70 people were killed in bombings in Afmadow district (same source). See US air strikes in Somalia.
• January 2007. The TFG moved from Baidoa to Mogadishu (CRS).

The battle for Mogadishu, 2007

Human Rights Watch documented the fighting from research in Kenya and Somalia in April and May 2007 (HRW, Shell-Shocked):

• 21–22 March 2007. A TFG disarmament operation was driven back. Captured TFG soldiers were killed and their bodies mutilated in the streets.
• Late March. Ethiopian forces launched their first offensive in the city. Four days of bombardment ended in a short ceasefire negotiated between the Ethiopian military and Hawiye clan elders.
• Late April. The ceasefire broke down and a second offensive began in north Mogadishu. On 26 April the TFG declared victory.
• The toll. The March and April fighting caused "the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of 400,000 people".

The same report found that the insurgents "routinely deployed their forces in densely populated civilian areas" and fired mortars without regard to civilians, and that Ethiopian forces fired "inherently indiscriminate 'Katyusha' rockets in urban areas". It found that TFG forces carried out "widespread pillaging" and "mass arrests" (same source).

The insurgency, 2007–2008

• 20 February 2007. Security Council resolution 1744 authorised the African Union to set up a mission in Somalia, AMISOM, for six months (UN Security Council, resolution 1744). See AMISOM.
• The opposition. Opponents grouped around the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), made up of ICU leaders, former members of parliament and others; around al-Shabaab; and around other armed factions (HRW, So Much to Fear). The ICU leadership moved to Eritrea (CRS).
• February 2008. The US designated al-Shabaab a Foreign Terrorist Organization (same source).
• October 2008. HRW reported that an al-Shabaab-run administration in Kismayo publicly stoned to death a young girl who had reported a rape, after accusing her of adultery (HRW, So Much to Fear).

In its December 2008 report Human Rights Watch wrote that "Ethiopian, Somali transitional government, and insurgent forces have all violated the laws of war with impunity" (same source):

• TFG forces. "Murder, rape, assault, and looting", and arrests of civilians to extort ransom.
• Insurgents. Death threats and targeted killings of people seen as TFG collaborators, "including people who took menial jobs in TFG offices or sold water to Ethiopian soldiers".
• Ethiopian forces. Bombardments "lobbed into densely populated neighborhoods", and a breakdown of discipline "to the point where they increasingly are responsible for violent criminality".

The Djibouti agreement and Ethiopia's withdrawal

• June 2008. The TFG and the ARS signed an agreement in Djibouti, mediated by the UN envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. It provided for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces and a UN force (CRS). An ARS faction based in Asmara, led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, rejected it (same source).
• 29 December 2008. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed resigned in Baidoa, saying he did not want to be seen as an "obstacle to peace" (UN, S/2009/132, para. 6).
• 13–15 January 2009. Ethiopian forces left their positions in north Mogadishu and "completed their withdrawal from all locations in Mogadishu two days later" (para. 13).
• 25 January 2009. Ethiopian forces left Baidoa. Looting followed when the TFG militia left, "until Al-Shabaab took control though negotiation with local clan elders" (paras. 15 and 22).
• 26 January 2009. Parliament grew by 275 seats: 200 for the ARS and 75 for civil society, women, the diaspora and others (para. 8).
• 30 January 2009. Meeting in Djibouti, the enlarged parliament elected the ARS chairman, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, as president (para. 10).

The years after are told in the transitional governments, 2000–2012.

Who suffered?

• The people of Mogadishu. "Since January 2007 at least 870,000 civilians have fled the chaos in Mogadishu alone, two-thirds of the city's population." Across the south, 1.1 million people were displaced (HRW, So Much to Fear).
• Civilians killed. The Elman Human Rights Center in Mogadishu estimated in December 2007 that 6,000 civilians had been killed since the end of 2006. HRW wrote that "no organization has been able to produce a credible estimate" for 2008 (same source).
• Displaced families in the camps on the Mogadishu–Afgooye road, which HRW said had "themselves become theaters of brutal fighting", where "freelance militias have robbed, murdered, and raped displaced persons" (same source).
• Soldiers and fighters of every side. The sources linked here give no count.

Sources differ

• Why Ethiopia intervened. Ethiopia said it was forced into war by threats from the ICU. Human Rights Watch wrote that Ethiopia's actions were "rooted in its own regional and national security interests, namely a proxy war with Eritrea" (HRW, Shell-Shocked).
• The ICU. HRW wrote that the Courts "were credited with bringing unprecedented stability" to Mogadishu, while "radical and militant Islamist elements" in it "stoked fears" (same source). US officials in 2006 labelled the whole ICU leadership extremist; the CRS report says the moderate leadership was later "marginalized" (CRS).
• The death toll. Somali groups gave estimates of 6,000 civilians by December 2007. A later edition of the CRS report cites human rights groups and Somali observers estimating "more than 22,000 people have been killed over the past two years" (CRS). No agreed figure exists.

Read the primary sources yourself

• Human Rights Watch, Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu, August 2007: report.
• Human Rights Watch, "So Much to Fear": War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia, December 2008: report.
• UN Security Council, resolution 1725 (2006): PDF; resolution 1744 (2007): PDF.
• UN Secretary-General, report on Somalia, S/2009/132 (March 2009): PDF.
• Congressional Research Service, Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace, RL33911: text.