By Mohamed Olad Hassan
Mogadishu – Fighters bent on bringing Islamic rule to all of Somalia won a strategic town on Wednesday, driving out secular militias following a brief fire fight, witnesses said.
Just hours earlier, the leaders of the secular militias fled Jowhar, which had been their last remaining stronghold in southern Somalia. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but residents were fleeing for fear of additional fighting for the town 90km from Mogadishu, the capital the Islamic fighters seized last week.
US officials have acknowledged backing the warlords against the Islamic group, which the US has accused of harbouring three al-Qaeda leaders indicted in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Islamic forces also seized Jowhar’s airport, about 10km from downtown Jowhar, on Wednesday morning. Skirmishes outside Jowhar between the Islamic fighters and militia loyal to the warlords continued.
The Islamic Courts Union has been building up troops around Jowhar in recent days to finish off their rivals, the warlord-led Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism.
A leader of the alliance, Abdi Hassan Awale, told The Associated Press that he had resigned from the alliance after his clan elders pressured him.
Clan elders in Jowhar had urged the warlords to leave to avoid a confrontation, two Somali officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Witnesses told The Associated Press that the warlords did not want to be disarmed by the Islamic fighters and fought their way out.
Mohamed Jama, a militiaman loyal to Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, told The Associated Press that Afrah and another warlord, Botan Isse Allen, had left Jowhar Tuesday night, taking along pickups mounted with machine guns and scores of militiamen and are now in El Bur, 330km north-east of Mogadishu.
Afrah and Allen are former members of Somalia’s transitional government. They were loyal to Mohammed Dheere, the alliance’s main leader, who was reportedly in Ethiopia trying to raise support for his forces.
Issa Ahmed, a member of the warlords’ alliance, said that he was still in Jowhar, his hometown.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991, when largely clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another. An interim government, formed with the support of the United Nations and including warlords who once fought each other, has failed to assert control outside its base in Baidoa, 250km from Mogadishu.
The Islamic group’s leaders portray themselves as free of links to the turmoil of the past and capable of bringing order and unity. The future of a country accustomed to moderate Islam is uncertain under rulers who have vowed to install an Islamic government.
After taking Mogadishu, the group sent a letter proclaiming it was not an enemy of the United States.
The US administration has not publicly confirmed or denied backing the warlords, saying only that it supports those who fight terror. But US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, have confirmed co-operating with the warlords as part of the global war on terror.
Henry Crumpton, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday that his department didn’t anticipate the events in Somalia and has an “imperfect understanding” of the Islamic group.
“We expect them to work with the transitional government, and we also expect them to work with us to hand over al-Qaeda and foreign fighters,” Crumpton said.
With extremists accused of harbouring terrorists in control in Mogadishu and sharp questions being asked about its policies in the region, the US is convening a meeting on Somalia in New York on Thursday.
Only one African country – Tanzania – was expected at the first meeting of the Somalia Contact Group. But US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said other countries may be added.
Washington’s alleged support for the warlords came in for veiled criticism on Tuesday by Somali and Kenyan leaders, who said it undermined their efforts to rebuild the East African nation.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, speaking at a meeting on Somalia of the seven-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which works for political and economic stability in the region, did not name the United States. But he appeared to refer to Washington when he said his “transitional federal government will not accept and will not support those who may seek to bypass the administration.”
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, known as IGAD, mediated talks in Kenya that led two years ago to the formation of the transitional government. On Tuesday, IGAD imposed an immediate travel ban and bank account freeze on nine secular warlords and threatened measures against the Islamic militiamen. IGAD members argued only the transitional government, which is trying to negotiate with the Islamic group, should control fighters.
Like Gedi, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister Raphael Tuju did not name the United States in his remarks at the IGAD meeting, but said that the country that had backed the warlords fuelled conflict in the Somali capital.
Kenya’s Tuju said it was the warlords who had “terrorised” the Somali capital for 15 years, and call the Islamic group’s takeover of Mogadishu a “popular uprising.”
Source: AP, June 14, 2006
