Mogadishu faction fighters regroup

Up to 90 people died last month in Mogadishu‘s worst battles in years, between militias linked to the Islamic courts and those tied to the Mogadishu Anti-Terrorism Coalition, comprising most of the capital’s powerful warlords.

Fleeing residents said tension in the city was high as each side stockpiled weapons and ammunition, moved fighters into position and strengthened their ‘technicals’ — flat-bed trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns.

“The city is on the brink of war,” one weary resident, Abdifatah Abdulkadir, told Reuters by telephone. “I saw several technicals belonging to the coalition patrolling our Bula Hubay neighborhood while Islamic court militia are stationed in our backyard.”

Many Somalis believe the United States is funding the influential warlords as part of Washington‘s war on terrorism but the U.S. government denies it.

The charge has given the Islamic courts, funded by prominent businessmen, another rallying cry against warlords vying for control of Mogadishu. The courts are the only authority in parts of northern Mogadishu and mete out justice under sharia law.

“My immediate neighbours have already fled to Afgoye,” Abdulkadir said. “I’m planning to take my kids to Bravo before the guns start blazing.”

Somalia has had no functioning central government since warlords ousted military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, heralding 15 years of lawlessness. Neither the government nor the militia backers had any comment on the situation.

“START SHOOTING”

Ali Nur, a fighter allied to the warlord coalition, said his fellow militiamen were just waiting to pull the trigger. “There’s nothing else remaining except to start shooting,” he told Reuters, without elaborating.

On the Islamist side, fighters were closely watching the coalition’s movements, ready to hit back if attacked. “We will not attack them but if they try to attack us we will defend our positions,” one source close to the Islamists said.

One Somali analyst said there were signs a new round of fighting would be worse than the clashes in the barren outskirts of the capital last month.

“We should expect a disaster because unlike the previous battles this time round they plan to engage each other in the city,” said the analyst, who declined to be named.

The recent violence in Mogadishu shows how little control Somalia‘s fledgling interim administration has over the nation of 10 million people.

Formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004, the government moved to Somalia last year, meeting in the southern city of Baidoa because of insecurity in Mogadishu.

Most of the Mogadishu warlords are lawmakers or ministers, while the Islamist factions have their allies in government.

Source: Reuters, April 19, 2006