Thursday, July 06, 2006
By Mohamed Ali Bile
In the latest sign of a radical tendency within the movement that now controls a swathe of south Somalia, Islamic militia shot a cinema owner and a young girl during a protest against a ban on watching Germany play Italy in the semi-final.
“With the cooperation of the elders of the district, we have put those who were behind the killings in prison,” Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told local HornAfrik radio.
“Those who killed the two civilians will face sharia law as soon as possible,” added Aweys, a cleric appointed overall leader a few weeks after the Islamists kicked out of Mogadishu U.S.-backed warlords who had run the city for 15 years.
Four others were wounded in Tuesday night’s shooting in the central town of Dusa Mareb, Aweys’ home area.
There have been other reports of militia from the Islamic sharia courts — out of which the movement grew — stopping viewings of the World Cup, provoking protests.
Islamist leaders say that is not their policy, but rather the work of over-zealous militiamen.
But Aweys does want to see government based on Islamic law. That puts him at odds with the weak interim administration — based in the provincial town of Baidoa — which is backed by the West and founded on a secular charter.
AFRICAN MISSION
A delegation from the African Union (AU) and east African inter-governmental peace body IGAD visited Mogadishu on Thursday in the latest effort by the international community to come to terms with Somalia’s power-shift.
The African mission — which had met with the government in Baidoa on Wednesday — held talks with Islamist leaders, local businessmen and civic groups in Mogadishu, witnesses said.
Underlining insecurity around the country, residents in drought-hit south Somalia near the border with Kenya said three militiamen died when a U.N. World Food Programme convoy carrying food aid was attacked during a tribal conflict.
Despite that, some aid agencies said they were sending back foreign staff to the Islamist-controlled southern town of Jowhar after pulling them out during fighting with warlords last month.
“The new authorities said they were welcoming international organisations and our local workers said it was safe, so we came back,” said Jocep Prior, head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Spain in Somalia.
Since taking Mogadishu on June 5, the Islamists first sought to project a moderate image, sending conciliatory messages to the West. But some Somalis are becoming disillusioned with their practices and nervous of a Taliban-style rule.
While the courts have brought relative peace and stability to Mogadishu for the first time in years, residents say some Islamist militia are imposing hardline norms like forcibly cutting hair and making women cover their heads and faces.
Somalis are mostly moderate Muslims.
The sheikhs at the forefront of the movement say their priority is to bring law and order to the Horn of Africa nation, which has been without central rule since warlords ousted a military dictator in 1991.
(Additional reporting by Bryson Hull in Baidoa, Jack Kimball in Nairobi)
Source: Reuters, July 6, 2006
