Some see signs that militias may spread extremism
Islamic militias have been a fact of life for several years amid the chaos of the Somalian capital. But after they took control of Mogadishu on June 6, the question has been whether they will consolidate a system of Taliban-style extremism here and extend it into the countryside.
Somalis aren’t sure the clan-based nature of the Islamic Courts Union will permit that. While they and outside policy makers debate the issue, Abdi Fatah Nur says he has had two run-ins with the militias.
One night this month, Nur said, he was one of about 100 men sitting in a cinema on Mussolini Street waiting to watch the World Cup match between Argentina and Ivory Coast when 10 militiamen arrived to shut it down. Nur said the 21-year-old cinema owner protested that watching soccer had not been banned. The militiamen left, but came back an hour later.
“They turned off the electricity,” Nur said. “All the people were shouting. Some wanted to run and were yelling, `Open the door.’ Some were yelling to the owner, `We want the World Cup.’ “
After the crowd fled, Nur said, the militiamen beat the owner to death in front of a nearby ice cream parlor. “They all beat him with the butts of their guns. Three used bayonets. Some were kicking him. One of them stood on his head.” Nur said he helped carry the body home.
Undeterred, Nur went to another cinema the next day to see Iran play Mexico. This one was raided too. Arrested with dozens of others, he was beaten and taken to a police station, where his hair was hacked off. He was jailed for three days.
Similar accounts have surfaced since militias of the Islamic Courts Union defeated the warlords who had controlled Mogadishu for 15 years. But signs of extremism had begun emerging earlier. On Dec. 31, 2004, militias declared that anyone caught celebrating could be put to death because New Year’s is not an Islamic holiday. In November, militias in northern Mogadishu raided cinemas showing Indian and Western films.
In recent weeks, the then-chairman of the courts union, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and other Islamic leaders have said they have nothing against people watching the World Cup. Ahmed has promised to secure Mogadishu, implement Sharia, or Islamic law, and negotiate with Somalia’s transitional government, which has little power despite international backing.
But all these promises have been thrown into doubt with Ahmed’s replacement by Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a more extreme figure accused by the United States of past links with Al Qaeda.
Despite an absence of guns on the street, security remains difficult. On Friday, a Swedish journalist was fatally shot by a gunman who came from behind and fired a single bullet, the Associated Press reported. Martin Adler, 47, was covering a crowd celebrating a tentative deal between the courts union and the transitional government.
The ICU, renamed the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts over the weekend, is so fragmented that few people in Mogadishu regard it as a viable administration. Like so much else in Somalia, the Islamic courts are based on clans. To avoid exacerbating conflicts among them, each court judges only members of its own clan. Two of the 15 courts interpret Sharia far more stringently than the others.
It remains to be seen who will ultimately prevail as leader of the courts. As former chairman of the loose alliance of Islamic courts, Ahmed was not a political leader in the conventional sense. He could not interfere in courts outside his clan.
Abdurahman Osman, who is close to Ahmed and is a former adviser to Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi, head of the transitional government, said that unless the new power structure was balanced along clan lines, it risked falling apart.
He said Ahmed didn’t control the militiamen who shut down cinemas, but that the movement must stop such excesses.
“It’s young men, 21 years old with limited education and limited income,” Osman said. “But if we don’t cut off this malignancy, if we don’t cut it off right away, it will spread. Because that idea is wrong. It just represents killing and hatred.”
Source: LA Times, June 29, 2006
