Kismayo, Sept 28 (AFP) – A southern Somali warlord and hundreds of fighters in his wing of a local militia defected to the country’s powerful Islamist movement on Wednesday in a new blow to the weak government.
Warlord Mohamed Rooble Gobale and about 300 militiamen pledged allegiance to the Islamists, turning 14 heavily armed vehicles and various weapons in the key port of Kismayo three days after it was seized by Muslim gunmen.
While some say the rebellion was more clan-based than religious, the fall of Kismayo to the Islamists, who now control almost all of southern Somalia, dealt a severe blow to the government and its hopes for the help of African peacekeepers.
“The fighters and weapons will boost the Islamist presence here and serve the people,” said Yusuf Mire Serar, a top commander in Gobale’s defecting faction of the Juba Valley Alliance (JVA) militia.
The move boosts the Islamist presence in Kismayo and effectively ends hopes of recapturing it by the other, government-allied wing of the JVA, led by the administration’s defence minister, which had held the port until Sunday.
Islamist officials said the defections would cement their hold on the port, about 500km south of the capital, that they took to prevent a planned African peacekeeping force from landing.
They said the additional fighters would help them seal Somalia’s border with Kenya, about 150km west of Kismayo, from where the land-based vanguard of the African force is to deploy.
Somalia’s internationally- backed but largely powerless transitional government has long appealed for the deployment of a nearly 8 000-strong regional east African peacekeeping mission to shore up its limited authority.
But the newly dominant Islamists – who have rapidly expanded their territory since seizing the capital, Mogadishu, from US-backed warlords in June after months of fierce battles – vehemently oppose the proposed mission.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi’s government is the latest in more than a dozen attempts to restore stability to Somalia, which was plunged into anarchy after the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.erar, a top commander in Gobale’s defecting faction of the Juba Valley Alliance (JVA) militia.
Source: AFP, Sept 28, 2006
