The Associated Press
Published: September 9, 2006
TRIPOLI, Libya A leading member of Somalia’s Islamic militia urged the international community and African countries not to send peacekeepers to war-torn Somalia, saying order had been restored. Two protests last week in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, denounced the plan by seven African countries to send peacekeepers Somalia. The Islamic courts militia mobilized some 3,000 people against the proposal, while some 500 former members of the armed forces before the state collapsed in 1991 held a separate protest to criticize the plan. “There is no need for foreign troops in the country,” Sheik Sherif Sheik Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic courts said on his arrival Friday at the Libyan port of Sirte, 225 miles (360 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli. “I think that the international community should concentrate on aid — not on sending troops,” Sheik Ahmed said. Leading members of the Islamic courts group, which controls Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia, arrived Friday to visit Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The 20-member delegation was invited to mark the anniversary of the creation of the African Union in 2002. The Islamic militants seized control of the capital in June after months of bloody battles with despised warlords. Hundreds of people were killed, many of them civilians. Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords toppled dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. The country descended into chaos, with rival warlords and clans ruling areas by force. Thirteen fighters who had been seriously wounded in recent fighting accompanied the delegation for treatment in Libya. Many people credit the Islamic group with restoring order to a nation that had seen violence and lawlessness for 15 years. But the Islamic group’s strict and often severe interpretation of Islam raises memories of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. U.S. officials accuse the Somali group of harboring al-Qaida members. The Islamic group’s dealings with the government have been mixed. On Monday, negotiators from both sides met in Khartoum, Sudan, and signed an agreement pledging to establish a unified national army. The agreement did not specify when the plan would take effect, and talks were expected to resume Oct. 30. A day later in Nairobi, Kenya, authorities from seven African countries endorsed a plan to send 3,500 Ugandan and Sudanese soldiers to Somalia by early October. The agreement by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development is unlikely be implemented in the immediate future.
