Somali officials on Tuesday blamed the latest violence in their lawless capital, Mogadishu, on the United States, which they accused of meddling in domestic affairs by funding an alliance of warlords.
”The US is behind [the latest violence] through its financial and military support of warlords and its interference in the country’s internal affairs,” said Somali Health Minister Abdel Aziz Sheikh Yussef at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.
Mogadishu was this week the scene of deadly battles between Islamic militia and gunmen loyal to a US-backed warlord Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, the worst violence the capital has seen for 15 years.
The warlords claim the country’s Islamists are harbouring foreign fighters and Muslim extremists, including al-Qaeda members.
While the US has not explicitly confirmed its support for the alliance, US officials have told Agence France-Presse that the alliance has received US money and is one of several groups it is working with to contain the threat of Islamic radicalism in the country.
But Yussef denied Washington’s claims of ”creeping Talibanisation” in Somalia.
”The people of Somalia deal with officials of the Islamic courts because they are appointed by tribal chiefs and have a good reputation compared with the warlords, contrary to what the US claims,” he said.
During his visit to Cairo, the health minister asked the Arab League to fulfil their promise of $500 000 in aid money to help with the deteriorating health situation caused by years of violence, adding that the number of functioning hospitals in Somalia was now down to three.
”It is the innocent people who die every day that are the victims, and they are dying in larger numbers than the fighting parties,” said the minister.
Somalia, a nation of 10-million people in the Horn of Africa, has been without a functioning central authority since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 plunged it into anarchy. Since then, warlords have been battling for control of a patchwork of fiefdoms.
More than a dozen attempts to restore stability have failed. The latest, a transitional government set up in 2004 in Kenya and now based in the town of Baidoa, west of Mogadishu, has been undermined by infighting and proved unable to assert control. — AFP
