Islamists holding much of lawless Somali capital Mogadishu declared war on ”infidels” on Wednesday as a battered United States-backed warlord alliance they have been fighting girded for new clashes.
With the two sides locked in a tense stand-off outside the alliance’s last remaining stronghold north of the city, and hold-out warlords refusing to accept Islamic control of Mogadishu, elders frantically appealed for peace.
Yet, Muslim militia and the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism (ARPCT) showed no signs of backing down from positions that led to four months of battles in the capital, leaving hundreds dead.
Mogadishu’s most senior Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nur Barud, called on Somalis to crush secular resistance to the imposition of Sharia law and to reject warlord efforts to garner support by appealing to clan and tribal loyalties.
”All Somalis must defend the Islamic courts because this is not inter-clan fighting, but war with the infidels,” he said in a speech aired by local radio stations.
”This fighting is between those who support Islam, and godless invaders and those who support them,” Barud said.
He referred to the ARPCT and the US, which has provided cash and intelligence support to the warlords to track down extremists, including alleged al-Qaeda members, whom Mogadishu’s 11 Islamic courts are suspected of harbouring.
On Tuesday, US President George Bush expressed concern about the fall of most of Mogadishu to Islamist forces a day earlier and said Washington would ensure Somalia does not become a haven for terrorists.
The chairperson of Mogadishu’s Islamic court union, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, warned that US intervention would face a disaster similar to a botched 1993 operation that left 18 US army officers and 300 Somalis dead.
”If US forces intervene directly against us in Mogadishu, then we are ready to teach them a lesson they will never forget and repeat their defeat in 1993,” he told the Saudi-owned pan-Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat.
Although the alliance has lost nearly all its key positions in the capital, warlords are rallying support from the powerful Abgal sub-clan, members of which demonstrated against the Islamic courts on Tuesday.
And they pledged to defend to the death their last stronghold of Jowhar, about 90km north of Mogadishu, from hundreds of Islamist fighters camped outside the town.
”If we see movement among the Islamic militia, we will attack,” said alliance commander Jendayi Dheere, the brother of Jowhar warlord Mohamed Dheere, a founding ARPCT member.
”We will not wait to be attacked first,” he told Agence France-Press from his base just south of Jowhar, about 3km away from the Islamist position. ”We will defend our town to the death.”
Clan elders tried furiously to defuse tensions, but allowed they were having little success in their bid to prevent a new surge in the violence that has killed at least 347 people and wounded more than 1 500 since February.
”We are trying to see how we can start peace talks to avoid another war that will kill hundreds of people,” mediator Mohamed Farah Jumale told AFP. ”But now we have no agreement.”
The warlord alliance was created in February with US support in a bid to curb the growing influence of the Islamic courts, hunt down the extremists they are accused of sheltering and disrupt feared plans for new terrorist attacks.
At least three terror suspects, including some of the accused in the al-Qaeda-claimed 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 bombing of an Israeli owned hotel in Kenya, are thought to be in Somalia.
Washington has never publicly confirmed or denied its support for the alliance but US officials have told AFP they have given the warlords money and intelligence to help to rein in ”creeping Talibanisation” in Somalia.
The support is controversial and has been denounced by the country’s largely powerless transitional government as well as Kenya, which late on Tuesday banned Somali warlords from its territory, closing off a traditional safe haven. — AFP
