Islamic militias secured the backing of influential clan elders overnight to set up a new system of governance for swathes of southern Somalia, which the Islamists now control, an elder said on Friday.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the head of the Joint Islamic Courts militia, sealed a deal with the traditional community leaders in Jowhar, a former stronghold of a United States-backed alliance of warlords, who were routed from the town on Wednesday.
“We agreed to collaborate with [the] Islamic courts in the establishment of new administrations,” said Sheikh Ibrahim Farah, a prominent elder and imam in the town, 90km north of the capital, Mogadishu.
The Islamist militians have been battling the warlord alliance for four months for control of Somalia, which has been without an effective central government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991.
Farah said the Islamists had agreed to let the elders head Jowhar’s administration while the militias would ensure security in the town and outlying regions.
Public support has steadily grown for the Islamic militias, who have vowed to impose Sharia Islamic law and bring stability and order to the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
Experts attribute much of this support to public weariness with years of violence and their resentment of US support for the warlord Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism (ARPCT).
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the firebrand cleric who founded the capital’s first Islamic court and is believed to have orchestrated the Islamic takeover, has already established Sharia tribunals in the central region of Galgudud.
In a separate deal announced on Friday, the Islamists reached agreement with Somalia’s largely powerless interim government, based in the south-western city of Baidoa, to accept Yemeni mediation for peace talks.
A Yemeni official in Sanaa said Islamist leader Sheikh Ahmed and Somali interim President Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed had agreed to talks led by Yemen’s president inside Somalia or in a neighbouring country.
But sources within the Joint Islamic Courts, told Agence France-Presse they had accepted the deal only as a means to buy time to consolidate their hold on Somali territory.
Numerous factions have ruled in Somalia since its last government collapsed in 1991 and their violent rivalry has scuppered multiple efforts to restore a functional authority.
Areas now under Islamist control include most of Mogadishu, Jowhar in neighbouring Middle Shabelle region, and several posts in the Hiraan region further north, including Gialalassi town. All are former strongholds of the warlord alliance.
Several warlords have switched camps, abandoning the ARPCT and pledging allegiance to the Islamists.
Islamic commanders said their fighters were encountering little or no resistance from local clans formally allied to the warlords, as they pushed northwards along the main road towards neighbouring Ethiopia.
With warlords and other secular fighters nowhere to be seen sight, the militias easily overran trading posts in Hiraan as they moved toward the town of Beledweyne, close to the border with Ethiopia, Somalia’s historic rival.
“We have accepted to support the [Islamic] courts,” said Ahmed Abdi Alin, an elder in Gialalassi, where two rival Adde and Hawad tribal sub-clans formerly allied to the warlords reportedly negotiated a settlement and shifted loyalty to the Islamists.
Meanwhile, a US-inspired group to promote reconciliation in Somalia held its first meeting on Thursday at the United Nations in New York, and vowed to foster good governance in Somalia.
The International Somalia Contact group so far includes representatives from the US, Norway, Britain, Sweden, Italy, the European Union and Tanzania.
Washington has never publicly confirmed or denied support for the ARPCT warlords. But US officials have told AFP they provided the warlords with money and intelligence to help to rein in the advance of the Islamists, which they viewed as “creeping Talibanisation”. — AFP