Somalis marked their 46th anniversary of independence quietly on Monday in Mogadishu, fearing the Islamic militants who control their capital would frown on celebrations.
In past years, public events were held in Mogadishu and other towns to mark independence day. But followers of the Islamic group that seized the capital by force earlier this month have long made it clear they believe only Muslim holidays should be celebrated.
On June 10, Islamic militiamen broke up World Cup viewing parties by firing into the air and cutting electricity to theatres.
The militants, some of whom say they want Qur’anic law for a country that has been lawless for more than a decade, seized Mogadishu and most of the rest of southern Somalia after battling warlords for months in fighting that killed more than 330 people, most of them civilians.
The country’s weak United Nations-backed transitional government was powerless to intervene during the fighting and is now hoping to establish its authority through negotiations with the Islamic group, known as the Somali Supreme Islamic Courts’ Council. The two sides signed a non-aggression pact June 22, but relations are strained.
The transitional government marked the anniversary of Somalia’s independence from Italy in 1960 at the presidential palace in Baidoa, the only town it controls in southern Somalia.
Somalis should ”liberate themselves from those who want to gain power through the barrel of the gun”, President Abdullahi Yusuf told lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and other officials in an indirect reference to the Somali Supreme Islamic Courts’ Council.
Somalia has known 22 years of dictatorship and 15 years of clan fighting in its 46 years of independence. It has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each another.
The transitional government established in 2004 has the support of the international community, but it wields little power and includes some of the warlords blamed for the country’s disintegration.
The Somali Supreme Islamic Courts’ Council, which changed its name on Saturday from the Islamic Courts’ Union, portrays itself as a new force capable of imposing the order, for which many Somalis long. But the extremism of some of its members, and allegations of links to terrorism, has provoked international concern.
The United States, which accuses the council of harbouring al-Qaeda leaders responsible for the deadly 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, had been secretly supporting the warlords in an attempt to root out terrorists. — Sapa-AP