Days after a radical cleric took charge of Somalia’s Islamic militia, a clan leader said the militia broke a ceasefire to seize a clan-held checkpoint outside the capital Mogadishu in an hour-long battle that killed six people.
Tuesday’s fighting marked the first military movement since the militia signed an agreement last week to stop all military action and recognise the country’s powerless, United Nations-backed interim government. The militia controls Mogadishu and most of the rest of southern Somalia, while the interim government holds only the southern town of Baidoa, 250km north-west of Mogadishu.
The checkpoint connecting the capital, Mogadishu, to the Lower Shabelle region was manned by members of the Habar Gidir clan, who charged motorists a fee to pass. Three of the victims were civilians and the others were clan members, said clan leader Abdi Kaibdid.
”The Islamists made a surprise attack on my troops overnight,” he told the Associated Press.
Salad Ali Jelle, deputy information minister for Somalia’s interim government, said the militia’s actions were a clear breach of the ceasefire.
”They should withdraw from the post they captured and go back to their original positions,” he said. Attempts to reach members of the Islamic militia were not immediately successful.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, carving much of the country into armed camps ruled by violence and clan law. Many of the capital’s residents applauded the Islamic group for forcing the warlords’ militiamen from Mogadishu earlier this month, despite concerns they may try to remake Somalia into a theocracy akin to Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Tuesday’s attack came a day after United States State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the US has no plans to engage with the group’s new leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on the US terrorist watch list as a suspected collaborator with al-Qaeda.
Aweys replaced a more moderate cleric, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who had been reaching out to the West and Somalia’s UN-backed interim government. The ceasefire deal was struck while Ahmed was still leading the Islamic militia.
Aweys told the AP on Monday that he will honour Ahmed’s agreement to meet with government leaders next month. He plans to tell the interim body — which has a Constitution that makes no mention of Islam — that an Islamic rule is the only option for Somalia.
Underlining the apparent tougher line under Aweys’ leadership, militia leaders said they will publicly stone to death four suspected rapists if they are convicted on Thursday in Jowhar, 90km from Mogadishu.
Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said it was too soon to characterise Aweys’ leadership. ”Let’s be cautious and try to see if there is a trend that clearly shows a move to an extremist agenda,” Dagne said.
Still, the appointment of Aweys is likely to stoke Washington’s long-standing concern that Somalia will become a refuge for members of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, much like Afghanistan did in the late 1990s.
The US has previously accused the militia of harbouring al-Qaeda leaders responsible for deadly 1998 bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and supported the warlords in this month’s battles in an attempt to root out terrorists. — Sapa-AP