The supreme leader of Somalia’s increasingly powerful Islamist movement said on Tuesday that easing a 14-year-old United Nations arms embargo on the lawless nation would be a ”fatal mistake.”
A day after a United States-created diplomatic body recommended ”urgent” modifications to the embargo, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys warned the move would plunge Somalia into new chaos with new battles between Islamists and defeated US-backed warlords.
”What has been destroying Somalia is the presence of arms and it’s awful to see the international community advocating the shipment of more arms to Somalia,” Aweys told Agence France-Presse from his central home region of Galgadud.
”Easing the embargo would be a fatal mistake,” he said. ”It is like allowing one group to arm itself. Others will follow and then we will have new problems in Somalia.”
Aweys heads the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), a group of Sharia courts whose militia seized the capital Mogadishu in June from a US-backed warlord alliance after months of fierce battles and is now tightening its grip on the nation.
The rise of the Islamists has fuelled fears of a Taliban-style takeover, particularly as some, including Aweys, are considered extremists and accused of harbouring ”terrorists” by the West. They deny the charges.
Their growing influence also threatens the authority of Somalia’s weak transitional government, which has been appealing to the UN to ease the arms embargo to help the deployment of foreign peacekeepers. — AFP
