Somalia’s Islamists said on Tuesday they are readying troops and recruiting young men to defend themselves against suspected Ethiopian soldiers in the country.
While witnesses have reported seeing the soldiers near the provincial capital, Baidoa, Ethiopia, which supports the country’s fragile interim government, has denied sending troops.
”We are preparing 2 000 fighters to go to Baidoa to defend the country from the Ethiopians,” Moalim Hashi Mohamed Farah, a top security official with the Islamists told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. He did not say when this might happen.
The Islamists took the strategic port town of Kismayo this weekend and now control a significant part of the country.
”I have no doubt that the Islamic courts will fight against Ethiopia,” Farah added. ”If the soldiers don’t go back we will go to Addis Ababa.”
The Islamists opened a recruiting office in the capital, Mogadishu, and are encouraging young Somalis to join the voluntary military.
”We urge the youth to defend the country,” said Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
During the 1990s Ethiopia on several occasions sent troops into its neighbour to prevent the establishment of an Islamic government there. Somalia has been without strong central rule for 15 years.
Somalia’s Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has appealed for protection from the international community. Without it, he said Somalia will become a ”terrorist safe haven.”
Earlier this month, the African Union granted a request by the transitional government to send in a regional peacekeeping force, which the Islamists have opposed.
Islamists seized Mogadishu earlier this year and have since taken other parts of the country, with the intention of establishing an Islamic state. They have been credited with bringing some order to the anarchic state.
‘They are oppressing us’
Meanwhile, in Kismayo Islamists quelled a women’s protest against the takeover of the port on Tuesday, as the interim government expressed hope the latest tensions with its rivals would not derail peace talks in Sudan.
In a second day of anti-Islamist protests in Somalia’s third biggest city, dozens of women and children took to streets now patrolled by Islamist fighters on pick-ups with machine-guns.
The Islamists quickly dispersed them, however, arresting several demonstrators including children, witnesses said.
”They are oppressing us,” said Hawo Warsame, one of the women protesters.
”They have arrested some of us as well as our children … These people are inhuman; they are refusing to let us protest peacefully.”
Apart from the brief protest, Kismayo was calm on Tuesday with shops opening again after the previous day’s much bigger and more violent demonstration.
One boy was shot dead on Monday when Islamists opened fire on a crowd burning tyres and throwing stones. — Sapa-dpa, Reuters