Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement called on Monday for the start of a threatened ”holy war” against Ethiopian troops allegedly on Somali territory, saying their graves would litter the country.
In a speech on the eve of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Islamists’ supreme leader, a hard-line cleric designated a ”terrorist” by the United States, urged all Somalis to immediately take up arms against invaders.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, chief of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), said the time for asking Ethiopia to withdraw its troops under the threat of ”jihad” was over and action was now necessary.
”We have been asking the Ethiopians to leave our country for a long time,” he told thousands at the Isbahaysiga mosque in Mogadishu, the base from where the Islamists have seized most of southern and central Somalia since June.
”This is the end of that request,” Aweys said. ”We are now telling them that from now on, their graves will be littered everywhere in Somalia. We are not going to tell the world that Ethiopia is interfering in Somali affairs anymore.”
”We will now start fighting,” he said. ”I am calling on all Somalis, wherever they are, to start jihad against the invaders and those who support them.”
Aweys appeared to be referring to Somalia’s weak transitional government, which, along with Addis Ababa, has repeatedly denied numerous eyewitness accounts of Ethiopian troops being deployed to protect the administration.
Mainly Christian Ethiopia, which has vowed to protect itself and the Somali government from ”jihadists”, admits to sending military trainers to Somalia but only a small number and not the thousands the witnesses have reported.
On the weekend, Somali government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops, according to witnesses, dislodged the Islamists from a town near the government seat of Baidoa, about 250km north-west of Mogadishu.
But the town of Burhakaba returned to Muslim control on Monday when the government forces left after what they said was an operation to restore security.
”We moved away from Burhakaba because we managed to restore security,” Said Hirsi Dhere, a government commander who oversaw the weekend seizure, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by phone from Baidoa.
The Islamists said the government troops had fled ahead of a massive advance by its fighters.
”The town is in the hands of the Islamic courts militia,” said Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, a militia commander allied to the Islamists.
”The government forces escaped before we arrived,” he told AFP from Burhakaba, about 60km south-east of Baidoa.
On Sunday, at least five people were killed in clashes between government-allied militia and Islamist gunmen near the town of Buale in southern Somalia, the latest in such fighting.
The fresh violence has sent tensions soaring in the region, with tens of thousands of Somalis fleeing into neighbouring Kenya amid growing fears of all-out war and potential regional conflict.
While Ethiopia is supporting the Somali government, there are allegations that its arch-foe Horn of Africa neighbour Eritrea is backing the Islamists and that the two may be using Somalia as a proxy battleground.
The deteriorating situation threatens to scupper a planned third round of Arab League-mediated peace talks between the government and the Islamists set to begin on October 30 in Khartoum.
Both sides had threatened to boycott the meeting, but last week the Islamists said they were ready to attend without conditions.
Somalia has been without a functioning central administration since 1991 and the government, formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004, has been wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over much of the country. — AFP
