Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi vowed on Monday that his government, backed by Ethiopia, would take Mogadishu from powerful Islamists now controlling the city, fuelling war fears.
With forces loyal to his weak administration and Ethiopian soldiers reinforcing the government seat of Baidoa, and the Islamists pouring troops into frontline positions, Gedi said he had an obligation to act.
“The Somali government is heading to Mogadishu,” he told reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he was en route to an African Union meeting in Nigeria.
“Any effort to try to stop it from visiting its capital will be futile,” Gedi said. “We are not asking the Islamists if we can come or not; we are the transitional government of Somalia and it’s our obligation to do so.”
He gave no timeframe for the push on Mogadishu, which the Islamists seized from warlords in June after months of fierce fighting, but military build-ups around Baidoa have soared in recent weeks since the failure of peace talks.
As tensions rise, speculation abounds that full-scale war is imminent, despite severe flooding that has wiped out roads and bridges in many areas where fighting is likely.
Many diplomats and regional security experts fear all-out war in Somalia could engulf the Horn of Africa in conflict, drawing in Ethiopia, which backs the government, and its arch-foe Eritrea, accused of supporting the Islamists.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said last week that he had completed preparations for war with the Islamists and stressed on the weekend that his country would not wait for approval from anyone to attack.
Mainly Christian Ethiopia, with a large and potentially restive Muslim minority, is wary of the rise of the Islamists on its border, who have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops in Somalia protecting the government.
Meles has admitted to sending military advisers and trainers to help the Somali administration but denies numerous witness accounts of having deployed thousands of combat troops.
Asked to comment on the Ethiopian presence in and around Baidoa, about 250km north-west of Mogadishu, Gedi replied simply: “We were not the first ones to invite people in.”
The comment was a reference to allegations from United Nations arms experts and others that the Islamists are receiving weapons and military support from seven, mainly Arab, countries as well as Lebanon’s radical Hezbollah movement.
Gedi’s government and the United States accuse some Somali Islamists of links with terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and believe they are harbouring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
“The Islamists invited the foreign destabilisation [that] will undermine not only the peace in Somalia, but across the region,” Gedi said, claiming that fighters from Eritrea, Pakistan and Afghanistan were among those in the country.
“It will be the Islamists’ responsibility if war erupts in Somalia because of the participation of foreigners,” he said. — AFP