Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since he was elected in 2004 while his Ethiopia-backed government struggles to exert authority over the city.
Yusuf was welcomed at the capital’s main airport by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi under tight security by government troops nearly two weeks since an Islamist movement fled the lawless coastal town of about a million people.
With the now-vanquished Islamists vowing to wage a guerrilla war, the government said it was ready to accept ”moderates” from the movement on condition they renounce violence and agree to offer support.
It was also the first time Yusuf has set foot in the capital since he and other former army officers fled the city in 1978 after a failed Ethiopia-backed attempt to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who was toppled 13 years later.
Witnesses said Yusuf and Gedi headed to Villa Somalia, the presidential palace in southern Mogadishu that was used by Barre until his fall in 1991, when the country was carved up among rival clan warlords and their fighters.
Yusuf survived a September 18 assassination bid when assailants blew up a car outside Parliament in the provincial town of Baidoa, then the only major town in government hands, which was blamed on the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).
Officials said the government was ready to accommodate some Islamists, a move recommended on Sunday by United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendaye Frazer when she met senior Somali officials in Nairobi during a regional tour.
”Our policy is of reconciliation. Our doors are open and we shall welcome all Somali parties into the national administration,” government spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari told Agence France-Presse.
”The Islamists are welcome as long they put down their arms, stop violence and indicate their willingness to join us in rebuilding our country,” added Dinari, an indication the government was yielding to pressure from the US and European Union.
Dinari said the government would not accommodate Islamists allied to al-Qaeda network.
”We will check the records — if one has ties with al-Qaeda or other extremists, we will not offer amnesty and [they] are not welcome into the government,” he said.
Both Washington and the government have long argued that the ICU is a ”heterogeneous” mixture of moderate and hard-line clerics.
Over the weekend, Frazer met with Gedi as well as maverick Somali Parliament speaker Sherif Hassan Sheikh Aden, who was disavowed by the government when he sought negotiations with the Islamists in November.
Frazer said Washington had already opened dialogue with some ICU officials.
In Brussels, the 27 EU countries last week said non-extremist Islamists must be invited into the Somali leadership as ”a condition for the continuation of our aid” for the government.
In Mogadishu, the toll from weekend violence climbed to four after two people died overnight after gunmen attacked a camp housing Ethiopian and Somali troops in the southern part of the city.
A teenage girl was killed and two other people died in hospital hours later. On Saturday, Ethiopian and Somali forces killed a teenage boy during a demonstration against Addis Ababa’s troops and disarmament.
Analysts say the growing insecurity in Mogadishu is an indication of the government’s limited ability to impose order in a city that has changed hands several times in the last 16 years.
The joint forces last week evicted the Islamists from Kismayo, their last stronghold about 500km south of Mogadishu, forcing them into scrublands along the border with Kenya.
Islamist fighters have vowed to wage a guerrilla war to destabilise the weak government and its Ethiopian backers, which has appealed for urgent deployment of regional peacekeepers.
The presence of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu has sparked street protests in recent days, an indication of growing resentment over their presence. Many Somalis regard Ethiopians as traditional enemies, while others see them as a proxy in the US war on terrorism.
Dinari said the government suspected that some of the fleeing Islamists had ended up either in Yemen or Kenya, while others were hold up in the border scrublands.
Washington and Addis Ababa have expressed concern that the rapid rise of Somali Islamists to power was a threat to Ethiopia’s security, and risked transforming Somalia into a full-blown haven and training ground for Islamic extremists. — AFP
