Ethiopian forces that helped Somalia’s interim government rout rival Islamists in a war over the New Year will begin leaving the chaotic Horn of Africa nation’s capital on Tuesday, an Ethiopian general said.
”Starting today [Tuesday], we will withdraw our forces from Mogadishu,” General Suem Hagoss said at a ceremony in the volatile coastal capital where former warlords and faction leaders handed over piles of their weapons to the newly installed government.
Suem was speaking in front of dozens of Ethiopian military troop trucks, some of which also towed artillery guns.
Somalia’s Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed said the Ethiopian forces guarding his fledgling government would be replaced in the coming few days by African Union peacekeepers from Malawi, Uganda and Nigeria.
”Troops from Malawi, Uganda and Nigeria are going to arrive within a week,” Aideed told reporters after the function.
South Africa, Libya, Tanzania and Angola had also agreed to send soldiers, he added, but he did not say when.
Ethiopia says it wants to pull out its troops after helping government forces oust the Islamists in a two-week war. Addis Ababa viewed the religious movement as a regional threat.
The AU has approved a nearly 8 000-strong force, but experts doubt its capacity to muster the force quickly, let alone tame a nation mired in anarchy since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Sheikh questioned
In Kenya on Tuesday, police were questioning a top Islamist leader taken into custody on the Somali border. ”Sheikh Sharif Ahmed … is in Kenya under police custody. The police are talking to him,” Kenya said in a brief statement.
Ahmed is the highest-ranking member of the former Somalia Islamic Courts Union (SICC) to have turned himself in after they were chased from the capital and the southern Somali territories they had controlled for six months.
Considered a SICC moderate before the war, Ahmed was among those the United States said should take part in reconciliation talks in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation.
The US embassy in Kenya, which is responsible for Somalia, denied reports US officials were involved his surrender, but said US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger planned to meet the former courts chairperson later this week.
”The ambassador will urge Sheikh Sharif to counsel his supporters not to carry out violence and to support the development of an inclusive government based on the Transitional Federal Charter,” the embassy said in a statement.
Washington launched an air strike two weeks ago against what it called al-Qaeda operatives among the fleeing Islamist ranks in its first publicly confirmed military strike there since ending a disastrous peacekeeping mission in 1994.
The Islamists and some foreign supporters have vowed to wage guerrilla war against Ethiopian troops in the country, and many Somalis suspect their militants have been behind a spate of attacks in Mogadishu, the latest of which took place on Monday. — Reuters