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Warlords advance toward Somali capital-residents
By Mohamed Ali Bile1 hour, 46 minutes ago
Warlords driven out of Mogadishu by an Islamist militia are advancing back toward the Somali capital from their last stronghold of Jowhar, residents said on Thursday.
The residents, reached by telephone, told Reuters the Islamists were pulling back toward the town of Balad, which fell on Sunday and is on the road to the capital.
They said Jowhar warlords, reinforced by allies defeated in Mogadishu and Balad, had moved into positions south of the town that were previously occupied by the militia loyal to Mogadishu sharia courts.
"The (warlord) coalition has moved forward to Qalimoy, where the Islamic courts militia was yesterday. While the Islamic militia have moved back and are now in Gololey, which is 20 km (12 miles) from Balad," said local farmer Abdi Warsame.
"I think they moved back because their leaders are busy meeting in Mogadishu and they want to tighten their defenses there."
The warlords have vowed to win back the capital.
Earlier, Islamic courts chairman Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said his forces would not push into Jowhar unless they were attacked.
Scores of residents had fled Jowhar fearing an Islamist offensive. They had stopped leaving on Thursday.
"The town is much calmer. Residents are happy the Islamic militia have moved back," Warsame said.
He said hundreds took to the streets there to support U.S. President George W. Bush's statement of concern that Somalia should not become an al Qaeda safe haven.
"Local administration leaders vowed to continue fighting what they called 'al-Qaeda in Somalia'," Warsame said.
The Islamic militia won control of Mogadishu on Monday from a self-styled anti-terrorism warlord coalition, widely believed to be backed by Washington, after fierce fighting that had killed 350 people since February.
GOVERNMENT HEADING TO MOGADISHU
Awad Ashara, a member of parliament, told Reuters the country's interim government was planning to meet the Islamists.
"The government will in the coming days be sending cabinet members, lawmakers as well as influential traditional elders to Mogadishu. They will try to achieve reconciliation between the Islamic courts and the other groups," he said.
Ashara said the government wanted the Islamists to open Mogadishu's main seaport and airport, closed since 1994.
"The government urged the Islamic courts to take immediate necessary measures of establishing law and order in Mogadishu until the government comes and to work out voluntary disarmament," he said
The interim government, too weak to enter Mogadishu from its base in the provincial city of Baidoa, has welcomed the defeat of warlords widely believed to have undermined it.
The Islamist victory dislodged warlords from Mogadishu for the first time since they ousted military ruler Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, but clan fighters vowed to reclaim lost ground.
Ali Nur, a warlord fighter, said his Sa'ad clan was boosting defenses in its areas of Mogadishu.
"They have agreed to fight the Islamic courts. We will not attack them now but if they attack us, we will repel them and repossess our territories," he said.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed on Thursday to Somalia's warlords to now "come together and find a way of stabilizing and rebuilding their country."
Washington said on Wednesday it might be open to dealing with the Islamic militia, possibly signaling a new approach to Somalia.
It has long viewed the failed state as a potential shelter for international terrorists. But its reported covert funding of the defeated warlords has drawn domestic criticism.
Some analysts believe the defeat of the warlords, who ran their fiefdoms in Mogadishu with private armies for 15 years and are despised by much of the population, could create an opening for peace in the anarchic country.
Washington, which has shied away from direct involvement in Somalia since a humiliating 1994 exit of U.S. and U.N. troops, refused to discuss reports it funneled $100,000 a month to warlords, but says it will support anyone fighting terrorism.
Agreed, it was this incident which emboldened UBL, from his own quotes.Hobbit said:See, this is what happens when we cut and run in the middle of a job. We could have stabilized this country years ago, but instead, we cut and ran the second we started taking casualties. If Mogadishu had happened under the watch of somebody more similar to Bush or Reagan, it would have, by now, been practically leveled and then rebuilt bigger and better.
It might also bear mentioning that th civilians support the U.S.'s suggestion of helping clean up the country.
Rapidly unfolding events in Somalia are grabbing more and more media attention. The country of Black Hawk Down now seems poised for a climactic battle in the capital city of Mogadishu between rival militias who have been fighting one another since February.
First, some background from the State Department website:
Somalia, with an estimated population of 8.5 million, has been without a central government since 1991. The country is fragmented into three autonomous areas: the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in the south, the self-declared Republic of Somaliland in the northwest, and the State of Puntland in the northeast [see map here]. In August 2004 the 275-member clan-based Transitional Federal Assembly was selected and in October that year it elected Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as Transitional Federal President. In December 2004 he appointed Ali Mohammed Ghedi as Prime Minister. Presidential elections in Somaliland, deemed credible and transparent, were held in April 2003 in January 2004, after years of internecine power struggles, Puntlands unelected parliament selected General Adde Musse as president. Civilian authorities did not maintain effective control of the security forces. Security conditions were relatively stable in many parts of the country, but during the year (2005), serious inter-clan and intra-clan fighting continued in (8 different regions) and in Mogadishu. No group controlled more than a fraction of the countrys territory.
The US Embassy in Mogadishu has been closed for some time. All contact with Somalia is conducted through the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Somalia comes within US Central Commands area of operations. For some years now, CENTCOM has maintained Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), headquartered in Djibouti. None of its 1500-plus personnel, with a civil affairs, counter-terrorist mission, operates inside Somalia. They do however operate in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Yemen.
You might say they have the place surrounded. Former CJTF-HOA commander Maj. Gen Timothy Ghormley put its mission this way: We are trying to dry up the recruiting pool for Al Qaeda.
(An interesting note: current Joint Chiefs chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, was Deputy Commander, Joint Task Force Somalia back in 1993.)
The two rival factions who have been fighting each other for control of Mogadishu are the US-backed Alliance For Peace Restoration and Anti-Terrorism warlord militia and the Al Qaeda-financed Islamist Sharia Court militia.
Unfortunately, covert US assistance to the Alliance, said to amount to $10 million, did not translate into victory for our guys. Here is how a regional expert, an ex-Special Forces officer, pseudonym Bellisaurius assessed that situation in a document sent to me by a trusted friend:
In essence, the Sharia militia controls the entire city (of Mogadishu) less parts of the southwestern and southern suburbs, principally the Medina area. The Alliance is in disarray. Only Alliance leaders Musa Sudi Yahalow Haji, Omar Finish and Abdi Hassan Awale Qaybdid are holding out in Mogadishu proper. (dont know date for this, so info may not be accurate). In the Alliance base of Jowhar, now cut off from Mogadishu, there remain only what is left of Qanyares forces, and those of Mohammed Dhere, principal Alliance leader in the Jowhar area. (more on Dhere later).
Taken all together, the surviving Alliance militias are not only in a state of confusion, but also hugely outnumbered and outgunned. It is only a matter of time before the Sharia militia takes full control of the capital city . Meanwhile, the TFG sits and watches events from its base in Baidoa. The president and prime minister are enjoying success in their strategy of standing by and allowing Sharia Court militias to destroy their internal political opponents the Alliance leadership.
In the view of Bellisaurius,
the world will, for the time being, have to countenance a Taliban-like government in Mogadishu.
And it now appears that Sharia Court (as in establishing strict Shari law in Somalia) militias do control most of Mogadishu. According to reports from Africa News Dimension, the senior Muslim cleric there, Sheik Nur Burud, said in a Wednesday broadcast that
All Somalis must defend the Islamic (Sharia) Courts because this is about war with the infidels this fighting is about those who support Islam and godless invaders and those who support them.
Alliance commander Jeudayi Dheere has vowed that
If I see movement among the Islamic militias, we will attack. We will defend our town to the death.
Meanwhile, Somalinet is reporting that TFG Prime Minister Ghedi is urging the international community to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to Mogadishu. He told reporters in Baidoa that the Islamic Courts and Civil Society (Sharia Courts) group should manage the relief and gave assurances that Mogadishu is stable. He then called for international security teams to deploy to Mogadishu to ensure the security and safety of the city. In other words, he knows it is far from stable and wants UN and/or US forces there pronto.
There are three aspects of US policy for Somalia:
1. removing the terrorist threat extant in Somalia and ensuring against Somalias use as a terrorist base;
2. preventing developments in Somalia from threatening regional peace and stability, and
3. overcoming long-term governance challenges that terrorists exploit to make Somalia a base.
In remarks from Texas Monday, President Bush said:
I talked to Secretary of State Rice about this subject yesterday there is instability in Somalia. The first concern, of course, would be to make sure that Somalia does not become an Al Qaeda safe haven, that it doesnt become a place from which terrorists can plot and plan. So were watching very carefully the developments there and we will strategize more when I get back to Washington as how to best respond to the latest incident in Somalia.
So as pro-western and Islamic militias are poised for a climactic battle for control of Mogadishu, the US and its allies must decide on their next course of action. And at CENTCOM the contingency plan for this particular situation has been taken off the shelf. Soon enough, President Bush will be facing a very tough decision.
dmp said:I remember that well...I remember the outrage of seeing (at the time) my fellow servicemen dragged, lifeless, through the streets. God be glorified, because if I happened to have a MOAB at my disposal I'd surely have used it.
bit.
