Mogadishu residents march against Somali Islamist rulers
June 22, 2006 (MOGADISHU) — Hundreds of Somalis marched in Mogadishu on Thursday denouncing their new Islamist rulers as fundamentalists in the latest protest since the sharia courts’ militia ousted U.S.-backed warlords earlier this month.
About 700 hundred protesters, including children from Koranic schools, marched through war-shattered streets in the central Sinai district in a demonstration organised by the traditional Sufist group Ahlu Suna Wal-Jamma’a.
“We are Muslims and we do not want these fundamentalists who seized Mogadishu,” said demonstrator Muumina Ali during the three-hour march and rally.
“Sheikh Sharif’s group are fundamentalists,” shouted another protester, referring to Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which controls Mogadishu and other towns across a swathe of southern Somalia.
While the ICU has brought relative peace and stability to Mogadishu for the first time in years, residents say some Islamist militia are imposing hardline practices like forcibly cutting hair and making women cover their heads and faces.
Ahmed, the moderate face of the ICU which also includes more radical Muslim leaders, has denied accusations his organisation wants to establish a Taliban-style rule in Somalia.
The Islamist takeover of Mogadishu has further complicated the 14th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
A weak interim government formed in Kenya in 2004 is currently based in the provincial town of Baidoa.
Its leaders were meeting an Islamist delegation in Sudan on Thursday to see if they could work out a power-sharing arrangement and prevent hostilities between them.
FUNDAMENTALISTS
Interim President Abdullahi Yusuf said this week the Islamist militia could not have succeeded without support from Muslim fundamentalists across the world.
The ICU says the government was formed without the consent or consultation of the Somali people, and is conspiring with Ethiopia to launch an offensive against them.
At Thursday’s protest in Mogadishu, militia linked to local civic groups and the Sufist group kept guard.
ICU militia stayed away, witnesses said.
The march followed other anti-Islamist protests, including one organised by a defeated warlord and another by people protesting the breaking up of World Cup viewing in some cinemas.
The ICU said it was preparing a massive demonstration for Friday in Mogadishu to show the superior popular support it has, and the people’s opposition to a government plan to invite foreign peacekeepers into the Horn of Africa nation.
(Reuters)