Islamists, Somali govt can never agree – top warlord
July 15, 2006 (MOGADISHU) — Somalia’s interim government and the Islamists who now control Mogadishu can never share power because they have conflicting ideologies, a recently defeated top warlord said on Saturday.
Fired National Security Minister Mohamed Qanyare Afrah — until last month one of Mogadishu’s biggest warlords — said Somalia’s future looks very bleak as a result.
“The government wants to govern by the charter while the Islamic Sharia courts want to rule by the Koran. There is no way they will ever agree,” Qanyare told Reuters in an exclusive telephone interview.
In February, the Islamist Courts Union — from which the Islamist movement sprang — attacked Qanyare and eight other warlords just hours after they had formed the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.”
After months of battles that killed at least 350 people, the Islamist militias ran Qanyare and his allies out of the capital on June 5.
The Islamists went on to seize a strategic swathe of Somalia that has made them the prime challenge to the authority of the government, forced to base itself in the provincial town of Baidoa because it lacks the strength to enter Mogadishu.
The government has rejected a second round of Arab League-brokered talks in Khartoum with the Islamists, due on Saturday, and many fear that another war in the Horn of Africa country will be the inevitable result.
“I am really sorry for the Somali people. Whenever one problem ends, another one starts. The future does not look very good,” said Qanyare, speaking from his rural home Dirin, 500 km (310 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu.
Islamist militias tried to attack him there late on Wednesday, killing two of his fighters and one civilian. But five Islamists were killed by a land mine blast.
Qanyare and three other warlords who were dissident ministers in the government were fired from their posts because of the fighting.
Days after their defeat, the regional peace-making body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) slapped Qanyare and the other alliance warlords with an east African travel ban and asset freeze.
“They have to clarify what problem we have created,” he said. “They are saying there are terrorists in Somalia and those who fought them committed an offence. Now who is right and who is wrong? This is what I don’t understand.”
The Islamists are busy chasing out the last remnants of the coalition and last week ejected its sole defiant member, Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, after two days of gun battles that killed at least 140 people and wounded scores.
Though Qanyare followed many other warlords in handing over his fighters and about 100 technicals — pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons — to the Islamists, he said he would not give up his remaining arsenal.
“It is my personal property. I bought them in the market,” he said, referring to Mogadishu’s Cirtogte gun market where machineguns, missiles and other weapons are sold.
“I don’t want to attack anybody or to fight anyone. These weapons are for my own personal safety,” he said.
Qanyare and other warlords were widely despised by ordinary citizens in Mogadishu, who suffered extortion, murder and rape at the hands of their fighters after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991 and anarchy was unleashed.
Many believe the self-styled anti-terrorism coalition was funded by U.S intelligence, but Qanyare denied that.
“People who wanted to put a scar on the coalition claimed that America was funding us. That is not true,” the 65-year-old former policeman said.
He said the alliance was finished. “We were defeated maybe because of lack of coordination or support. I have no intention of returning to Mogadishu,” he said.
(Reuters)