Somali Islamists advance to town near govt base
Aug 15, 2006 (BAIDOA) — Islamic militiamen have advanced to a southern Somali town close to the weak transitional government’s base, officials and residents said Tuesday, a move the government may view as aggression but which at least one Islamic official says is an effort to resolve a dispute in the town.
In a dozen pickups mounted with machine-guns, the militiamen rolled into the town of Bur Haqaba at about 1200 local time, said a resident.
On July 19, when the Islamists captured Bur Haqaba, troops from neighboring Ethiopia crossed into Somalia the following day and set up base in Baidoa, where the U.N.-backed transitional government has its temporary seat. Bur Haqaba is 60 kilometers south of Baidoa.
Ethiopia and the Somali transitional government it supports denied there were Ethiopian troops in the country, though the troops were seen by several witnesses crossing to Baidoa. The Islamic militia withdrew from Bur Haqaba after its July 19 advance.
Mad Issaaq Nuur, one of the Islamic militiamen who had advanced to Bur Haqaba Tuesday, told The AP they had gone there to mediate between rival clan militias in the town.
Other Islamic militiamen said the group had gone to Bur Haqaba to receive an unspecified number of militiamen defecting from the government side. They said they planned to return to the capital, Mogadishu, once they had received the defectors.
They said they didn’t intend to attack Baidoa, 240 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu, which the Islamic group controls together with most of southern Somalia.
In Mogadishu, an official of the Islamic group said that beginning Tuesday, their militia will patrol the streets of the capital to make it more secure and stable.
Security has been a private affair since Somalia’s government collapsed in 1991. Businessmen who had arms would be advised when and how to surrender their arsenals soon, said Abdirahman Ali Mudey, an information official of the Islamic courts group.
The rise of the fundamentalist militia in recent months has prompted concerns within Africa and worldwide. The U.S. accuses the group of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. And the group’s imposition of strict religious courts has sparked fears of an emerging, Taliban-style regime.
Somalia hasn’t had an effective central government since warlords toppled longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, plunging the country into anarchy.
(AP/ST)