'We won the fight against the enemy of Islam'

June 06 2006
Mogadishu - An Islamic militia with alleged al-Qaeda links has seized Somalia's capital after weeks of bloody fighting with United States-backed secular warlords, raising fears that the nation could fall under the sway of Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation.After 15 years of anarchy in the Horn of Africa nation, the Islamic militia's advance unified the city for the first time in more than a decade and posed a direct challenge to a fledgling United Nations-backed Somali government."We won the fight against the enemy of Islam, Mogadishu is under control of its people," Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, said on a radio broadcast on Monday. The militia now controls a 100km radius around the capital after fighting off a secular alliance of warlords.
The Islamic militia is gaining ground just as the UN-backed interim government struggles to assert control outside its base in Baidoa, 250km from Mogadishu. Weapons prices soared there on Monday amid fears that the militia could head to Baidoa next.The militia is the first group to consolidate control over all of Mogadishu's neighbourhoods since the last government collapsed in 1991 and warlords took over, dividing the impoverished country of eight million into a patchwork of rival fiefdoms.Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Centre in St Paul, Minnesota, said the Islamic militia's victory in Mogadishu was a major turning point in the country's history."It is exactly the same thing that happened with the rise to power of the Taliban," he said, adding that the extremists are "using the people's weariness of violence, rape and civil war" to gain support for a government based on Islamic law.The battle between the militia and the secular alliance has been intensifying in recent months, with more than 300 people killed and 1 700 wounded - many of them civilians caught in the crossfire of grenades, machine guns and mortars.Alliance leaders could not be reached for comment on Monday and are likely to have fled Mogadishu. One of them, warlord Mohamed Dheere, was believed to be in neighbouring Ethiopia seeking reinforcements.The US is backing the secular alliance in an attempt to root out any al-Qaeda members operating in the Horn of Africa. US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, have confirmed cooperating with the warlords. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, president of Somalia's transitional national government, has said Washington is funding the alliance.The administration of US President George Bush has not confirmed or denied backing the alliance, saying only that it supports those who fight terror.The US has not carried out any direct action in Somalia since the deaths of 18 servicemen in a 1993 battle in Mogadishu depicted in the film Black Hawk Down.The US officials said recently that Islamic leaders in Mogadishu are sheltering three al-Qaeda leaders indicted in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The same al-Qaeda cell is believed responsible for the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 15 people and a simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner over Kenya.The Islamic militants and their secular rivals began competing for influence in earnest after a UN-backed interim government slowly began to gain international recognition. The weak government, wracked by infighting, has not even been able to enter the capital because of the violence.
Sapa-AP