Mogadishu protesters march against foreign troops

By Andrew Cawthorne

Reuters
Friday, June 16, 2006

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Thousands of Somalis chanting anti-Western slogans protested in Mogadishu on Friday against parliament voting to allow foreign peacekeepers in the country, a move opposed by the newly powerful Islamist militias.

Punching the air, about 3,000 protesters marched through trash-lined streets in a protest organized by the Islamic courts, shouting: "We don't want foreign troops."

Others waved banners that read "America open your eyes" and "Democracy go to hell" in what organizers said was the people's response to Wednesday's parliamentary vote.

Militia loyal to Islamic courts wrested control of Mogadishu on June 5 from warlords widely viewed as backed by Washington, after a three-month battle that killed at least 350 people.

Seeking to counter accusations from their vanquished rivals, the Islamists said they had no plans to start their own government and vowed to crack down on extremists in their midst.

"We want to concentrate on bringing stability and security," Islamic Courts Union deputy Chairman Sheikh Abdulkadir Ali Omar told foreign journalists in the Somali capital at the courts' invitation.

"Then we are ready for dialogue and discussion in the future. We are not here to form our own government," Omar said.

Ironically, the warlords and Islamists shared one thing -- a vehement refusal to allow foreign troops in to secure the interim government, as Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has been requesting since his election in late 2004.

Yusuf's government is too weak to enter Mogadishu, and has made its temporary home in the south-central town of Baidoa which the Islamists appear to have flanked with a rapid march from coastal Mogadishu to Baladwayne on the Ethiopian border.

TALKS AT RISK

Wednesday's vote appeared to have put ongoing talks between the government and the Islamists at risk.

"The negotiations have no chance at the moment because of the foreign troops decision," Sheikh Abdulkadir Omar, deputy chairman of the Islamic courts, told crowds in Mogadishu's Tarbuunka square.

In a sign of the Islamic courts' increasing implementation of Sharia law, three teenagers accused of theft were whipped after Friday Prayers in Balad, a town just north of Magadishu.

"We are happy because I was fearing that my son would become a gangster but the courts have stopped that," said Abshira Ahmed, mother of one of the teenagers lashed in Balad.

The clan-based courts were established in 1998 and have gained popular support by providing a semblance of order in the capital, which had been controlled by secular warlords since the ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Under a decision made last year by the brokers of the Somali peace process and approved this week by parliament, troops from Uganda and Sudan would come first, followed by bordering states including Somalia's traditional rival Ethiopia.

"Somalis want to govern themselves ... we will never accept military intervention from Ethiopia or anyone else," said Hussein Qorab, head of a peace group linked to the courts.

Somalis are usually resistant to outside interference, and the last peace mission there ended in a bloody and humiliating withdrawal by U.S. and United Nations troops in the mid 1990s.

Many Somalis are suspicious of the intentions of Ethiopia, Washington's top counterterrorism ally in the Horn of Africa.

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Ali Bile)

Source: Washington Post