by Michel Cariou
Saturday, May 05, 2007
"The insurgents are hiding. Now, they change their strategy. They want to use car bombs, landmines," said Hussein Mohamed, a spokesman for Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
With direct combat having ended over a week ago, the Somali and Ethiopian soldiers have turned their attention to searching for arms caches and rooting out rebels in an effort to consolidate control over the war-wracked city.
They have also multiplied road blocks, closing some districts off to traffic.
The insurgents, remnants of the Union of Islamic Courts movement routed four months ago in central and southern Somalia, remain opposed to the government presence, however, and have formed ad-hoc alliances with clan fighters.
According to a Somali human rights group, around 400 people -- most of them civilians -- died in the last rounds of fighting, in which soldiers sought to stamp out the insurgency.
The fear among many of Mogadishu's inhabitants is that the current attempt to instill order will not hold, and open violence will return. Their determination to hold on to weapons despite the disarmament push has complicated the army's efforts.
Mohamed admitted that bringing security back to the city was slow going.
"We have to search house by house. It takes a long time," he said. "Every day we find bombs, landmines." He added that 200 people had been arrested in recent days.
Captain Paddy Ankunda, the spokesman for the Ugandan contingent in an African peacekeeping mission deployed in Somalia, also confirmed that "there are quite many bombs and landmines in town."
The Somali government is targeting businessmen in the capital, many of whom come from the powerful Hawiye clan that is close to the rebels. But they, too, are resisting -- for largely commercial reasons.
"Businessmen never paid taxes.... They don't want any government," Mohamed said.
Since the rebels' defeat, the leaders of the Hawiye have kept a low profile.
But the government's policies in trying to impose security on Mogadishu -- a city that has been living in armed chaos since 1991, when it became prey to fueding warlords -- has raised hackles.
"Peace behind the tanks is not real peace," said Ali Mohali Mohamed, the chief administrator of the city's Medina hospital.
Mogadishu's security problem "will not be solved by force," he said, reflecting a common opinion in the capital. He added that negotiations should instead take place. "We need reconciliation," he said.
The government, though, has shown little patience for that line of reasoning, arguing that the first step to peace is by eliminating the rebels, behind which it claims Al-Qaeda lurks.
"The civilians want peace, the government wants peace. If the government and the civilians work together, they (the rebels) will not be able to hide," the president's spokesman said.
According to him, it will be only then that the conditions would be right for a "national reconciliation conference" that is reportedly being planned for mid-June.
Source: AFP, May 05, 2007