Friday, October 23, 2009
Speaking a day after an insurgent attack against the presidency in Mogadishu sparked clashes that left at least 21 civilians dead, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke said tide was turning in the conflict.
"We're very confident that our forces will recapture the town (Mogadishu)," he told reporters in Nairobi after a meeting with UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe.
The western-backed transitional administration headed by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed controls less than half of Mogadishu and owes its survival largely to the protection of African Union peacekeepers.
Sharmarke stressed that the government would seek to reassert control over southern Somalia, which has been firmly under insurgent control since last year.
"I can assure you that we are not looking at Mogadishu only," he said.
"Some officers have been trained in Kenya... Forces have been trained and recruited in the south and they are ready... Soon we will challenge the insurgents in those areas," Sharmarke said.
An alliance of the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab group and military leaders close to the radical Hezb al-Islam in August 2008 conquered Kismayo, a key port and southern Somalia's largest city.
Much of southern Somalia has since been a stronghold for the Shebab and allied foreign fighters, run under strict Islamic law and a no-go zone for most humanitarian organisations.
Sharmarke claimed that as government forces were beefing up and receiving foreign assistance, the insurgents were getting weaker, as exemplified by internal fighting between the rebels in Kismayo this month.
"The Shebab are having lots of problems and they have lost the support of the population," he said. "Tension between them and Hezb al-Islam has caused them to withdraw from many parts of the country."
The Shebab seized on the civilian deaths caused by the African Union peacekeeping mission's retaliatory fire on Thursday and threatened the force's two contributing nations.
"It was difficult to differentiate who is who among the bodies of mothers killed by the bombardment of Ugandan and Burundian troops," Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, Shebab's Mogadishu leader, told reporters.
"The children of those mothers must divert the war from Mogadishu to the capital of those nations that attacked Somalia," he said. "I hope they will do that."
Shebab has evolved from the armed youth wing of the Islamic Courts group into an extremist organisation that recently declared allegiance to Al Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden.
The shift, coupled with the influx of foreign fighters has sparked fears that the Shebab would start attacking targets beyond Somalia's borders.
While Burundi and Uganda, the only two countries to volunteer troops for the 5,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Somalia, have no borders with Somalia, Kenya does and has repeatedly voiced concern about stability.
However the Kenyan government itself came under fire Friday for recruiting forces among the refugees that have poured into Dadaab, in northern Kenya, the world's largest refugee camp.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement claiming hundreds of Somalis in refugee camps had been approached with the promise of between 400 and 600 dollars for military training and huge salaries for fighting.
"Kenyan authorities have directly supported the drive," the group said in a statement.
"Permitting recruitment of fighters in refugee camps undermines the very purpose of the camps -- to be a place of refuge from the conflict," said Georgette Gagnon, HRW's Africa director.
Source: AFP, Oct 23, 2009