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UN
fears potential al-Qaida safe haven after attempted coup and worsening
chaos
Nairobi, May 16, 2009 –
Hundreds of foreigners fighting alongside Somali Islamic insurgents are
driving fierce battles against government forces which have killed more
than 100 people, the UN envoy to Somalia said today.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdalla said that between 280 and 300 foreign fighters were
involved in an attempted coup last weekend against President Sheik
Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a moderate Islamic leader.
Concern that the government might fall is mounting. Observers fear that
if al-Qaida-linked insurgents seize the capital they will gain a safe
haven on the Horn of Africa.
Somalia's coastline borders an important sea trade route and the horn
juts into the Indian Ocean just below the oil-rich ¬Arabian Peninsula.
The government controls only one major road in the capital, Mogadishu,
along with some government installations, with the assistance of about
4,350 African Union troops.
The fighting has frightened even longtime residents of the
battle-scarred capital. During a lull today people streamed out of their
homes seeking food or safer quarters.
Ould-Abdalla said some of the foreigners were mercenaries and others
were Islamic ideologues. He said he had offered to help Somalia's
hardline Islamic leaders remove their names from a UN Security Council
list of terrorists if they will work for peace.
"It is not in killing their own people that they will solve this
problem," Ould-Abdalla said, referring to the terrorist designation. "On
the contrary."
One on the UN list is hardline leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, leader
of a faction of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. The
leader of the other faction is Somalia's current president, the more
moderate Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.
Aweys has been based in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, since the umbrella
Islamic group he led with Ahmed was ousted from Mogadishu and southern
Somalia in 2006 by Ethiopian troops.
Ahmed returned to Mogadishu as president in February – and Ethiopia
withdrew its troops from Somalia – under a deal mediated by Ould-Abdalla.
Aweys returned to Mogadishu last month, saying he wanted the African
Union forces out of Somalia as well.
During this week's fighting some government troops have defected to the
insurgents, although the government denies it. The local television
station HornAfrik has run video of Islamist fighters displaying 17
military vehicles with government plates they said were brought over by
defecting soldiers.
Ahmed's spokesman, Abdulkadir Darnaamik, told Associated Press late last
night that the insurgents had taken two government buildings, including
Mogadishu Stadium, where the government kept weapons.
"No one has got the upper hand," said Darnaamik.
Residents have been fleeing for days, sleeping under trees and
sheltering children under scraps of plastic. The streets are eerily
quiet, the shops shuttered; even Friday's calls to prayer have been
silenced in some areas of northern Mogadishu.
Mother-of-two Hawo Hussein said she was going to stay with relatives in
a safer part of the capital. "There is no hope that the two sides will
stop fighting," she said.
If the violence gets worse, she added, she would flee to Kenya, where
250,000 Somali refugees already live.
Residents described seeing insurgents, some with turbans wrapped around
their faces, careering around the streets in pickup trucks bristling
with weapons.
The few people who have remained to look after houses search for food
during lulls in the violence. They say the fighting is even more intense
than when the Ethiopian troops supporting the government invaded in
2006.
The election of a moderate Islamist as president and the decision to
implement Sharia law has failed to persuade the most hardline elements
to give up their struggle. Somalia, torn apart by clan militias, has not
had an effective government for 18 years.
Source: The Associated Press
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