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Somalia’s Islamist leader vows to expel Ethiopian troops |
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Sheikh Hassan Dahit Awyes, a senior leader of Somalia’s Islamist opposition, has vowed to expel US-backed Ethiopian troops by force and create an Islamic Republic in the war torn country on the Horn of Africa. Awyes who led Somalia’s Islamic Courts movement and who the Bush Administration claims, is a terrorist linked to the Al-Qaeda, said Mogadishu’s western-backed Transitional Federal Government was run by “traitors”. Awyes said in an interview at his base in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, that the UN-sponsored peace talks that opened in Djibouti last week, were doomed to fail unless Ethiopia first withdrew all its forces. Accusing the UN of partiality, he said, peace process cannot start and he would continue the struggle unless the US-backed Ethiopian troops were pulled out. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has, however, vowed to keep troops in Somalia. “Ethiopian forces did not enter Somalia to control the country but to make sure that extremist forces do not get into power in that country, he said. “The Islamic Courts Union has declared jihad against Ethiopia twice. It was our responsibility to resolve the huge wave of jihadis”, he said.
Awyes has accused Ethiopian troops of committing atrocities against civilians, a claim supported by an Amnesty International report, but rejected by the Ethiopian Government.
Mr. Awyes is Somalia Islamists’ most influential and respected figure. He is based in the Eritrean capital. To American dismay, many Somali Islamists gained a safe haven in Asmara after the Ethiopian intervention in late 2006 broke the Islamic Courts’ grip on Mogadishu and southern Somalia.
A successor organisation to the Islamic Courts, the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia, was launched in Asmara late last year. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed became its chairman. Western diplomats regard him as a moderate who may hold the key to national reconciliation. But Sharif is viewed with suspicion by an older generation of hardliners and some youthful militants. Awyes complains that the opposition delegation led by Sharif went to the Djibouti talks without fully consulting him and other members of the Alliance. Diverging approaches have provoked speculation about a looming power struggle.
Ethiopia dispatched its troops to Somalia in December 2006 with the backing of President Bush to remove the Union of Islamic Courts from power which had defeated the notorious warlords who held sway over the country after the UN peacekeepers were forced to withdraw in 1993. Washington which backed the invasion of Ethiopia, alleged that the Islamic Courts, a loose alliance of Islamists, had given sanctuary to Al-Qaeda elements. The US, besides planning and financing Ethiopian occupation, is now lending a helping hand to the beleaguered Ethiopian troops by launching cruise missiles from ships anchored off the Somali coast.
Ethopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a former guerilla leader and a self-proclaimed Marxist, has his own reasons to take on the Islamic Courts fighters. He believes that having a pliable government installed in Mogadishu would help neutralize the threat from the separatist movement in Ethiopia’s Ogaden province. Indications are that Somali insurgents and their counterparts in Ogaden who are strongly bound together by religious and kinship ties, are coordinating their military activities.
Ethiopian forces are, however, facing fierce opposition to their occupation of Somalia. Ethiopia admits that a significant number of its troops have been killed in recent months. In November last year, Ethiopian troops were ambushed by rebels and the bodies of Ethiopian soldiers were dragged around the streets of Mogadishu. In retaliation, according to Amnesty and other sources, the Ethiopian forces resorted to the execution of civilians. An Amnesty report has accused Ethiopian troops and local militias allied to them of carrying out killings, torture, rape, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances.
The people of Somlia are the worst sufferers. UN agencies warn that Somalia is slipping closer to catastrophe, due to a combination of unmitigated violence, large-scale population displacement, drought, failed harvests, rising global food and energy prices and endemic lawlessness. The UN says upto 3.5 million Somalis – about half the population - may soon need humanitarian assistance. In the first week of May, Ethiopian troops fired on thousands of Somalis who were demonstrating against acute food shortages that have gripped the country. More and more Somalis are fleeing the country. As many as 700,000 people fled Mogadishu last year in the wake of the Ethiopian occupation.
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