To read the full story, click here: Somali Violence Spotlight Fundamentalists

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A recent upsurge in violence in Somalia's capital has focused attention anew on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the chaotic Horn of Africa state. The violence had killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 140 since Saturday.

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, said by the United States to be linked to al-Qaida, is prominent among the fundamentalists increasingly projecting themselves as an alternative to the numerous armed groups running the clan-based fiefdoms that comprise Somalia.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew the government and then began fighting each other.

Wednesday, Aweys pledged to keep fighting a new alliance arrayed against him in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Mogadishu was calm Thursday as elders sought to mediate.

Aweys described his rivals as "forces of evil" supported by Western powers.

His rivals, meanwhile, describe the fundamentalists as terrorists, accusing them of killing moderate intellectuals, Muslim scholars and former military officials in a string of unexplained murders. Islamic militias have set up their own courts in some parts of Mogadishu, where they shut down bars and destroy shops that reproduce or sell pirated DVDs and music cassettes.

Counterterrorism experts in the U.S. and elsewhere have long worried that al-Qaida could find a haven in Somalia, taking advantage of its instability and perhaps finding hosts among men like Aweys.

To read the full story, click here: Somali Violence Spotlight Fundamentalists

For the full article go to:  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/world/africa/18somalia.html

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 17 (AP) ? A secular alliance of warlords battling fundamentalist Islamic militias in Somalia said Wednesday that the militias were being strengthened by fighters from the Middle East, Pakistan and elsewhere, and said it had the bodies to prove it.

"Foreigners were fighting alongside the local terrorists and were killed," said Hussein Gutale Ragheh, a spokesman for the alliance. No one was caught alive, he said, but among the dead were Arabs and others who looked like Pakistanis, Sudanese and Oromo fighters from neighboring Ethiopia.

The report could not be verified.

The possible presence of foreign Islamists has heightened fears that Al Qaeda is trying to make Somalia a staging ground, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday. The United States is widely believed to be supporting the secular alliance, but officials refused Wednesday to confirm or deny that.

"Our concerns with regard to Somalia and terrorism lie primarily in the potential presence of foreign fighters in Somalia," said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman. The United States is working with a wide spectrum of leaders, and he said he did not know whether that included the warlords.

Somalia, which has had no effective central government in 15 years, has been roiled by a surge in violence that has killed more than 140 people this month in and around Mogadishu, the capital. Most victims have been civilians caught in cross-fire or hit by shells.

The Islamic fundamentalists portray themselves as capable of bringing order to the country. Their growth in popularity and strength, and the possibility that they have outside support, is reminiscent of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the late 1990's.

New York Times

MARKA, Somalia, May 26 ? A baby with its leg blown off by shrapnel. Corpses in the streets. The wounded writhing in pain inside wheelbarrows, the only ambulances around.

The exodus has come on foot, inside packed minibuses and atop overloaded trucks. Some fled with nothing but their children in their arms. Others took mattresses and cooking pots. All sought to outrun this nasty war, the worst Somalia has seen since the fall of its central government in 1991.

The fighting pits the capital's notorious warlords against Islamist leaders trying to turn the country into a religious state. The United States appears to be in the mix as well, with officials saying that Washington is concerned about foreign terrorists in the country and is working with Somali leaders.

The American officials say a small number of foreign fighters with links to Al Qaeda are operating within an alliance of Somali Islamic groups and hope to turn the anarchic country into a place not unlike Afghanistan under the Taliban. The officials would not confirm or deny reports that warlords were being paid to apprehend the foreigners.

For many of the people running for their lives from Mogadishu, the fighting is as incomprehensible as so many past conflicts: a shootout between rival militias, both heavily armed with all manner of weaponry, in which civilians are the ones bleeding the most.

The fighting erupted in February, only to worsen as the months have passed. Fueled by arms from foreign governments in the region and beyond, the battle for power has cost more than 300 lives, even as the leaders on both sides portray themselves as defenders of the people.

"We don't consider either side as good," said Issa Ali, 40, who fled with his wife and three children. "God knows which is the best to rule Mogadishu."

The warlords have ruled Mogadishu for 15 chaotic years, using young gunmen to extract as much revenue as they can from checkpoints, ports and airstrips within their turf. They have struck alliances with business leaders, who pay protection money.

But the Islamic leaders have quietly emerged as a major force, with huge political, economic and military strength. They have slowly filled a void, creating Islamic schools and courts and providing social services unavailable anywhere else. In recent days they have captured crucial areas of the capital, seizing control from the warlords.

But among the moderate sheiks are hard-liners who American officials say have formed a small Qaeda cell in Mogadishu. To combat those extremists, American intelligence officials have formed a relationship with the warlords, who call themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism.

"Clandestine third-country involvement" is what a report released this month by an expert panel convened by the United Nations calls the behind-the-scenes activity by American operatives. Without explicitly naming the United States, the panel suggested that Washington had provided financial support "to help organize and structure a militia force created to counter the threat posed by the growing militant fundamentalist movement in central and southern Somalia."

The situation has eerie parallels to Afghanistan, where warlords so disillusioned the population that the hard-line Taliban were able to move in to fill the void in the mid-1990's, slowly taking over 90 percent of the country, including the capital. That fundamentalist government, which provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden and his backers, was overthrown by the United States and its allies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In the case of Somalia, Americans are not the only ones involved behind the scenes. The United Nations panel found that Ethiopians have been arming the fledgling government that has convened outside Mogadishu, in the inland town of Baidoa.

To counter Ethiopian influence, the government of Eritrea, which broke away from Ethiopia after a civil war, has provided arms to the Islamists, the panel said, detailing precise shipments of weapons provided by each side.

The panel also accused Italy of violating a United Nations arms embargo in Somalia, saying it had shipped trucks and "a number of large, long, sealed boxes" to the transitional government. In addition, Yemen has shipped pickup trucks, military uniforms and boots to the transitional government, the experts found.

All of the countries named by the panel have denied violating the embargo.

As battles rage on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia's transitional government, which was formed after two years of peace negotiations in neighboring Kenya, largely sits on the sidelines. Its officials have issued declarations calling for an end to the violence, but to little effect.

In fact, four of the chief warlords involved in the fighting hold top-level cabinet posts in the government and have so far openly flouted calls for them to lay down their arms. The Islamists have also thumbed their noses at the government, especially its call for a foreign peacekeeping force.

Hussein Nour Ali, 43, argued that a religious state would bring order to the chaotic country and allow people to live their lives. "We support the Islamic courts because they support peace," he said. For the full article

MOGADISHU, June 1 (Reuters) - Islamic militia, who have expanded their control of Somalia's capital in fighting that has killed some 330 people, pressed their campaign north of Mogadishu on Thursday in a bid to capture more territory.

The latest battleground in the third and fiercest bout of fighting since the turn of the year between militia linked to Islamic courts and a self-styled anti-terrorism coalition of warlords was near the town of Balad.

"It's an open terrain, many must have been killed, but I don't know how many have died and are wounded so far," Ibrahim Mallim, a coalition militiaman, told Reuters by telephone.

Balad is controlled by a warlord from the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).

Founded early this year, it is widely believed to have received funding from the U.S. government.

Although also fuelled by commercial and political motives, the fighting in and around Mogadishu is seen by many Somalis as a proxy war between Islamists and Washington. Residents say it has involved some of the worst violence ever seen in Mogadishu.

HARDLINE MUSLIM STATE

The warlords say the Islamic militia, grouped around sharia courts which keep a semblance of order in the otherwise anarchic capital, include al Qaeda-linked militants and want to establish a hardline Muslim state in the Horn of Africa nation.

Somalia has been without functioning government since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. A new interim government, the 14th bid to restore central authority since then, is based in a provincial town and has little power.

Coalition sources told Reuters Balad had been reinforced with about 30 "technicals" -- pick-up trucks turned into battle wagons with fixed heavy guns -- and 200 fighters.

Local residents were fleeing for their lives.

"We have to run before both sides enter," one woman, Batulo Shiek, said by telephone from the town.

Mogadishu's Islamic Courts chairman Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who this week told Reuters that CIA officers were regularly flying into Mogadishu to meet warlords, said on Thursday the courts had issued a formal rallying cry to Somalia's 10 million people.

BBC NEWS

Published: 2006/06/06

The Islamist militia that now controls Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, has emerged out of a judicial system funded by the powerful business community to try and bring some law and order to a country without a government.

But over the past two years, the Union of Islamic Courts has emerged into Somalia's strongest fighting force - forcing the warlords who have controlled the capital for the past 15 years into retreat. There are 11 autonomous courts in Mogadishu, some of which have periodically tried to clamp down on robbery, drugs and what they say are pornographic films being shown in local video houses.

The Islamic Courts say they want to promote Islamic law rather than clan allegiance, which has divided Somalis over the past 15 years.

However, all but one of the 11 courts is associated with just one clan - the Hawiye, who dominate the capital.

Some clan elders in north Mogadishu have now set up their own court, independent of the Union.

Al-Qaeda links?

The Union's public face is its chairman Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate who sought to assure Somalis and the international community this week that the Islamic Courts were no threat and only wanted order.

But the Union does contain radical elements.

Two of the 11 courts are seen as militant; one is led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, on an American list of terrorism suspects because he used to head al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, which was linked to al-Qaeda.

He is, however, strongly critical of the United States and its "war on terror".

Western diplomats are also concerned by Afghanistan-trained militia commander Adan Hashi Ayro, whose militiamen have been implicated in numerous killings of Somali nationals, as well as five foreign aid workers and a BBC producer, Kate Peyton.

During the years of warfare and anarchy, many Somalis have increasingly turned to their faith for some sort of stability.

One visible sign is that before the civil war began in the 1980s, very few women wore headscarves in Mogadishu.

Now, almost every woman wears a headscarf and an increasing number are wearing veils covering their faces, with just narrow slits for the eyes.

Even those Mogadishu residents who are wary of Islamic extremism may welcome a single group being in control of the capital for the first time in 15 years, saying there will at least be some authority.

MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Wed Jun 7

An increasingly powerful Islamic militia rolled through its newly captured territory and installed a religious court in one town Wednesday as the remnants of a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords desperately tried to regroup.

The Islamic Courts Union controls the Somali capital and surrounding areas after defeating the secular warlord alliance in weeks of battles that killed at least 330 people ? many of them civilians caught in the crossfire.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, have confirmed cooperating with the secular warlords, who charge the militia has links to al-Qaida.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday the Islamic Courts Union had sent a letter to the United States, adding that Washington was reserving judgment on the group.

"In terms of the Islamic courts, our understanding is that this isn't a monolithic group that it is really an effort on the part of some individuals to try to restore some semblance of order in Mogadishu," McCormack told reporters.

Their aim, he added, "is to try to lay the foundations for some institutions in Somalia that might form the basis for a better and more peaceful, secure Somalia where the rule of law is important."

McCormack was answering a question whether the Islamic Courts group had pledged in its letter that it was not going to harbor terrorists. McCormack would only confirm that the letter had been received.

"I think that as a matter of principle that we would look forward to working with groups or individuals who have an interest in a better, more peaceful, more stable, secure Somalia who are interested ? who are also interested in fighting terrorism," he said.

Militiamen toting heavy machine guns installed an Islamic court in Balad, about 20 miles from the capital. Chanting residents said that an Islamic state would help pacify a nation wracked by anarchy since 1991.

"Allah is our God, Muhammad is our prophet and Islam is our religion, so we are in favor of acting on the holy Quran," said local cleric Mohamud Anshur.

Shop owner Mostaf Hassan Ali said he would give the militia a chance.

"The secular militia did not provide reliable security to this town. Now, we can rest assured the Islamists can improve the situation," he said.

About 20 miles away in Jowhar, their last remaining stronghold, secular warlords took up defensive positions two days after being pushed out of the capital in a humiliating defeat that came despite U.S. support for their alliance, which has said it wants to root out terrorists.

If militiamen capture Jowhar and consolidate power in Mogadishu, the Islamic Courts Union will effectively control all of the major towns in southern Somalia, further isolating the U.N.-backed transitional government in Baidoa, 155 miles from the capital.

Interim Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told journalists in Baidoa that the international community needed to urgently send food, medicine and temporary shelter to assist residents of Mogadishu driven from their homes by the fighting.

He called for international mediation to bring peace to Somalia's troubled capital and to prevent any future outbreaks of violence. He said his government was ready to begin negotiations with the Islamic militants.

Somalia's location in the Horn of Africa and its role as a cultural bridge with the Middle East gives the country strategic importance, so much so that the United States has posted troops in neighboring Djibouti to try to prevent terror groups from taking hold in the Horn of Africa.

The Times June 13, 2006

No music, no dancing, no football as Muslim law takes over from reign of the warlords

By Rob Crilly

The man who drove US-backed warlords out of Mogadishu says he has no desire for an Islamic state

In an interview with The Times Sheikh Ahmed insists the courts have no interest in turning Somalia into an Islamic state or governing like the Taleban in Afghanistan. He claims to have no agenda beyond keeping the warlords from the city.

?We don?t do anything. We will make facilities for the community ? whether politicians or intellectuals, women or youths ? we make facilities for people to choose what they want,? he says. ?We just want to defend our people.?

He denies any links to al-Qaeda even though his movement includes jihadists such as Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, leader of Al-Ittihad, who has admitted meeting al-Qaeda leaders and is wanted by the US.

?The USA has to bring evidence of whether he is a criminal. After that we will have a discussion,? he says. The West has got it all wrong. ?We ourselves have a question. The Westerners are against our religion, but we don?t know why,? he says before a muezzin?s call to prayer abruptly ends the interview.

Today there are 11 courts, each administering justice to a particular sub-clan. In the void of a failed state, they have managed to set up schools and clinics, and their victory last week has halted the bloodiest round of fighting seen in a decade, with more than 350 people killed this year.

But the restoration of some semblance of order has come at a price. The courts have closed cinemas accused of showing immoral films and made celebrating New Year a capital offence. A boy was recently allowed to stab his father?s killer to death in front of a cheering crowd.

At Mogadishu?s Peace Hotel weddings used to finish with hundreds of people dancing in the car park, but no longer. ?The Islamic courts have told us there can be no pop music,? says a waiter. ?It?s very sad. We all hope that things are not going to be like Afghanistan.?

Further afield Somalia?s fledgling government, set up 18 months ago with United Nations backing, is watching developments anxiously from its base in Baidoa about 130 miles to the northwest.

It has opened talks with the Sharia courts to see whether they might be able to work together. Mohamed Abdi Hayir, Somalia?s Information Minister, said: ?Like any organisation there are extremists and moderates within the courts. We will see if we can work with the moderates so that the extremists do not have any power.?

But Sheikh Ahmed?s allies include many who believe that the Sharia courts? triumph in Mogadishu should be replicated nationwide, turning Somalia into an Islamic state.

Sheikh Mohamed Siad, the governor of Lower Shabelle, is one of the military strongmen whose thousands of militiamen and fleet of ?technicals? ? Toyota pick-ups fitted with anti-aircraft guns ? provide much of the Islamic courts? muscle.

?We are Muslims and we must work at implementing Koranic law. Democracy will never work,? he says, slurping a cappuccino as he holds court.

The militias are engaged in a war against infidels, he says. ?The warlords are killers, looters. So we are at war with them and the people who supported them, including Americans.?

JUSTICE AND THE KORAN

Sharia, or Islamic law, is either specified in the Koran or Sunna (sayings of the Prophet), or interpreted from them by religious scholars

Saudi Arabia

Exclusively derived from the Koran and the Sunna. Recommended punishments for some specific offences include mutilation and beheading

Nigeria

Some northern states have implemented Sharia. Recommended punishments are enforced

Malaysia

Islamic civil courts are increasingly powerful, despite secular constitution.  For the full story...

Reuters June 14 2006

Somalia's parliament on Wednesday approved deployment of foreign peacekeepers to the anarchic nation, a move opposed by newly powerful Islamist militias controlling Mogadishu, the parliament speaker said.

Out of 199 legislators voting, 125 were for a plan approved last year by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which oversaw Somalia's peace process, parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan announced in the legislature.

The original opponents -- the Mogadishu warlords routed last week from the capital by Islamist militia -- are out of the way.

But the newly influential Islamists, loyal to the city's sharia courts, had threatened to stop talks now underway with the government if the plan was passed.

Islamic Courts Union Chairman Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had no immediate reaction when reached by telephone.

NY Times

6 Nations Urge Talks in Somalia for Exiled Rulers and Islamists

By HELENE COOPER

The United States joined five other countries yesterday in calling for negotiations between Somalia's largely powerless government in exile and the Islamists who have seized control in Mogadishu and swaths of southern Somalia.

The diplomats also pledged economic and political support to Somalia's long-neglected interim government, which was formed with United Nations support but has been unable to enter Mogadishu, the previous capital, and has been stuck in Baidoa, about 150 miles away.

A communiqué issued after the hurriedly convened meeting is filled with diplomatic but nonspecific references to the need for "enhanced multilateral engagement" and "overall co-ordination of the international community's support."

The countries in the group are the United States, Britain, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Tanzania.

In any event, Washington is adopting a more conciliatory approach to the Islamists. Jendayi E. Frazer, the State Department's top Africa official, had kind words yesterday about a second letter from Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamist militia group.

"Before our meeting, we received a letter from the Islamic Courts Union," Ms. Frazer said. "They said they won't allow Somalia and Mogadishu to become a haven for terrorists, and that's encouraging."

Mr. Ahmed and the Islamic Courts Union seized control of Mogadishu last week. The first letter to the international community was also conciliatory, saying that the Islamists wanted a "friendly relationship."

But Ms. Frazer questioned why the Islamic militias were continuing to push north into other Somali towns. Reuters, quoting residents, reported yesterday that Islamist militias had moved on Baladweyne, near the Ethiopian border and about 190 miles north of Mogadishu.

"What is the purpose, what is the intent?" Ms. Frazer asked.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since early 1991, when largely clan-based warlords overthrew its dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, then turned on one another. Last week, American-backed warlords fighting against Islamists were run out of Mogadishu. Washington fears the Somali Islamists may be harboring operatives of Al Qaeda.

The United States began informally reaching out to Somali clans in late 2002, shortly after an attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and a failed attempt to shoot down a plane bound for Israel from Mombasa. Washington was seeking intelligence about people suspected of being members of Al Qaeda, said a recent report by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive experience in Somalia.

But while that approach brought a few successes, it may also be part of the reason for the Islamic resurgence in Somalia, which is far better known for clan loyalty than for adherence to strict Islamic codes.

Yesterday's communiqué also called on the international community to increase relief assistance to Somalia. There are some 250,000 displaced people in Mogadishu, and Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, said he told the diplomats, "Somalia today is one of the worst human crises on earth."

"It's a place where people do not go to school but become child soldiers and terrorists," Mr. Egeland said after the meeting.  For the full article....

NY Times

MOGADISHU, Somalia, June 18 ? Flush from a military victory earlier this month that caught Washington and the world by surprise, Islamic militiamen have begun waging smaller battles ? cultural, not military ones ? in and around Somalia's shellshocked capital.

A week ago, when Mexico and Iran were still playing the first half of their World Cup soccer match, gunmen allied with the Islamic courts burst into a tiny theater in the Hiliwaa neighborhood of north Mogadishu, condemned the place as ungodly and angrily switched off the television set.

When they caught sight of a man with a trendy Afro, with lines shaved into it, they tied his hands behind his back, took out a pair of scissors and evened it out into a scalp-revealing buzz cut.

"They said, 'Your hair is against our culture and is not Islamic,' " recalled the man, Abdi Fatah, 26. They whipped him with a belt, then jailed him for three days.

With the old warlords gone, Mogadishu is safer, and more dangerous, too. It is a happier place, and a more oppressive one. It is a capital city that is also a rundown shantytown, churning with change. Where exactly it is headed nobody knows.

Fewer guns are visible now. The man-made roadblocks have disappeared, leaving livestock and huge craters as the main obstructions to navigation. But a new, more silent battle is under way, for control of the Islamic movement in Somalia.

Moderate sheiks led by Sharif Ahmed, a fresh-faced former geography teacher who insists his country is not using Taliban of Afghanistan as a model, are jockeying for power with those with a more rigid interpretation of Islam. For every warm handshake a visiting reporter receives, others offer nothing more than an icy glare.

Mr. Aden counts as an associate Aden Hashi Ayro, a young military commander trained in Afghanistan who leads a faction linked to a string of assassinations. He is believed to despise the West. Mr. Ayro could not be reached for comment despite numerous inquiries. People close to him said he had nothing to hide but was unavailable.

Mr. Aden, though, was willing to speak, albeit with obvious disdain. Mr. Aden, an orphan who said religion taught him what his deceased parents never could, spoke in a whisper, his face peeking out from under a scarf.

"If you will not join Islam, you are not my brother," he said, refusing to offer his hand. "I am a holy warrior and those who disturb Islam, we will disturb them."

The scramble for power in Mogadishu is taking place behind the scenes, in mosques and private rooms where clan elders gather. It filters to the surface only in the mixed signals that are being given about what people can wear now, and what they can do.

The capital's Islamic leaders find themselves in an unfamiliar spot. No longer can they just preach about the way things are supposed to be. Now they face the challenge of running a broken-down city of two million suffering souls.

Mogadishu's current journey began a decade ago when the clans that rule the city became fed up with anarchy, after a dictator was ousted. Since there was no government or order, they set up Shariah courts. The courts, each linked to a clan, hired their own gunmen and began the tricky task of settling disputes.

Islamic schools, financially backed by various Middle Eastern countries, popped up. The graduates now fill the rank and file of the new administration.

Soon, the clan-based courts merged in a powerful alliance that eventually took on and toppled the warlords who had been ruling and running roughshod over Mogadishu residents.

But those courts owe part of their strength to the Bush administration, which tried secretly to undermine them. In recent years, American intelligence agents paid warlords to root out Islamic militants operating in Mogadishu. The United States said a small cell of Al Qaeda, made up of foreigners, had set up shop in Mogadishu after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and were being protected by court leaders.

"Al Qaeda's concept is right and one day they will rule," said Mr. Aden, the young militia commander. "The name Muslim and Al Qaeda are the same to me. We are alike."

But sympathizing with Al Qaeda and working on its behalf, Somalis say, are two different things. "I think there are people here who love bin Laden and Al Qaeda but that's true in every capital, even Washington," said Ali Iman Sharmarke, a prominent Mogadishu radio journalist who studied in America. "But those willing to strap a bomb to themselves and fight for Al Qaeda, they're not here."

Still, Washington's concerns remain, and now the task of portraying moderation falls to Mr. Ahmed, the top leader of the Islamic courts. Soft-spoken and erudite, he said he first became involved in Shariah courts in Mogadishu after a 12-year-old boy at the Islamic school where he was teaching geography was abducted by militiamen.

"We are a Muslim people, we want to live in a peaceful way, we want to live with the rest of the world in a peaceful way," said the bearded Mr. Ahmed, 41, who was trained in the Koran in Sudan and Libya. "We are not terrorists and we do not associate with terrorists."

The Islamic courts are not World Cup haters, either, Mr. Ahmed has said, explaining that a rogue militia, not an official order, led to the closing of some theaters.

Mr. Fatah is still watching the World Cup, although he is now doing so in the houses of friends who have satellite dishes. Other Somalis, though, continue to pack into public theaters in other parts of town, where the local militias have opted for moderation.

But there have been other confrontations. Earlier this year, Islamic militiamen stopped Ismahan Ali Mohamed, 18, on the street and ripped the long, tight-fitting skirt she was wearing. They ordered her to wear a looser garment next time.

Now, she wears a flowing hijab on the streets that covers all but her face. "It feels heavy and it's not comfortable," she said, removing it inside a hotel restaurant to reveal a bright pink outfit that still covered her but allowed more of a glimpse of what was underneath. "With this, I feel happy and beautiful and free," said Ms. Mohamed, an aspiring actress.

A friend, Ubah Mohamed, 34, who runs a beauty shop, said she feared the new rules. "If these Islamic people get their way, we'll have to cover all the way," she said. "I'm a beautiful girl and I like to show others how beautiful I am. Behind the veil, no one can tell."

Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31, who publishes a small newsletter devoted to women's issues, heard from a man involved in one of the Islamic courts that her publication would probably be shut down. "He said, 'Women have a right to sit in your house and do domestic things,' " she said. " 'You don't have a right to do a journal on human rights.' "

At a rally orchestrated by the new Islamic leadership to show the population's opposition to foreign peacekeepers, the only guns visible belonged to Islamic militiamen providing security. But one of them readied his AK-47 to fire and pointed it at the head of a young boy to shoo him to the side.  For the full article..

Sudan Tribune

Friday 23 June 2006

June 22, 2006 (MOGADISHU) ? Hundreds of Somalis marched in Mogadishu on Thursday denouncing their new Islamist rulers as fundamentalists in the latest protest since the sharia courts? militia ousted U.S.-backed warlords earlier this month.

About 700 hundred protesters, including children from Koranic schools, marched through war-shattered streets in the central Sinai district in a demonstration organised by the traditional Sufist group Ahlu Suna Wal-Jamma?a.

"We are Muslims and we do not want these fundamentalists who seized Mogadishu," said demonstrator Muumina Ali during the three-hour march and rally.

"Sheikh Sharif?s group are fundamentalists," shouted another protester, referring to Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which controls Mogadishu and other towns across a swathe of southern Somalia.

While the ICU has brought relative peace and stability to Mogadishu for the first time in years, residents say some Islamist militia are imposing hardline practices like forcibly cutting hair and making women cover their heads and faces.

Ahmed, the moderate face of the ICU which also includes more radical Muslim leaders, has denied accusations his organisation wants to establish a Taliban-style rule in Somalia.

The Islamist takeover of Mogadishu has further complicated the 14th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

FUNDAMENTALISTS

Interim President Abdullahi Yusuf said this week the Islamist militia could not have succeeded without support from Muslim fundamentalists across the world.

The ICU says the government was formed without the consent or consultation of the Somali people, and is conspiring with Ethiopia to launch an offensive against them.

At Thursday?s protest in Mogadishu, militia linked to local civic groups and the Sufist group kept guard.

ICU militia stayed away, witnesses said.

The march followed other anti-Islamist protests, including one organized by a defeated warlord and another by people protesting the breaking up of World Cup viewing in some cinemas.

Sudan Tribune

Sunday 25 June 2006.

June 24, 2006 (MOGADISHU) ? A fundamentalist Muslim who is listed by the U.S. State Department as a suspected al-Qaida collaborator was named Saturday as the new leader of an Islamic militia that has seized control of Somalia?s capital.

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, Chairman of the Union of the Islamic Courts in Somalia.The appointment of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys ? announced by the group in a media statement ? makes it unlikely that the increasingly powerful militia will govern using the moderate brand of Islam practiced by most Somalis.

In yet another sign that radical Islam is taking hold, the group changed its name Saturday from the Islamic Courts Union to the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts.

Aweys, a cleric believed to be in his 60s, has strenuously advocated for a strict Islamic government to end 15 years of anarchy in Somalia. In 1991, warlords drove out dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and turned on each other, turning the country into a patchwork of rival fiefdoms.

Aweys replaces Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who is more moderate.

Since seizing control of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia from warlords earlier this month, Ahmed has softened his rhetoric calling for strict Islamic, or sharia, law, and agreed to recognize the largely powerless interim government. That government is based in Baidoa, 150 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu, because the capital is so violent. For the full article?

.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali Islamists seized more territory near Mogadishu overnight, witnesses said on Tuesday, prompting accusations they had violated a ceasefire agreement.

In the first attack around Mogadishu since militia loyal to sharia courts took the capital from warlords this month, five people were killed when gunmen seized three checkpoints from a warlord.

Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, who was part of the defeated self-styled anti-terrorism warlord alliance and has remained in Mogadishu, said he would respond to the attack.

Residents said Mogadishu was tense as night approached, with fears of overnight clashes erupting as fighters loyal to Islamic courts gathered.

"The Islamic courts militia have massed near the sports ground. I think there could be a confrontation with Qaybdiid's fighters," Furhan Gure, a resident, told Reuters.

The captured checkpoints are on the route to Afgoye, about 20 km (13 miles) from the capital.

Deputy Information Minister Salad Ali Jele said the Islamic courts had violated an agreement signed in Sudan's capital Khartoum last week to stop military campaigns.

"They agreed not to start new violence," Jele said in a statement from the southern town of Baidoa, where the interim government is based.  

SHARIA LAW

The sharia courts now control a large swathe of Somalia and have appointed Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, named in a U.N. list of al Qaeda associates, to lead their governing council, raising fears they want to impose Taliban-style rule on Somalia.

Aweys said in an interview published on Tuesday by the Xogogaal daily newspaper the Islamists would negotiate with the government but wanted to extend "sharia law and its order to all inside the country".

Their victory dealt the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign an embarrassing setback, as its funding for the much-despised warlords gave the Islamists popular support that fueled their rapid march across a key part of Somalia.

Aweys again denied any affiliation with al Qaeda or other extremist groups.

"I am not on the American list of terrorists, but I am in a list of those who lost their money due to the closure of Barakat Money Remittance Company by the Americans," he said.

Barakat -- a Somali wire transfer company -- was shut down by the United States after the September 11, 2001 bombings, in what it said was a move to stem financing for extremists.

Aweys said the Islamists would keep their promise to negotiate with President Abdullahi Yusuf's weak but internationally recognized interim government.  

But he said the temporary charter now guiding the government must comply with sharia.

"We will negotiate with them, discuss and remove the secular articles that are opposed to the Islamic law," Aweys told the newspaper. "The TFG should accept this because the TFG members are also Muslim."

"One of the pillars of our charter says any rule and law against the Islamic sharia law is null and void. We don't see it as a problem," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.

Somalis in general practice a moderate form of Islam. Some said the Islamists' planned stoning to death of five rapists on Monday, since postponed, showed they wanted to pursue a hard line despite presenting a moderate face.  For the full article...

ICC NOTE:  Yet again there are two messages out there, one in which the Somali Islamic leaders say they will be moderate, and a complete different one reflected by Bin Laden's most recent message, saying that Somalia will become the next battleground against the West.  United Nations Ambassador, John Bolton had recently commented that where you find terrorism, you will find incredible religious intolerance.  Please pray for the Christians in Somalia, where a battle is already raging against them.

For the full article go to: News 24.com

Mogadishu - Somali Muslims who fail to perform daily prayers will be killed in accordance with Qur'anic law under a new edict issued by a leading cleric in the Islamic courts union that controlled the capital.

The requirement for Muslims to observe the five-times daily ritual under penalty of death was announced late on Wednesday and appeared to confirm the hardline nature of the increasingly powerful Sharia courts in Mogadishu.

Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, said: "He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel and Sharia law orders that that person be killed."

Peace and prosperity

Ali said: "Sharia law orders the killing of any Muslim person when he fails to perform prayers."

Ali added that it was the duty of every Somali to implement the provisions of Sharia law, which after fully accepted would allow "everybody to enjoy life based on peace and prosperity".

Members of such militia shot and killed two people in central Somalia late on Tuesday while quelling a protest against a ban on watching the World Cup at a local cinema and had in the past been tasked with carrying out court rules.

US 'supports vanquished warlords'

Muslim militiamen had also presided at several public executions ordered by the Islamic courts in recent months and other Mogadishu residents had complained of harassment at their hands for not dressing properly.

The Islamists flatly rejected the charges, but had vowed to impose strict Sharia law across the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim country in what many saw as a direct challenge to Somalia's largely powerless transitional government.

The Islamic courts had signed a mutual recognition pact with the government and were due to meet with senior officials next week in Sudan, but remained at deep odds with the administration on several key issues.   

For the full article:  CNN

MOGADISHU, Somalia  -- The Islamic militiamen controlling the Somali capital broke up a wedding celebration because a band was playing and women and men were socializing together, witnesses said Saturday, describing the latest crackdown by a group feared to be installing Taliban-style rule in this African nation.

The Islamic fighters beat band members with electric cables and confiscated their equipment, said Asha Ilmi Hashi, a singer with the group Mogadishu Stars.

"We had warned the family not to include in their ceremony what is not allowed by the sharia law. This includes the mixing of men and women and playing music," Sheik Iise Salad, who heads an Islamic court in the northeastern Huriwaa District, told The Associated Press. "That is why we raided and took their equipment."

"What was going there was un-Islamic," Salad said.

The late Friday attack came three days after militiamen in central Somalia shot and killed two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast banned because it violated the fighters' strict interpretation of Islamic law. (Full story)

A recruiting video issued by militia members and obtained by The Associated Press this week shows Arab radicals fighting alongside the local extremists in Mogadishu, provided the first hard evidence that non-Somalis have joined with Islamic extremists in Somalia. The group has repeatedly denied links to extremists such as al Qaeda.

The militia has filled a power vacuum in this anarchic country without effective central government, setting up a court system and a militia to enforce their vision of Islamic rule.

The group has appeared to grow increasingly radical, forbidding movies, television and now music. 

For the full article go to:  Reuters

By Mohamed Ali Bile and Guled Mohamed

MOGADISHU,  - Islamists who control Mogadishu and a large swathe of southern Somalia have opened a sharia court to serve two government-controlled regions, officials said on Monday.

The Islamic movement has set up nine new courts in areas it has seized since driving out U.S.-backed warlords from Mogadishu on June 5, but it is the first time the Islamists have established a court in an area they do not yet control.

The move is likely to inflame tensions between the Islamists and the government, which is struggling to assert its authority beyond is temporary base in the provincial town of Baidoa.

A day after the interim government agreed to continue talks with the newly powerful Islamists, the Islamic movement announced it had opened the Al-Bayan court in the Bay and Bakol area which falls under the direct control of the government.

Top Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, called on the Digil and Mirifle clan in those areas to cooperate.

A wealthy Mogadishu businessman who declined to be named spoke on behalf of other businessmen from the two regions. "We are a Muslim and it is a must to practise Islam," he said.

The Islamic Courts Union, an alliance of sharia courts from which the Islamist movement sprang, is the biggest threat to the authority of interim President Abdullahi Yusuf's Western-backed government.

Many fear tensions between the Islamists -- led by longtime Yusuf foe and hardline cleric Hassan Dahir Aweys -- and the government will boil over into an all-out fight for supremacy of the anarchic Horn of Africa country of 10 million.

The International Somalia Contact Group, comprising the United States, European Union, African Union, Arab League meeting in Brussels on Monday called on both sides to respect a June 22 ceasefire agreement and urged more talks.

In a statement it also urged the U.N. Security Council to "consider with a sense of urgency" modifying the arms embargo to allow security forces to be trained.

Military and official sources told Reuters last week that thousands of Ethiopian troops, whose government is allied to the interim Somali government, were scattered within several locations in Somalia, including the outskirts of Baidoa in a bid to prevent possible Islamist attacks.

Militia sources said on Sunday the Islamists had agreed on a defence line to prevent attacks on the capital at the strategic Baledogle military airport, the midway point on the road between Mogadishu and Baidoa.

For the full article go to: BBC News

July 28 2006

Riots have broken out in the Somali town of Baidoa after a minister in the transitional government was shot dead.  Minister Abdallah Isaaq Deerow was killed outside a mosque in Baidoa, where the government is based.

On Thursday, at least 19 members of the transitional government - which controls only a small area - resigned.

In another development, a second cargo plane has landed in Mogadishu, fuelling allegations that the Islamic forces who control the city are receiving arms.

Mr Deerow, minister of constitutional affairs, was killed after Friday prayers at the mosque.

Later on Friday, hundreds of people took to the streets of Baidoa in protest at his killing, burning tyres and looting shops.

Mr Deerow was not among the group of ministers who resigned on Thursday.

Obstacle

The resignations were prompted by some ministers' dissatisfaction that Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi had failed to make progress in talks with the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls Mogadishu.

Public Works Minister Osman Ali Atto said he came back from the capital to the government's base with an agreement from the Islamic courts that fresh talks be held.

But he said that Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi was "an obstacle to progress" and had refused to listen.

Some MPs are planning a motion of no confidence in the government.

They are opposed to the deployment of foreign peacekeepers and the presence of Ethiopian troops who are in Baidoa with the blessing of the transitional goverment.

More resignations are expected and observers say that the transitional government is looking increasingly fragile.

President Abdullahi Yusuf's government has little influence outside its base in Baidoa, but has the diplomatic support of the United Nations and the African Union (AU) and the strong backing of neighbouring Ethiopia.

Many Somalis, including the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which controls much of southern Somalia, are opposed to the presence of Ethiopian troops on Somali soil.

For the full article go to Church of England Newspaper    

July 28 

By Ed Beavan

The route from independence

Somalia, which borders Ethiopia and Kenya, has a population of around 10 million people and has been blighted by years of civil war, famine and drought leading to the death of a million of its inhabitants.

Somalia became independent from British rule in 1960, but has been without an effective government for almost 15 years after the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991. Lawlessness has been rife during that period with rival clans waging war against one another, while in the early 1990s the north-west of the country declared itself the self-proclaimed the state of Somaliland, and has since enjoyed a period of relative stability.  Somalia is almost 99.9 per cent Muslim and the small number of Christians in Somalia have been heavily persecuted with many being killed.

Why could war break out?

The current crisis in the country has been sparked by escalating tensions between Ethiopia and the Union of the Islamic Courts (UIC), the Islamic militants who control the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Ethiopian troops have moved into two towns in south-western Somalia after their government backed Somalia?s interim government, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. The UIC, which has spread its control to much of the southern part of Somalia, has vowed to wage a ?Holy War? and drive out the Ethiopian troops.

Many Western commentators fear the UIC could be offering safe havens for Islamic radicals and allowing al-Qaeda to run training camps in Somalia, although the militia denies it has links with the terrorist group. The UIC say their aim is to restore a system of Sharia law in the city and put an end to brutality and fighting on the streets. To further complicate the situation, a UN report earlier in the year linked the UIC with Ethiopia?s rival and neighbour Eritrea.

The views of British Christian groups

Dr Khataza Gondwe, Advocacy Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa for the Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) Group, is keeping a close eye on the situation in Somalia, and said: ?I don?t think Somalia has been forgotten about as there is still the al-Qaeda angle which means it is always on the agenda, but it?s a place people don?t want to get involved in because there is so much lawlessness, and after the failure of the previous American intervention.

?At the moment is it extremely worrying, things are bubbling up and it?s hard to see a solution, as the Islamic Courts have such momentum and object to an EU or UN peace force, while the transitional government is so weak.?

Persecution widespread

Dr Gondwe also explained the horrific situation for Somalian Christians, many of whom have fled to Kenya because of the high levels of persecution. She said: ?The situation for Christians is awful, the one thing Somalians agree on is ?let?s kill Christians?.

?Any Somalian who claims to be a Christian is an apostate, and Christians face serious persecution or death. ?Only recently we heard about three Christians who were shot dead as they came back from an international prayer meeting in Mogadishu. ?Meanwhile a Christian family had their house set on fire, with the mother and daughter who survived suffering serious burns.

?Even Somalian Christians who manage to escape to Kenya still suffer persecution from Somali Muslims who have also fled across the border.? CSW is currently lobbying the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to recognise the plight of Somali Christian refugees and their need for special consideration. Open Doors UK, an organisation which highlights the plight of persecuted Christians around the world, places Somalia as the fourth worst place for Christians to live on their World Watch List, after North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In their synopsis of the situation, they write: ?In Somalia, there is no constitution or any legal provision for the protection of religious freedom. The federal government is very weak as the warlords still have some control in different parts of Somalia. Islam is the official religion and social pressure is strong to respect Islamic tradition, especially in certain rural parts of the country.

?Most regions make use of local forms of conflict resolution, either secular, traditional clan-based arbitration, or Islamic (sharia) law. ?Less than one per cent of ethnic Somalis are Christian, practicing their faith in secret. In some parts of Somalia, underground believers from a Muslim background find themselves in a worse situation than in 2005. Five of these believers were killed by fundamentalist Muslims. As a result, many others became afraid and fled to Kenya and other parts of the world.?

What does the future hold?

The interim government is due to hold talks with the Islamic Courts in early August in Khartoum, after previous talks broke down. But given the lack of success in previous attempts to broker peace between the two sides it is hard to be too optimistic about the situation. Last week many Somalis lined the streets demonstrating their antipathy to the Ethiopian troops occupying the two towns in the south.

It?s hard to believe things will improve unless the UN and western superpowers get behind peace talks for the region.

But despite the lack of news on our TV screens and in our papers on Somalia, British Christians need to continue to pray for peace for this beleaguered region.

For the full article go to:  The Christian Science Monitor

BAIDOA, SOMALIA

Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) began life without a home - conducting business in a Kenyan sports center.

Since returning to battle-scarred Somalia in February, it rapidly found itself without a country to govern. By early June, Islamist militias seized the capital, Mogadishu, and took control of wide swaths of central and southern Somalia.

Now, the TFG is facing complete collapse after 38 ministers and assistant ministers have quit in the past nine days.

"What we need is the prime minister to have a clear policy to deal with moderates in the Islamic courts. As a government we have to have our principles and a strategy to talk with them," says Ibrahim Isaac Yerow, sipping a spiced cup of coffee outside the former grain warehouse where Parliament sits in the dusty provincial town of Baidoa. "We don't have that at the moment."

Before resigning Wednesday, Mr. Yerow was the assistant minister of national property. Four more ministers quit Thursday.

The emergence of the Union of Islamic Courts - now the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia - as a political force in Somalia sent shockwaves through Western governments earlier this year, raising fears that they could turn this country into a haven for Al Qaeda.

They took control of Mogadishu in June, ousting a coalition of warlords who allegedly received backing from the US.

Since then the TFG has seen its influence limited to the city of Baidoa, about 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu.

Deadlines for peace talks in Sudan have come and gone during the past month, with both sides blaming the other for sabotaging negotiations.

Ethiopian troops reportedly arrived here to bolster government defenses as Islamic militias moved to within 40 miles of Baidoa, although both sides now appear to have pulled back from all-out war.

It has been a turbulent week in Baidoa.

Last Friday, Abdallah Isaaq Deerow, minister for constitutional and federal affairs, was shot dead as he left a mosque, prompting a security crackdown in the town.

Two days later prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi narrowly survived a vote of no-confidence that erupted into a fist fight between members of Parliament.

Meanwhile, the Islamists have consolidated their hold. On Tuesday they took control of more than 50 battlewagons from clan-based militia leaders and opened a new Islamic court some 370 miles north of their Mogadishu stronghold.

This week another round of peace talks failed to materialize.

David Shinn, former US ambassador to Ethiopia, says the delay in restarting talks means the government is running out of options.

"Everyday, the TFG gets weaker and as it gets weaker its bargaining position gets weaker, too," he said by telephone from Washington.

He says its only hope may be that the Islamists would split between extremists - such as Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, cited by the US as a terrorist - and moderates in the movement.

Mohamed Abdi Hayir, minister of information, says his government has no fear that the Islamists are going to take Baidoa or that Mr. Gedi's administration will implode.

"There is no political crisis," he insists, pointing out that only 16 full ministers out of 42 have resigned. "We are working in a democratic way. People are free to leave the government and the prime minister can replace them as he chooses."

But if even six more full ministers resign - something observers say could be imminent - the TFG would likely crumble.

And, like many here, Mr. Ali worries that the TFG's presence in Baidoa will soon make the town a target of Islamist militias.

"The town is the base of the government and so we always know that they want this place," he says of the Islamic courts. "They have all stopped talking about the peace talks which makes us worry that they may try to take it by force."

For the full article go to BBC News

Anti-Islamist protest in Somalia

August 9 2006

Tension is high in a central Somali town after protests against Islamists who now control the capital, Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia. Correspondents say residents in Galkayo, 600km north west of Mogadisu, are divided about whether to support the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

Two people were injured in Tuesday's protest, led by clerics who say the UIC's brand of Islam is too militant.

Galkayo borders Puntland, a region believed to be against the courts.

The transitional government of Somalia, based in Baidoa, is also divided about whether to negotiate with the courts.

Scuffles

Hundreds of people carrying placards and shouting anti-UIC slogans took part in the demonstations before scuffles broke out, Somalia's Shabelle website reports.

 I'm not willing to go back to Somalia until Somalia becomes peaceful and a democracy

UIC militia are reported to be controlling a main road outside Galkayo.

In Baidoa, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi is attempting to form a new 31-member cabinet after the previous cabinet was dissolved on Monday.

President Abdullahi Yusuf has given him a week to form a new government.

The two agreed on Monday to put aside their differences, after divisions on the question of possible talks with the Islamists sparked a crisis in the government.

The interim cabinet originally had more than 100 members, not all of whom had been approved by parliament.

Over the past two weeks some 40 ministers quit their posts in protest at the prime minister's opposition to peace talks with the UIC, and Mr Ghedi narrowly survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

For the full article go to Sudan Tribune

Friday 11 August 2006.

Aug 10, 2006 (MOGADISHU) ? Troops in Somalia?s semiautonomous Puntland region said Thursday they were ready to fight Islamic militants who are trying to spread their influence to the central part of the country after taking control of much of the south.

Somali militiamen belonging to the Islamic fighter faction brandish their weapons 04 June 2006 in Balad."We hear that the militiamen want to expand their authority throughout Somalia, but we will never accept such expansion," Puntland Gen. Yusuf Ahmed Kheyr said in a radio broadcast.

Puntland declared its autonomy in 1998 as much of this Horn of Africa nation was descending into chaos. The region has its own justice system and has been relatively peaceful.

"Puntland is calm and has formed all necessary regional administrations," Kheyr said.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the Islamist group, has been in central Somalia in a bid to increase the territory the Islamists hold.

The Islamic militants have stepped into the power vacuum in recent months and imposed strict religious courts, raising fears of an emerging Taliban-style regime. The United States accuses the group of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Somalia?s official government is virtually powerless and is based in Baidoa, 255 kilometers outside the capital. The Islamist group -known as the Supreme Islamic Courts Council - has further marginalized the fragile administration, which was formed two years ago to help stabilize the country.

Also Thursday, the Islamist group arrested two men who were running for local office in the capital of Mogadishu. The men were seeking positions on the Mogadishu Local Council, which was formed by the warlords who ruled the capital before the militants took over in June.

"The council is a remnant of the warlords so they can?t have a say in the running of the capital," said Sheik Utaiba, who ordered the arrests.

For the full article go to All Africa

Greg Alonso Pirio

Lagos

The growing power of the Islamic Courts in southern Somalia is a serious set back in the United States in its international war on terror and a threat to the stability of the strategically situated Horn of Africa region.

Stateless Somalia has proved an ideal setting for the emergence of a secretive and dangerous jihadist organization, Al Itihaad Al Islamiya, which lies at the heart of the Somali Islamic Courts. Al Ithihaad has actively worked with Al Qaeda since 1993 to carry out acts of aggression against the Americans, including the 1993 downing of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu and the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

In 2002, Al Ithihaad also likely provided support to Al Qaeda operatives who carried out near Mombasa, Kenya, a terrorist attack against the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel and a failed missile attack against an Israeli civilian airliner. Ossama bin Laden and some of Al Ithihaad leaders have apparently known each other from their Afghan mujahidin days, when the CIA recruited and transported a large contingent of Somalis to fight as holy warriors against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda and Al Ithihaad first forged their alliance in opposing the U.S.-led, United Nations intervention in Somalia. This alliance was part of Al Qaeda's masterplan to create a large Islamic state in the Horn of Africa that could serve as a launching pad for attacks against its ultimate prize, Saudi Arabia.

Al Ithihaad forces also supported Al Qaeda in its preparation for the 1998 Al Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, that resulted in 213 deaths and over 5,000 injuries - most of them Kenyan. Soon after, Bin Laden reportedly visited a joint Al Ithihaad-Al Qaeda camp at Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border to congratulate those who had provided material support for the Al Qaeda operation.

A strategic objective of Al Ithihaad is the establishment of a pan-Somali Caliphate in the Horn of Africa, that would bring Somali ethnic populations in neighbouring Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya into a territorially enlarged Somalia. In the mid-1990s with Al Qaeda and Sudanese support, Al Ithihaad launched a terrorist campaign and a military invasion against Ethiopia. Bin Laden transported several hundred Arab mujahadin veterans of the anti-Soviet Afghan struggle to assist Al Ithihaad in its military ambitions inside both Somalia and Ethiopia. In response to Al Ithihaad aggression, Ethiopian forces entered Somalia and defeated Al Ithihaad forces on the battlefield.

The Islamic Courts have been blocking the installation in Mogadishu of a new interim government, whose formation has been supported by the international community. News reports out of Sudan suggest that recent initial talks between the interim government and the Islamic Courts may be heading to a détente between the two, but unless the Islamic Courts show a willingness to break with its Al Ithihaad antecedents and its connection with international terrorism, the incorporation of the Islamic Courts into an interim Somali government may serve to further legitimize a group that poses a threat to United States, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

The response of the Islamic Courts to the recent request by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Jendaye Frasier, to hand over Al Qaeda operatives responsible for the Nairobi Embassy bombing and the terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in Mombasa will be telling in this regard. But the prospects of this happening appear unlikely.

Within days of Frasier's urging, the Islamic Courts' named Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys as its new leader. Sheik Aweys is believed to be one of the masterminds of the Black Hawk Down attack and a key architect of Al Ithihaad's territorial aggression. In 2001, the United Nations named Sheik Aweys as an associate of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and asked member states to freeze his assets. However welcomed it may be, the Islamic Courts breaking with Al Qaeda is about as likely as the Taliban breaking with Bin Laden after it was confronted by post 9-11 ultimatum of the United States.

How Ethiopia is disposed toward any new political configuration inside Somalia will be key to the future of the region. With large Muslim and Christian populations, a multi-cultural Ethiopia can ill afford to have an aggressive Islamicist state on its border, and in the past, Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea, has supported Al Ithihaad to fight against Ethiopia. To reduce the Somali threat to its sovereignty and stability, Ethiopia has built up an alliance of Somali militia leaders as a counterforce to the Islamicists, and in the past intervened militarily to crush the jihadists. Don't be surprised if Ethiopia takes pre-emptive military actions to hobble the jihadist threat along its borders.

Ultimately, it may be the success of the democratic experiments in Kenya and Ethiopia that will serve as the best antidote from a regional Islamicist threat. Kenya is a well advanced multiparty democracy, and the continued promise of political freedoms and signs of robust economic growth will likely serve to undercut Islamicist sentiment within its own Somali population, though Kenya would be well served to assure that the ethnic Somalis in the economically disadvantaged North Western Province receive their fair share of such growth.

Ethiopia, too, has made important strides in achieving a multi-party democracy, but last year, an apparent resort to armed rebellion by impatient elements of the Ethiopian opposition provoked a crackdown by the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. In the long run, a genuine commitment to participatory democracy as well as more rapid economic growth may well be Ethiopia's best defence against those like Al Ithihaad who would like to see the multi-religious Horn of Africa region under the rule of an Islamicist state.

For the full article go to Reuters

MOGADISHU, - Islamist fighters in Somalia have seized two coastal towns and vowed to rid the area of piracy that has made the country's Indian Ocean waters some of the most dangerous in the world, residents said on Sunday.

The militiamen met little resistance and there were no immediate reports of casualties as they moved into Harardheere, a town 400km (250 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, before advancing north to take Eldher a day later.

"We have to secure the town and its surroundings," one Islamist commander, who did not give his name, told a crowd of residents in Harardheere. "Piracy is a crime."

Fighters loyal to the country's Islamic courts movement seized Mogadishu and a strategic swathe of southern Somalia in June. They oppose the interim government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa, and threaten its limited authority.

The northern and southern coastline of Somalia -- Africa's longest -- links trade routes for key commodities like oil, grains and iron ore from the Gulf and the Red Sea down to the Mozambique Channel. Thousands of merchant ships snake down past the Somali coast to the Cape of Good Hope every year.

For the full article go to The Economist

A region endangered by Islamists, guns and its own swelling population

Several thousand Ethiopians sleep rough in Bossaso's dirt, like animals. They are sustained by Muslim alms: a free meal each day, paid for by Bossaso traders. Some of the Ethiopians arrive in town feral with hunger. They have to be beaten back with cudgels when the meal is served. The hope of all of them is to be illegally trafficked across the sea to Yemen. They slip out of town in the moonlight, cramming into metal skiffs that are death traps. Many drown in the crossing: the boat sinks or they are tossed overboard by traffickers when Yemeni patrols approach. Some of the men interviewed in Bossaso for this story have since drowned in this way. Refugee agencies say only a few of those who survive will find jobs in Saudi Arabia. The rest will drift, disappear or die young.

Then there are the destitute Somalis. Some 6,000 of them live in one slum the size of a football pitch. The number could grow to 10,000 within a year. If fighting breaks out in southern Somalia, it will be even more. It is a typical Horn of Africa slum. Only the air is free. Several families split the rent on a cardboard shack. Fires sometimes break out, fanned by sea breezes, often burning people alive. Wells are private: filthy water is a commodity for sale. There are few jobs for the men. Women venture out to sift through the rubbish that blooms and shines like armour in seemingly every open space in Bossaso. Islamists pass through the slums, looking for likely recruits. Disease is a bigger worry. A local doctor reckons that a new epidemic could easily break out: polio and typhoid are already on the prowl.

The Horn of Africa has long been haunted by hunger and by violence. The story of Bossaso is an early sign that these evils will continue, and worsen. Islamist expansionism in Somalia?and the armed resistance to it?plus uncontrolled population growth throughout the area could result in whole pockets of the Horn facing collapse. This would be a humanitarian disaster; it could also lead to a much wider conflict, involving several countries.

The assumption has been that the market will somehow find solutions for the dramatic increase in the Horn's population numbers (see table). So it may, in well-watered bits of the region, where land use can be intensified. In arid areas there is little chance of this happening. There, nature and politics will play their part, and the results will be disastrous.

More regional fighting, for a start. The most immediate risk is of war breaking out between Somalia's Islamists, based in the capital, Mogadishu, and the ?secularist? Somali government holed up in Baidoa and backed by ?Christian? Ethiopia and the United States?an alliance that no doubt helps Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, to repair his relations with the West, which deteriorated sharply last year after a dodgy election and the shooting of scores of protesters.

The Islamist advance in Somalia was a response to political anarchy, not a symptom of population or environmental pressures. But UN relief agencies are sounding the alarm on these pressures. They are specially concerned about south Somalia and Ethiopia's vast Ogaden desert, where malnutrition rates are far higher than the 15% which signals a humanitarian emergency (nutrition rates in the Horn generally are the lowest in the world). A drought last year resulted in massive loss of livestock in both regions. A Somali war involving Ethiopia would be fought asymmetrically, with Islamist guerrillas striking across Somalia and inside Ethiopia, raising the chances of catastrophic famine.

Cue for al-Qaeda's entrance

It wouldn't take much for famine to seize hold of the area. Humanitarian action has kept the starving alive, but it has not enabled them to recover their lives. The trend is an ever increasing need for food aid plus ever less money from donors to pay for it. The World Food Programme (WFP) is responsible for delivering most of the aid in the Horn. It says that the number of Ethiopians on its books has doubled since the 1990s, in bad years to as many as 10m. The situation is not much better elsewhere. Some 1.7m hungry people are reliant on food aid in south Somalia?when the WFP can get it to them. And 3m people in Kenya, mostly in the country's arid north, will get some kind of food aid this year.

Al-Qaeda has been quick to see and exploit the fragility of the Horn. An audiotape, released in June and believed to be by Osama bin Laden himself, called on ?every Muslim? in Somalia to resist the transitional government. It also promised to attack any country sending troops into Somalia. This was meant as a direct encouragement to the jihadists among the Islamists, some of whom trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Some think Mr bin Laden harbours hopes of opening up a new jihadist front in the Horn, specifically in the arid borderlands of north Kenya, south Ethiopia and south Somalia.

These borderlands are politically marginalised, awash with small arms, and environmentally strained. Their inhabitants include large numbers of feisty but ill-educated Muslims, many of whom are skirmishing with their Christian and animist neighbours. The area is not much of a prize in itself, but prolonged instability there would severely restrict development in the larger region, as well as limiting trade between Ethiopia and Kenya.

The rise of the Islamists in Somalia has been swift. They took control of the capital in June, vanquishing the loathed Mogadishu warlords whom the CIA had misjudgedly backed. They are loosely grouped into an alliance of Islamic courts, each court pooling gunmen into a central militia. The first courts in south and west Mogadishu were set up in 1994, with the aim of arresting, prosecuting and punishing criminals. Sufi traditionalists and moderate Islamists, associated with the pacific wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, outnumber radicals in Mogadishu. But it is the radicals who control the court militias and are increasingly holding sway.

And it is to the radicals that al-Qaeda is looking for action. It is known that they have received several arms shipments from Eritrea, which would like to draw Ethiopian troops southwards, away from its own border. More weapons and explosives may now be coming in: Mogadishu port was reopened in late July.

The United States will not talk to the radical Islamists until they give up al-Qaeda suspects who may be sheltering in Mogadishu. One worry is that Somali jihadists, led by Ahmed Abdi Godane, an al-Qaeda graduate from Afghanistan, and supervised by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former Somali army colonel who presides over the Islamist militia, may develop their own terrorist organisation. Already, Mr Aweys's lieutenant, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, is suspected of murdering foreign aid workers and freethinking Somalis, and desecrating a Christian cemetery. Mr Aweys considers Mr Ayro a ?good man?.

Moderate Islamists want the Islamic courts to impose order, making it easier, among other things, to run a business. Radicals like Mr Aweys are working towards the establishment of an Islamic emirate of Somalia, taking in Somali-populated areas of Ethiopia and Kenya. In other words they want to push out into the borderlands. In Ethiopia this would mean taking the Ogaden by force, as Somalia tried and failed to do in 1977. The situation is less clear with regard to Kenya. Islamists have so far been careful to distinguish Nairobi from Addis Ababa. Some Islamists privately say they would like to push the borders of the emirate as far as Garissa, but only through peaceful negotiation.

Islamists on the rise

Since taking control of Mogadishu, the Islamists have fanned out across central Somalia, installing courts and securing strategic bridges and airstrips. In response, Ethiopia has sent hundreds?maybe more?soldiers into the country, including a troop placement in Baidoa, reinforcing Somalia's feeble transitional government. Perhaps 25,000 Ethiopian troops are on the border. Some of the government's former local allies are moving over to the Islamist side, judging this to be preferable to spurring another war. But the government itself is resisting, and its external supporters are not prepared to risk a radical Islamist Somalia. The Islamists, for their part, feel things are going their way and are unlikely to seek an accommodation with Ethiopia.

In this warlike context, the Horn's uncontrolled population growth appears even more explosive. The borderlands have among the highest fertility rates in the world, particularly so among the Somalis. Women in these areas are likely to have six or seven children, against three in the cities. Over half the population is aged 15 or under. There has been little progress in family planning. In remote areas there is no provision for birth control at all. A recent study by the Ethiopian government, which is making tentative steps to reduce population growth, found that only 3% of Somali women in Ethiopia had access to contraception, compared with 45% of women in Addis Ababa.

Islamist militia guard Mogadishu

Last year's drought heightened tensions. Some tribes in the borderlands are buying guns and ammunition in preparation for battles they expect to be fought in December, when the cattle will be strong enough, after the rains, to be marched off by raiders into enemy territory. There is concern that the raiders are gaining in strength?and will get stronger yet if, as in the case of the Somalis, they are reinforced and organised by the Islamists.

War in Somalia could ignite other wars. Most of these will probably be small tribal affairs, such as the battles in northern Kenya, which tribal elders say have claimed more than 100 lives this year. But an Ethiopian offensive in Somalia could result in Eritrea taking its chance to attack Ethiopia. A war between the two countries fizzled out in 2000, but with no resolution on their disputed border.

Mr Zwaagstra has been studying the borderlands for decades. Not known as an alarmist, he is now pressing the red alert button. There are too many cattle for the capacity of the land, he says, but too few to sustain the community. Population growth is part of the problem; drought is another. The Horn appears to be drying up. This may or may not be a result of climate change, but experts give warning that if the predicted increase in temperatures does come about, if only by one or two degrees, the borderlands will become unsustainable.

The risk of whole areas of the Horn collapsing with famine and irreversible environmental damage, urged on by jihadist and tribal clashes, is clear cause for alarm. A first task, if Somalia is to be salvaged, is to support a moderate and competent government there. That will be hard, to put it at its mildest. The transitional government is moderate but inept: the Islamists well-organised but given to jihadist tendencies.

Another obvious step is to deter the cattle raiders by improving security in the arid borderlands. Disarming tribal warriors there is difficult; investing in local police and army units is not. However, the police are often ill equipped for the task. Kenya, for instance, has hardly any serviceable helicopters to track cattle raiders and other miscreants. Most of Ethiopia's 7m pastoralists are Muslim and the parched lands they roam are particularly combustible. The Ogaden and Oromia regions of Ethiopia already have their own rebel groups but these, in some areas, could be pushed aside by Islamist guerrillas.

For the full article go to the New York Times

Islamists in Somalia Sharply Rebuff Plan for African Peacekeepers

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya

On Thursday, East African military leaders met in Nairobi and floated a plan to send more than 6,000 soldiers to Somalia. The country seems to be teetering on the edge of war between the Islamic forces who control the capital, Mogadishu, and a fledgling transitional government based in Baidoa and backed by Ethiopia. Many fear that such a war could drag in Somalia?s neighbors and destabilize the entire region.

Military chiefs for the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional organization that includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, said they would like to dispatch the first troops to Somalia by October.

But less than 24 hours after the announcement, Islamic clerics in Mogadishu called for a holy war against the peacekeepers.

?We are Muslims, and we are targeted for that identity,? said Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the spiritual head of the Islamic forces.

Somalia?s Islamic leaders fear that the peacekeeping plan is simply a ruse to back up the transitional government, which has been hurt by defections and rivalries and is still so weak that its leaders are more or less confined to Baidoa, 150 miles inland from Mogadishu.

On Friday, imams at Mogadishu?s mosques urged followers to join Islamic militias and prepare for battle. One said, ?The mosque will be the industry that will produce heroes,? according to a Somali reporter who did not want to be identified because of safety concerns. The militias recently began a recruitment drive for teenage boys, and many war-orphaned children have been signing up.

Similar fervor swept through Mogadishu last month when reports circulated that Ethiopia, Somalia?s longtime rival, had dispatched troops to Baidoa to protect the transitional government from collapsing. Ethiopia denied the reports, but the effect was to solidify support for the Islamic clerics, who have cleaned up the capital and restored a degree of law and order after more than 15 years of anarchy.

Somalia?s transitional government is energetically supporting the plan for African peacekeepers and seems to have won over military leaders in Kenya.

On Thursday, Jeremiah Kianga, Kenya?s chief of general staff, told reporters in Nairobi, ?There?s an urgency in this deployment and we need to move faster to make the plan a reality.?

For the full article go to Reuters

By Mohamed Ali Bile MOGADISHU, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Somalia's powerful Islamist movement opened a militia training camp on Wednesday with trainers from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Pakistan, witnesses said.

The presence of foreign trainers points to what many fear is a growing internationalisation of a crisis that has split the Horn of Africa nation and threatened the slim authority of its interim government.

The Islamists' hardline leader, Shiekh Hassan Dahir Aweys, attended the opening of the camp for more than 600 Islamist militiamen at Hiilweyne, north of Mogadishu.

"You will study military tactics, because you will defend your country with Islamic morality," Aweys told the recruits.

Witnesses identified foreign trainers from Eritrea, Pakistan and Afghanistan at the camp.

Diplomats fear Somalia could become a proxy battleground for Ethiopia and Eritrea, and have said that more players like Libya, Iran and Egypt have quietly entered the fray.

Eritrea has long denied any involvement in Somalia, but a U.N. Security Council report said it has sent weapons to the Islamists repeatedly in a bid to frustrate rival Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, the Islamists said Ethiopian soldiers and a warlord ally of the government had taken a town along the Ethiopian border, stoking fears of new clashes.

The Islamists, who seized the capital Mogadishu and key southern territories in June after routing U.S.-backed warlords, have refused to negotiate with the government until the Ethiopians leave.

Qaybdiid was one of the last warlords to surrender his militias to the Islamists in a clan-brokered deal in July.

But tensions have been running high in Galkaayo since he returned there two weeks ago with more fighters and dozens of "technicals" -- pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons.

Qaybdiid is opposed to the Islamists setting up in the town, some 750 km (465 miles) north of Mogadishu. "We are scared the fighting could hit residential areas where there are many women and children," one local elder said.

The Islamists oppose the interim government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa because it does not have the military strength to go to Mogadishu.

In the capital, the Islamists also held an official opening ceremony for Mogadishu International Seaport -- closed since 1995 -- boosting their claim to be restoring normality.

"From now on, Mogadishu seaport is open and all Mogadishu businessmen should use it," a senior Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, told the gathered crowd.

For the full article go to The Weekly Standard

August 29 2006

When fighters from the radical Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu on June 5, analysts were immediately concerned that the country could become a haven for terrorists. Since then, the ICU's hold on the country has tightened. More alarming, the militia has come to more closely resemble al Qaeda's previous sponsor, the Taliban, with each gain it makes.

After wrestling control of Mogadishu from Somalia's interim government, the ICU's militias seized a number of towns. These gains have resulted in the Islamic militia controlling cities that stretch all the way to Somalia's border with Ethiopia. More important, these gains have been strategic in nature. The ICU now enjoys great flexibility in moving its militias and supplies, and is on the verge of controlling the majority of Somalia. In contrast, the interim government is holed up in the south-central Somali city of Baidoa, and appears increasingly vulnerable.

On August 9, fighting broke out in Beletuein between Islamic militiamen and forces loyal to Yusuf Ahmed Hagar, whom the transitional government had nominated as governor of the Hiran region. After the fighting began, Hagar reportedly "escaped with two pick up trucks mounted with heavy machineguns heading to the border of Ethiopia." The city now appears calm, and firmly in the ICU's hands. The capture of Beletuein allows for increased supply movement from south to north. Beletuein is also close to Baidoa, further isolating the government there from the rest of the country.

Since then, the ICU has made three strategic gains that give it access to the Indian Ocean. In mid-August, it captured the port cities of Harardhere and Eldher, coastal towns known as a haven for pirates. And although ICU leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys denies it, eyewitnesses reported that his forces captured the port town of Hobyo on Somalia's central coastline. (The ICU pledged to stamp out piracy after capturing these towns, but this claim cannot be taken at face value: the militia has every incentive to portray itself as a force for stability in order to prevent outside governments from undermining its hold on power.)

Not only does the ICU effectively control the area surrounding the land-locked interim government in Baidoa, but its fighters talk of further advances that would give the ICU control over the most of the country. ICU fighters say they would like to spread the militia's influence to Galkayo, a town 350 miles northwest of Mogadishu. Although militiamen in Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region have vowed to fight the ICU if it makes such an advance, their prospects for success are far from certain.

Americans and other Westerners frequently have trouble comprehending why they should care about events occurring half a world away in Africa. One reason we should care is that the ICU's expansion may escalate into interstate warfare.

Ethiopia views the Islamic militia's rise as a matter of great concern, and has expressed its solidarity with Somalia's transitional government. Ethiopian information minister Berhan Hailu has said, "We will use all means at our disposal to crush the Islamist group if they attempt to attack Baidoa."

Ethiopian troops have reportedly been in Somalia since late July. Just as the Ethiopian government has threatened to use military force against the ICU, the ICU has vowed to attack Ethiopian soldiers in Somali territory. Thus far there haven't been any clashes, but both sides are clearly ready to fight. Each seems to be waiting for the other to strike first.

And there is an even more pressing reason why Westerners should care about the ICU's rise: the striking similarity between its ascendance in Somalia and that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

One similarity is that as the ICU has gained power, Somalis have welcomed its rule because it is seen as a force for stability. Rival warlords have ruled Somalia since the fall of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. According to a Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder, "[t]he warlords' militias were notorious for indiscriminate violence: Women and girls were often raped and locals could not move about the city without fear of being killed. Since the ICU took control, experts say there are noticeably fewer guns on the streets, and people move freely throughout the city without fear of attack."

This mirrors the Afghan population's reaction to the Taliban. As Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote in his best-selling book Taliban:

The Taliban had won over the unruly Pashtun south because the exhausted, war-weary population saw them as saviors and peacemakers, if not as a potential force to revive Pashtun power which had been humiliated by the Tajiks and Uzbeks. . .In the areas under their rule, they disarmed the population, enforced law and order, imposed strict Sharia law and opened the roads to traffic which resulted in an immediate drop in food prices. These measures were all extremely welcome to the long-suffering population.

This passage touches on the most visible similarity between the ICU and the Taliban: both imposed a harsh version of sharia (Islamic law) in the areas that they seized. Under the Taliban, women had no rights. Homosexuality, conversion from Islam, and preaching of non-Islamic faiths were capital crimes. And the list of restrictions went on. CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen noted in his book Holy War, Inc., "Soccer, kite-flying, music, television, and the presence of females in schools and offices were all banned. Some of the decrees had a Monty Python-esque quality, like the rule banning the use of paper bags on the remote chance the paper might include recycled pages of the Koran."

For the full article go to The Sudan Tribune

Somali Islamists shut radio channel for playing western music

Sunday 10 September 2006.

Hardline Islamists who control much of southern Somalia on Saturday ordered the closure of a radio channel for playing western music, fuelling fears that the lawless nation was gradually sliding into religious extremism.

Militiamen loyal to the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) stormed into the radio station in Jowhar, about 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of the capital, and ordered its closure until further notice, officials said.

"We have ordered Radio Jowhar to close down because it is playing music that promotes evil behaviour," Sheikh Mohamed Mahamoud Abdulrahman, said a commander in the Islamic movement.

Abdulrahman said the radio station had defied several requests to stop playing music that is against the teachings of Islam.

"We cannot have a radio station playing evil music yet we are trying to promote Sharia law across Somalia," he said.

The station?s manager Said Hagaa confirmed that the increasingly influential movement had pulled the channel off air hours after ordering it not to play western music.

The Islamists who seized southern Somalia and are currently expanding their influence to the central regions have flogged several people in the capital and outlying outposts for violating Islamic law in recent weeks.

They have also banned all trade and public transportation during prayer times, live music at wedding receptions and other events and harassed civilians, mainly women, for failing to wear appropriate dress in public in areas under their control.

In July they issued an edict warning that Muslims who do not perform daily prayers may be punished by death.

The requirement for Muslims to observe the five-times daily ritual on penalty of death appeared to confirm the hardline nature of the increasingly powerful Sharia courts in the capital.

It was not immediately clear who would enforce the regulation, or how. But the courts have well-armed militias which routed a US-backed alliance of warlords in June after four months of bloody battles for control of Mogadishu.

US and other western officials have expressed concern about a "creeping Talibanization" in Somalia at the hands of the Islamists, some of whom are accused of links with Osama bin Laden?s Al-Qaeda network.

The Islamists flatly reject the charges, but have vowed to impose strict Sharia law across the largely Muslim Horn of Africa nation of some 10 million that has been without a functioning central authority for the last 16 years.

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For the full article go to Reuters 

By Sahra Ahmed

KISMAYO, Somalia - Islamist fighters opened fire in the Somali port city of Kismayo on Monday toward residents burning tires, throwing stones and chanting to protest against the Islamist takeover of their city hours before.

A 13-year-old boy was shot dead while protesting, while two other people were injured, witnesses said, amid sketchy reports from Somalia's third largest city.

"We have been taken over by extremists, the Islamic courts have taken us by force, and now they are firing at us," protester Dahabo Dirie said amid screams and gunshots.

Riding on trucks mounted with machine guns, the Mogadishu-based Islamists poured into Kismayo overnight to extend their grip on south-central Somalia and effectively flank the powerless central government on three sides.

The government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa and with little military strength of its own, denounced the Kismayo takeover as a breach of an agreement both sides reached during peace talks in Sudan to halt further military expansion.

Residents of Kismayo, near Kenya's border, said some arriving Islamist fighters stirred up an already tense mood by burning the Somali flag and raising an Islamic one.

That set off massive protests, after the town had previously been peaceful since the Islamists entered, they said.

"I witnessed the Somali flag being ripped apart and burned. This is unacceptable," said resident Mahad Abdullahi.

A Reuters witness saw thousands of men and women pouring on to the streets, shouting "We don't want the Islamic Courts" and tossing stones at trucks used by Islamist fighters. Roads were blocked with stones and burning tires, she added.

For the full article go to Christianity Today

Daniel Blake

September 29, 2006

Somali Christian refugees in Kenya continue to face increasing attacks from Somali groups and struggle to receive adequate assistance to survive, according to reports received by Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Reports explain that one Somali Christian refugee, who shall be referred to as A, left Somalia with his family in fear of his life. Since their arrival in Kenya, A?s family has repeatedly been threatened by supporters of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

In addition, three of A?s children have been abducted by his Muslim relatives, and allegedly returned to Somalia, where it is thought that they may have been forced to enroll in a ?rehabilitation? centre. Two more of his children were abducted, but were rescued when the authorities were pressured to act.

A is currently recovering from an assault in July that left him comatose, yet this week on 27 September A and his family were attacked again, tells CSW.

Statistics reveal that more than 3,400 Somalis have sought refuge in Kenya in the last three weeks, bringing the tally to almost 25,000 since the beginning of the year.

It appears that as the UIC gains further ground in Somalia, there is a corresponding increase in attacks on Somali Christians in Kenya by UIC supporters. According to local sources, there are ?many proxy representatives of the Islamic Shari?ah Courts in Nairobi?.

For the full article go to CNN 

September 29 2006

MOGADISHU -- Muslim fundamentalist militias who have seized control of much of war-ravaged Somalia are to be unified under one Islamic army, an official said Friday.

Fighters are to be brought together in the coming days at a training camp on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu, and be under the direct control of the Union of the Islamic Courts.

"This is a unified Islamic Force," Sheik Mukhtar Robow, deputy chief security of the Islamic group, said. "We will be more organized than before."

Despite a cease-fire agreement with the virtually powerless government, the Islamic group has continued its advances in the country. The establishment of one unified army would been seen as further provocation to Somalia's weak administration, set up in 2004 with U.N. help.

Islamic forces are divided along clan and ideological lines, with some more radical in their interpretation of Islam than others.

Robow declined to give details on the numbers in the force or when it would be ready.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.

The government has struggled to assert authority, while the Islamic movement seized Mogadishu after fierce battles with secular warlords in June and now controls much of the south.

The Islamic group's strict and often severe interpretation of Islam raises memories of Afghanistan's Taliban, which was ousted by a U.S.-led campaign for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters.

The United States has accused Somalia's Islamic group of sheltering suspects in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden has said Somalia is a battleground in his war on the West.

For the full article go to Reuters

29 Sep 2006

KISMAYO, Somalia, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Islamist gunmen who captured the Somali port of Kismayo have forcibly closed a private media network there which they accuse of distorting news about protests against the takeover, journalists said on Friday.

Islamist fighters on battle-wagons turned up at HornAfrik Radio's Kismayo offices late on Thursday, ordering staff to stop operations, the National Union of Somali Journalists said.

The Islamists, who control a swathe of southern Somalia, seized Kismayo on Monday without firing a shot -- but their arrival has been met with several protests.

HornAfrik's Kismayo station director, Ahmed Mohamed, said three of his reporters had been briefly detained on Friday.

"Three of our reporters were arrested this morning. I had to flee last night to avoid arrest," Mohamed told Reuters by telephone. "They say we reported false information on the recent protests and of having links with the former administration."

But he denied the station had relations with the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority which controlled the region around Somalia's third largest city before Islamists took over.

The Islamists have been rapidly expanding their influence after seizing Mogadishu from U.S.-backed warlords in June, effectively flanking the Western-backed interim government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa, on three sides.

The administration -- the 14th attempt at restoring central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator -- views the Kismayo takeover as breaching a ceasefire agreed at talks in Sudan.

Sahra Abdi, one of the detained HornAfrik journalists, said those arrested were warned about their reporting. "They told us to avoid inflaming the already charged situation," she said. "The radio station is still closed until further notice."

Islamist official Ibrahim Shukri said the Kismayo station had been closed for spreading false information.

"We saw them as a danger to security. They have a responsibility and should not report false news" he said.

Shukri denied reports a boy was killed in a protest and that his fighters had burnt a Somali flag upon arrival on Monday. Both had been widely reported by media, sourcing eyewitnesses.

The Islamists say they are simply restoring law and order to Somalia after 15 years of anarchy. They are also openly calling for mainly Muslim Somalia to be ruled by a sharia system.

But critics say the Islamists are extremists who have links to al Qaeda and are harbouring foreign radicals in Somalia. The Islamists' top leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is on U.S. and U.N. lists of people with alleged links to terrorism.

Earlier in September, the Islamists closed another radio station in the town of Jowhar for playing love songs. It was allowed to re-open after promising to stop broadcasting music.

For the full article go to:  The Sudan Tribune

Monday 2 October 2006.

Oct 1, 2006 (NAIROBI) ? Fighters of Somali Islamic Courts have seized control of a strategic village in the agriculturally rich area of Lower Shabelle near the Ethiopian border, reports said on Sunday.

Fighters loyal to the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) group routed pro-government militia from the village of Jawill, some 15km from the Ethiopian border on Saturday. The only roads between Ethiopia and central Somalia pass through the village.

SCIC senior leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has vowed to seize more territories.

The Saturday?s takeover is the SCIC?s second major territorial gain in nearly a week, following last Sunday?s takeover of the southern port city of Kismayo.

The SCIC have gradually expanded their influence over Somalia since defeating warlords in a battle for the capital, Mogadishu, in June.