Despite ceasefire call, fighting continues in Mogadishu

The Associated Press reports that the recent violence in Somalia has left at least 90 dead and nearly 200 wounded since it started on Sunday.

The sounds of heavy weapons echoed through the city, but the fighting was not as intense as it has been over the previous three days. The battle between gunmen loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and secular militiamen has centered on the northern neighborhood of Sii-Sii, with neither side gaining an advantage.

Francois Lonseny Fall, the U.N. secretary general's special representative for Somalia, appealed for "leaders on both sides to step back from the brink and reconsider the damage they are inflicting on the population."

"Whatever the allegiances, the intermittent conflict between heavily armed camps has resulted in indiscriminate loss of life and has created fear and chaos for those civilians trapped in the crossfire," he said. "The indiscriminate use of heavy machine guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and artillery in and between urban areas is unacceptable."

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The AP writes that the ceasefire was declared Tuesday by Islamic Court Union chairman Sharif Ahmed in response to public appeals. However, the warlords expressed skepticism over the Islamic militias' motives.

"The Islamists have ran out of ammunition, so they want to get breathing space for mobilization and rearming their militia," Hussein Gutaale, spokesman of the secular militias, said Tuesday.

In an earlier report, Reuters cited Siyad Mohamed, a militia leader linked to the Islamic courts, who said that the ceasefire declaration initially seemed to reduce the violence.

"It's much calmer today, no major battle took place," he said. "(Traditional) elders have intervened and it looks like the ceasefire will hold."

He said both sides had lost at least 20 fighters, adding the rest were civilians caught in the cross-fire in the run-down area of Siisii.

This round of fighting is only the latest between the Islamist militias and the secular warlords, made up of several traditional clans. The Christian Science Monitor reported that fighting has been ongoing over the past few months, leaving some 70 dead, mostly civilians, even before the current spate of violence. The militias and warlords have been fighting for control over Somalia, which has lacked a central government since the civil war began in 1991.

Much like the Taliban in Afghanistan during the mid-'90s, the Islamists have declared that they are determined to end the current lawlessness but also place Somalia under strict sharia or Islamic law. They have accused the warlords of being supported by "non-Muslim foreigners," implying the US anti-terrorist task force stationed in neighboring Djibouti.

The warlords, who have formed a coalition called the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism," claim that the Islamists are behind many recent targeted assassinations of prominent figures, particularly those who have argued in favor of an international peacekeeping force, which the fundamentalists are dead-set against....

The warlords also accuse the Islamists of cultivating close links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), terror-related groups have taken advantage of Somalia's collapse to attack neighboring countries as well as transit agents and material.

Washington has long viewed mainly Muslim Somalia as a potential haven for Islamic militants, and it is thought by many both inside and outside the nation to be sending money to the Mogadishu warlords as part of its counter-terrorism strategy.

Even Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf said last week Washington was backing the warlords, whose new coalition dubs itself the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism."

Reuters reports that the US has declined to comment on the allegations, which Somali officials are making more often and more publicly than they had in the past.

Somali officials had until now also been cautious about responding to the reports of U.S. cash going to Mogadishu.

But Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said....: "The U.S. government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that.

"The warlords, through U.S. support, have caused so many deaths of innocent civilians in the recent fighting in Mogadishu," he said by telephone from Baidoa, a provincial town where the interim Somali government is based. "(It) only fuels further civil war."

Voice of America (VOA) reports that last week, the question of US support for Somalian warlords was put directly to State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack.

"We are working with individual members of the transitional government to try to create a better situation in Somalia," he answered. "Our other operating principle is to work with responsible individuals and certainly members of the transitional government in fighting terror."

McCormack provided no details. But Somalis say that answer was enough to confirm their suspicions that, as part of its global war on terror, the United States is giving active support to some of the most powerful factional leaders and their business allies in the Somali capital.

But Somalis no more want the warlords in charge than they do Islamic extremists, writes VOA.

Mogadishu-based journalist Mohammed Amiin Sheik Adow says few Somalis support Muslim extremism and many are in favor of adopting ways to stop militants from establishing a firm foothold in the country.

But Adow says Somalis do not want factional leaders heading up that fight. It was warring clan leaders and their militias, who left Somalia in chaotic ruin after the fall of Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Adow says Somalis are fed up with them and many have been turning to Islamic courts, seeking protection from the warlords.

"The Islamic clerics are [considered] better than the warlords because they set up Islamic Shariah [law] courts in Mogadishu, which at least can do something about security," he noted.

VOA adds that Somalis believe the US support of the warlords is feeding, not curbing, Islamic extremism in the region, and that the US should focus on stabilizing Somalia's infrastructure, rather than pursuing terrorists there.

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