From the Hindu News: International ~~ Somali Islamic militia names al-Qaida collaborator as leader
Mogadishu (Somalia), June 25 (AP): A fundamentalist Muslim who is listed by the US State Department as a suspected al-Qaida collaborator has been named as the new leader of an Islamic militia that has seized control of Somalia's capital.
The militia said in a statement yesterday that it had appointed Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who the Bush administration says was an associate of Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s. The US has long feared that this chaotic nation will become a staging ground for terrorist attacks much like Afghanistan did in the 1990s.
And in yet another sign that radical Islam is taking hold in a country where most practice a moderate brand of Islam, the group changed its name yesterday from the Islamic Courts Union to the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts.
The US State Department made no comment Saturday.
Aweys replaces Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who is moderate in comparison. Since the militia drove widely despised secular warlords out of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia earlier this month, Ahmed has softened his rhetoric calling for strict Islamic, or sharia, law.
He also agreed to recognise the largely powerless interim government which is based in Baidoa, 150 kilometres from Mogadishu, because the capital is so violent. Aweys has condemned that government and any attempts to install a Western-style democracy.
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. |
