Somalia Islamists vow to fight foreign troops
the peninsula ^ | 9/6/2006 | afp
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MOGADISHU • Anarchic Somalia lurched toward long-elusive stability after a interim accord between powerful Islamists and the weak government, but plans for regional peacekeepers appeared in tatters.
As Islamist and government leaders savoured their less-than 24-hour old deal, reached at Arab League-mediated talks in Sudan, east African leaders hastily cancelled a summit in Kenya called to discuss the proposed force.
And in Mogadishu, thousands of Muslims rallied against the mission, vowing that Somalia would become a “graveyard” for any soldiers sent by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad).
Around 7,000 demonstrators gathered in the capital to denounce any deployment of Igad peacekeepers, which had been requested by the transtitional government and endorsed by the African Union but vehemently opposed by the Islamists.
“We will not accept foreign troops in Somalia,” they yelled in the rally called by the city’s Islamic courts. “We shall fight against Igad troops.”
“If they forcefully deploy, graveyards of the Igad troops will litter Somalia,” said senior cleric Sheikh Omar Iman Abubakar of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS). “We will never allow a single soldier from a foreign country into our country,” he told the angry crowd. “We will fight against them until death.” Igad, which groups Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan and nominally Somalia, has had much-postponed plans to deploy about 8,000 soldiers to support the Somali government. But the mission has split the bloc, notably with arch-foes Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are accused of supporting the rival Somali sides, taking opposite positions: Addis Ababa in favour and Asmara opposed.
And, the accord signed late on Monday in Khartoum between the administration and the newly dominant Islamists calls for the formation of a unified national army and police force and denounces all foreign interference in Somalia. The deal, which calls for power-sharing talks to begin at the end of October, made no mention of the peacekeeping mission but appeared to take Igad leaders by surprise as they prepared to meet in Nairobi.
Only three heads of state or government turned up—host President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Somalia’s interim president Abdullahi Yusuf Mohamed. The planned summit was then hastily transformed into a closed-door meeting on how to deal with the new developments, according to Kenyan officials who spent two days in talks with the Islamists preparing for the gathering.
But those talks ended with no change in the Islamists’ vehement opposition to the Igad force, which had been actively supported by the government, at least until the Khartoum agreement |
