Radicals Gain Edge In Somali Capital
Moderates Lose Key Positions in Islamic Militias

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 4, 2006

JOHANNESBURG, July 3 -- A group of largely moderate Muslim leaders who took control of Somalia's capital a month ago has been pushed aside in recent days by radicals determined to create a strict Islamic state there, according to Somali and other political analysts.

Leading the drive has been Hassan Dahir Aweys, whom the United Nations and the United States consider a terrorist with ties to al-Qaeda. Aweys's June 24 appointment as head of the Islamic militias ruling Mogadishu, the capital, has been followed by the installation of like-minded lieutenants in other key posts and the demotion of moderates such as the previous leader, Sharif Ahmed, analysts say.

Among those losing clout is Abdurahman Osman, a Somali-born U.S. citizen who emerged last month as a spokesman for the Islamic militias and a moderate face toward the outside world. He arranged for Western journalists to visit Mogadishu and met on behalf of the Islamic militias with Jendayi E. Frazier, a U.S. assistant secretary of state, in Nairobi last month.

Osman resigned last week, two days after Aweys took charge of the militias. On Monday, he booked a plane ticket home to Minnesota -- a definitive sign of his lost faith.

"I have nothing to do with those people now," Osman said from Nairobi. "I'm so depressed the last three nights I'm almost out of my mind."

On June 5, Mogadishu fell to Islamic militias affiliated with neighborhood religious courts and backed by a moderate coalition of businessmen, civil society activists and elders from the city's leading families. Ousted was a group of secular and widely hated warlords who benefited from U.S. financial support in exchange for capturing suspected terrorists.

Many people in Mogadishu cheered the change, because the Islamic militias provided the first semblance of a government since 1991.

Street crime plummeted. Shops stayed open past dark for the first time in years. Many residents said they welcomed the idea of sharia , or religious law, in a society where Islam has traditionally been practiced moderately. Few women wear veils in Mogadishu, and schools have typically mixed girls and boys in the same classes.

The first hints of change came when militia members forced the closure, in some neighborhoods, of cinemas showing the World Cup and films they deemed too sexually explicit. Some young women opted for more conservative head coverings, some young men for shorter hair.

The fatal shooting on June 23 of a Swedish journalist, Martin Adler, appeared to signal the growing power of Mogadishu's most extreme elements. Aweys took control the following day and soon announced that he intended to extend his interpretation of Islamic law to all of Somalia. He also announced that five alleged rapists would be stoned to death, in accordance with sharia.

"The radicals won," said Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn. "The radicals got the upper hand in this movement so they can impose their vision of Islamic sharia."

The situation has grown more charged over the past few days, some Somalis say.

On Friday, Osama bin Laden released an audiotape touting the success of Islamic forces in Mogadishu. On Sunday, the 53-country African Union announced plans to send peacekeeping troops into Somalia -- over the vehement objections of the militias in Mogadishu, who have repeatedly made clear their opposition to incursions by foreign forces.

Relations have also cooled between the militias and the nominal national government, which is backed by the African Union and the United Nations. Though largely powerless within Somalia, the government was initially courted by the militias as a way for them to win international legitimacy. At a one-day meeting in Sudan on June 22, the two groups agreed to recognize each other.

But the national government's alliance with Somalia's giant neighbor, Ethiopia, has angered the militias, who fear an attack, analysts say. The Swedish journalist was shot at a rally to protest the involvement of foreign troops as he filmed the burning of a makeshift Ethiopian flag. The crowd was shouting, "Down with Ethiopia" and also "Down with America," a witness said.

The fear of Ethiopia, which fought a border war with Somalia in the late 1970s, runs so deep in Mogadishu that the decision by the African Union to send peacekeeping forces is seen mainly as a pretext for Ethiopia to unleash its far larger and more sophisticated military on the Islamic militias. The city buzzes with frequent reports that Ethiopian troops have already crossed the border and also that Ethiopia's enemy to the north, Eritrea, is funneling guns to the militias.

Some Somalis hold out hope that the same loose coalition of businessmen, activists and clan elders that helped drive out the warlords will soon turn against the militias as power breeds brashness.

Ali Iman Sharmarke, a businessman and radio journalist in Mogadishu, said he believed the Islamic militias would lose power if they grew too strict in their interpretation of religious law. "People will hate them as they hated the warlords," Sharmarke said from Nairobi. "The moderates will not fly with bin Laden."

But Jamal said it was increasingly apparent that outsiders -- bin Laden, the United Nations, the United States, the African Union, Ethiopia, Eritrea -- were shaping events, rather than Somalis.

"It looks like the interests of the Somali will not be looked after," he said. "The situation is really very, very bad right now."