Somalis Not Ready to Turn Over Weapons

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, right, receives Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf at State House in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007. Kibaki said that Kenya would not be used as a refuge for people seeking to destabilize governments in the region, noting that Kenya had already beefed up patrols along the border with Somalia. (AP Photo) (AP)

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Ahmed Hassan has no plans to part with his AK-47, the weapon of choice in this notoriously violent city, even now that a legitimate government is functioning here for the first time in more than a decade.

"I won't do it," Hassan said Wednesday, tugging on his gray beard. "For 16 years this country has been in chaos. It would be suicide."

From freelance gunmen on the streets to women selling mangoes by the sea, everybody seems to have a weapon in Mogadishu. Many in the Somali capital say they would rather protect themselves for now than trust the government forces who captured the city from Islamic militants just last week.

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has called for residents to turn in all their weapons by Thursday. After that, he said, his forces will "forcibly extract" them.

The country's police commander _ who has only about 1,000 officers under his control, none of them yet in Mogadishu _ admits he's outgunned.

"I cannot say there is a viable police operation in Mogadishu," Ali Mohamed Hassan Loyan told The Associated Press during a trip to a police recruitment center in Mogadishu where about 100 men, most of them older than 50, were signing up. "We are depending on the military."

Gedi has said his military forces, backed by Ethiopian troops with tanks and MiG fighter jets, have neutralized the Islamists over the past two weeks and forced them to give up or scatter into the bush. On Wednesday, the government claimed it captured two more southern towns from the militants and said its forces were headed toward a third.

In Washington Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. Navy vessels were deployed off the coast of Somalia looking for al-Qaida and other militants allied with the Islamists who may be trying to escape.

Ethiopia has promised to withdraw its troops from Somalia as soon as possible, and many Somalis fear that when they do, there will be a power vacuum and even a return to the anarchy and warlord rule of the past.

Somalia's last effective central government fell in 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. The government was formed two years ago with the help of the United Nations, but has been weakened by internal rifts.

The intervention of Ethiopia late last month prompted a military advance that was a stunning turnaround for the government, which is seeking international peacekeepers to help restore order.

In the meantime, the Bakaara Market in downtown Mogadishu is doing brisk business in weapons. The market is a network of narrow, dusty streets, with rickety wooden stands selling Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns and hand grenades.