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Islamists say Mogadishu theirs

Somalia Islamic militia members sit on a truck carrying an anti-aircraft gun that they seized from a secular alliance of warlords Monday after they took control of a neighborhood in Mogadishu. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Jonathan S. Landay Knight Ridder
Somalia Islamic militia members sit on a truck carrying an anti-aircraft gun that they seized from a secular alliance of warlords Monday after they took control of a neighborhood in Mogadishu. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

WASHINGTON – Muslim militias claimed Monday to have routed warlords allegedly backed by the United States after weeks of fighting for control of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, dealing a setback to U.S. efforts to contain the spread of militant Islam.

U.S. officials and other experts warned that if the militias consolidated their victory they would establish an Islamist state where al-Qaida could secure bases from which it could spread its violent ideology to other East African and Horn of Africa nations.

The Islamists’ claim of victory in Mogadishu comes as the United States and its allies struggle to contain growing Islamic violence in Iraq and some of the fiercest attacks in Afghanistan by the Taliban since that Islamic militia was driven from power in 2001.

Al-Qaida-inspired extremists might be allowed to use Somalia as a refuge from which to support and mount operations against Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the world’s No. 1 oil producer, located a boat ride away across the Red Sea, said U.S. officials and other experts.

Somalia “can be a platform for further action,” warned Bruno Schiemsky, the chairman of a group of experts appointed by the U.N. Security Council to monitor Somalia, in a telephone interview from Nairobi, Kenya.

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization, said it’s too early to predict what could happen. The secular warlords could rebuild their forces with outside aid and launch a counteroffensive for Mogadishu.

Territory has frequently traded hands since central government rule collapsed in 1991, plunging Somalia into anarchy and civil strife that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

But a U.S. counterterrorism official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that the Islamic militias’ apparent seizure of Mogadishu is “certainly not a positive development in terms of (U.S.) efforts to fight terrorism. It’s worrisome.”

U.S. officials said the Islamists are already hosting the al-Qaida planner of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and two organizers of a failed 2002 attempt to down an Israeli passenger jet in Kenya with a missile.

The Somali Islamists also have received training from militants from Pakistan, Indonesia and Arab countries, including Syria and Algeria, said Schiemsky.

The United States hasn’t been directly involved in Somalia since 18 U.S. troops were killed in Mogadishu in 1993. But the Bush administration has deployed about 1,500 U.S. troops in Djibouti, on Somalia’s northern border, as part of a strategy of preventing radical Islamic groups from operating in the region.

The United States has been secretly supporting a coalition of secular Somali warlords, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, according to leaders of a largely powerless transitional central government restricted to the city of Baidoa, according to regional observers and news reports.