10-Day Offensive Revives Fears That Radical Islamist Insurgents Could Take Power
By Stephanie McCrummen  Washington Post Foreign Service

Ten days of heavy fighting across the bombed-out capital of Mogadishu and other areas has pitted the Islamist rebels — now operating openly with hundreds of fighters from the United States, Britain, Pakistan, Chechnya and other places — against the fragile government of President Sharif Ahmed, a widely respected moderate Islamist once vilified by U.S. officials but now regarded by Washington as Somalia’s last, best hope.

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Momentum has been swinging back and forth between the government and rebels for days, but on Sunday it seemed to be with the rebels, who include several leaders who U.S. officials have said maintain ties to al-Qaeda. In a major blow, they took a key government stronghold, Ahmed’s home town of Jowhar, about 50 miles north of the capital, giving them control of major routes to the north.

The rebels have for the past year controlled virtually all of southern Somalia, where local leaders — some Somalis call them Islamist warlords — have imposed a harsh version of sharia law, publicly flogging people who don’t attend Friday prayers and chopping off the hands of alleged thieves.

Ahmed’s government, while popular with many Somalis, directly controls only Mogadishu’s airport, its seaport and a small corner of the ruined city where the presidential palace is fortified by 4,000 African Union peacekeepers in something akin to Baghdad’s Green Zone. Ahmed has remained sequestered there for most of the past week.

“Things look bad for the government,” said one Somali analyst in Mogadishu, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by rebels, who are quick to assassinate critics. He said it would be a “disaster” if the rebels took over.

For many war-weary Somalis, the battle underway has an air of finality — a fight that will determine whether an internationally recognized central government survives or the historically moderate Muslim nation becomes al-Qaeda’s official African headquarters.

At the grass-roots level, the battle is in many ways about identity, a struggle between the sense of purpose and power that militant Islam is offering thousands of young, jobless Somali men who have known only anarchy, and the almost gravitational pull of the country’s entrenched clan system and a more moderate Islamic tradition.

“The elders, the traditional leaders, the businesspeople, the moderate religious leaders — they are trying to mobilize their people to support Sharif, saying that our identity is at stake,” said Ali Said, director of the Center for Peace and Democracy, a Somali think tank operating in exile in Nairobi. “They are saying, ‘We have to fight back.’ “

More than 100 people have died since the fighting began, and thousands are again fleeing the capital, where young Islamist fighters roam freely. With alliances among various leaders and militias fluid, however, the fight is hardly over.

For a while, the momentum had seemed to be with Ahmed, who was elected in January and recently adopted a moderate version of sharia law in a bid to win back young Somalis who had joined the main rebel group, al-Shabab, Arabic for “youth.”

But last week, favor swung back to the rebels. With their advance on Mogadishu underway, hundreds of Islamist militiamen who had been persuaded to join Ahmed went back to al-Shabab. The Somali government and the United States accused Eritrea of supporting the group by flying cargo planes full of AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons to a sandy airstrip outside the capital just before the rebel advance began. Eritrea has denied the allegations.

Ahmed has strong international backing and widespread public support among Somalis sick of al-Shabab and its harsh version of Islam. While presenting himself as a devout Muslim, Ahmed has also cobbled together an alliance of clan militias and warlords eager to crush al-Shabab if only to preserve their business interests. On Sunday, militiamen loyal to the important but infamous warlord Yusuf Indahaadde, long considered an Eritrean proxy, joined with the government, which analysts and observers considered a significant defection.

“I think Ahmed will survive this,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top U.N. envoy to Somalia, said in a telephone interview. “And if by some miracle the rebels win, they will not last.”

Ould-Abdallah and other analysts say the rebels are suffering from internal divisions as leaders jockey for power and clan divisions surface. The foreign contingent, for instance, has been disillusioned to find weapons, food and money being doled out along clan lines, Ould-Abdallah said. The foreigners — who fight under their own flag — have in recent days withdrawn from their positions in Mogadishu. “They are demoralized,” Ould-Abdallah said. “They came to wage an ideological war, and they are caught in the middle of a tribal fight.”

The pull of clan is beginning to trump Islamist ideology, which so far provided a common cause for fighters from an array of clans, a feat once unheard of in Somali society. According to one Somali analyst familiar with the situation, several top rebel leaders are angry with Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of Somalia’s oldest militant Islamist leaders, who comes from the militarily powerful Ayr clan.

Aweys, a player in Somali politics for decades, is poised to become president if the rebels take over. But rebel leaders from less-powerful clans are suspicious that he is trying to pry his clansmen from al-Shabab in his bid for power.

And it is unlikely that al-Shabab’s members, who have developed a keen sense of entitlement after fighting for three years against Ethiopian occupiers who installed Somalia’s last government, would accept any leadership other than their own, some analysts said.

“Now the Shabab and other Islamists need each other, but I don’t think they’ll be able to continue this alliance,” Said said. “Their goal is to topple the government, but after that, what?”

Special correspondents Mohamed Ibrahim in Nairobi and Yusuf Hagi Husein in Mogadishu contributed to this report.

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