By SARAH CHILDRESS —Stepped-up attacks by Somali militants are challenging the new president’s campaign promises to bring peace and order to this war-torn country.

President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s plan involved more public relations than firepower: erode the popular base of the country’s extremist Islamist insurgency and win over other, influential warlords.

 

But in recent weeks, Al Shabab, a loose collection of Islamist militants including hardened insurgents, disaffected youth and other extremists, has intensified its assaults.

On Wednesday, nine people died after insurgents fired mortars at the presidential palace in Mogadishu. The mortars missed their target and fell instead on a residential area.

The violence underscores the difficult task for Mr. Ahmed, who took office in January.

Somalia has long been a tangle of shifting alliances. President Ahmed was once part of a government that declared jihad on its neighbor, Ethiopia.

Now, he is positioning himself as a moderate working for peace.

During his first few months in office, Mr. Ahmed pressed warlords — many weary of fighting — to support the administration. His government and the United Nations say he is making progress there.

The government’s broader strategy has been to weaken Al Shabab by providing opportunities for education and jobs to young men who might otherwise, in the words of a government spokesman, be enlisted by insurgents for “seventy dollars and a mobile phone.”

Those plans are on hold, however, amid strife in Mogadishu. In recent weeks, Al Shabab and another militant group, Hisb-ul-Islam, banded together to overturn the government, clashing with Somali forces in a fresh push toward Mogadishu.

The fighting has prompted more than 45,000 Somalis to flee the capital, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

So far, Somali and African Union forces have managed to keep the insurgents at bay, holding significant portions of Mogadishu under government control.

But Mr. Ahmed’s government is growing increasingly worried about what it says is a new flow of foreign fighters supporting the insurgency.

This week, Mr. Ahmed appealed to the international community to help stop the flow of foreign militants — some from Pakistan and the U.S. — into the country.

The U.N.’s special representative on Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who recently visited Mogadishu, said foreign fighters have blurred the lines defining the conflict. “We don’t know who is with whom,” he said.

A spokesman for the government, Abdirisak Aden, said the leadership is committed to “dialogue and reconciliation,” with any faction interested in helping to rebuild the country.

“But the government needs to differentiate from these foreign fighters,” Mr. Aden said. “Our concern is how to fight these elements.”

The international community pledged more than $200 million in assistance at a recent donor conference. It likely will take months for that money to reach Somalia.

The African Union’s mission in Somalia has slightly more than 4,000 troops charged with establishing peace in Mogadishu. These troops have become a target for insurgents, who lay roadside bombs for their tanks.

Nicolas Bwakira, the special representative for the mission, said the recent attacks included some of the worst violence he had seen in the country since March 2007, after the Ethiopians invaded and Somalia had no effective government.

But this time, Mr. Bwakira said, the militants’ violence signaled their frustration, not strength.

“We have a government supported by the population,” he said. “The [insurgents] see that they are losing ground…. So in order to undermine and derail the political process they have to engage in a vicious war.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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