BARTAMAHA (MOGADISHU): — Somalia’s embattled president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has vowed to reorganise his administration’s security forces and regain control of the capital Mogadishu.

“We have spent the last days with the army here and I can tell you that we have already collected sufficient information to improve and reorganise the security forces,” he said late Thursday.

Sheikh Sharif was speaking at Villa Baidoa in Mogadishu, the main base for the transitional federal government’s security forces. He spent three days there and was seen in military uniform, a rare occurrence.

“I can assure you that the armed forces will bring about the required changes to the situation across the country and in Mogadishu in particular,” he told hundreds of members of the armed forces.

“We are in the final stages of fully preparing the national armed forces… With our efforts now, I hope the army’s operations will be more effective than they used to be,” he said.

“The president stayed with us at Villa Baidoa and has not gone back to his palace since Tuesday. He met all the top military officials and discussed the security situation with them,” Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Jama told AFP.

“I think he is now committed to engaging a final offensive to eliminate the Al Qaeda-linked militants,” he added, referring to the Shebab group, which has waged a fierce insurgency in Mogadishu and controls most of the country.

“He is no longer busy with other things now, he is only talking about military and security issues,” the military official added.

Sheikh Sharif’s heralded military push comes weeks after a new government was approved last month and as differences are appearing between the Shebab and their allies in the insurgency Hezb al-Islam.

“I believe that the time for talking is over now. The president feels the security threat posed by the Shebab and so do we,” Colonel Abukar Abdi, another senior military official, told AFP.

“If he is serious about these new efforts, let him pay the army first,” he added, referring to recurring payment delays that have accounted for the government’s fickle allegiances in the past.

Sheikh Sharif and his government have promised a major nationwide offensive to crush the Shebab for months but it is still pending.

They control only a few blocks of the capital and a handful of small patches with their allies elsewhere in the country. The government owes its survival in Mogadishu largely to an 8,000-strong African Union force (AMISOM)

According to Uganda’s army spokesman, the first batch of 1,000 government soldiers trained in Uganda with European support graduated on Wednesday and are ready for deployment.

“There has been a security vacuum which we hope these troops and the African Union will fill and help in the stabilisation of Somalia,” Felix Kulayigye told AFP on Thursday.

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Source:- AFP.

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