Google The New York Times - NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 28 - Just hours after the Islamist forces abandoned Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, militias loyal to the transitional government seized the city today in a stunning reversal of fortunes.
According to residents, troops from the transitional government, along with Ethiopian soldiers who had been backing them up, poured into the capital from the outskirts of the city while militiamen within Mogadishu occupied key positions, like the port, airport and dilapidated presidential palace.
“The government has taken over Mogadishu,” a transitional government leader, Jama Fuuruh, told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu’s port.
“ We are now in charge."
Mogadishu’s new powers immediately had to deal with a rising level of chaos, as armed bandits swept the city and fragmented clan militia began to battle each other for the spoils of war. Witnesses said an intense gun battle raged around a former Islamist ammunition dump and that clan warlords had instantly reverted back to setting up roadside checkpoints and shaking down motorists for money. Many terrified residents stayed in their homes behind bolted doors and the few that ventured into the streets carried guns.
“No one is really in command,” said one adviser to Western diplomats who has close contacts with both the Islamists and the transitional government. “Chaos is in command.”
People inside Mogadishu and out are stunned. The Islamist forces, just a few weeks ago the most powerful force in the country and considered a regional menace, had disintegrated after just four days of counter-attacks by the Ethiopian-led troops. There were reports that the Islamist leaders had gone underground, fleeing deep into the Somali bush. There were also worries that they had simply changed tactics and could be planning to employ guerilla warfare and terrorist attacks, as they had threatened to do. Today, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed , a top Islamist leader, said his forces had surrendered the city to avoid a bloodbath.
“We don’t want to see Mogadishu destroyed," he told Al-Jazeera television today by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The Islamist forces hastily collapsed on Wednesday afternoon when clan elders pulled their troops and firepower out of the movement after a string of back-to-back military losses in which more than 1,000 Islamist fighters, most of them adolescent boys, were killed by Ethiopian-backed forces.
“Our children were getting annihilated,” said Abdi Hulow, an elder with the powerful Hawiye clan. “We couldn’t sustain it.”
As the transitional government’s troops marched into the city, political negotiations began. Mr. Hulow and other clan elders said they wanted to negotiate with the transitional government to get good positions for fellow clan members in exchange for support. Today, Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister of the transitional government, was meeting with elders from Mogadishu’s power clans on the outskirts of the city.
The Islamists started out as a grass-roots movement of clan elders and religious leaders who banded together earlier this year to rid Mogadishu of its notorious warlords, earning them a lot of public support.
But much of that good will seems to have been sapped by their decision to go to war against the transitional government and the Ethiopian forces protecting it.
The Islamists attacked Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government, on Dec. 20; a few days later, they announced that Somalia was open to Muslim fighters around the world who wanted to wage a holy war against Christian-led Ethiopia.
That provoked a crushing counter-attack by the Ethiopians, who command the strongest military in East Africa. For the past week, the Islamists have lost one battle after another, their adolescent soldiers no match for a professional army.