Last week, insurgent attacks killed more than 100 civilians and led at least 30,000 people to flee their homes

TO BE NOTED: From the NY Times:

"Insurgents Are Said to Capture Somali Town

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Islamic insurgents sustained their offensive against the nation’s fragile government and captured a strategic southeastern town on Sunday, hours after a leader of another Islamic militia defected to the government, witnesses and officials said.

The defection of the militia leader, Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde, would be a major boost for Somalia’s weak government.

But the Islamic fighters, known as the Shabab, captured the important agricultural town of Jowhar, 55 miles northeast of Mogadishu, the capital, and a critical link to central Somalia, residents said. Government officials denied that Jowhar had fallen, but residents said the insurgents were in control.

The State Department says the Shabab is a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda, a charge the group denies.

Last week, insurgent attacks killed more than 100 civilians and led at least 30,000 people to flee their homes. There has been concern that the government may collapse if the fighting in Mogadishu persists.

There has been a lull in fighting here since Friday, but observers fear that if the insurgents seize Mogadishu, they will gain a haven in the Horn of Africa.

In Jowhar, a resident, Hamdi Da’ud, said he saw the bodies of three pro-government militiamen on the street after the militia fought insurgents for 20 minutes. Both sides fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, he said.

Information Minister Farhan Ali Mohamud said that the Islamic insurgents had not captured Jowhar but that the fighting was continuing.

President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed’s government directly controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and the border town of El Berde. But Mr. Ahmed has allies among the militias that control much of central Somalia and pockets of the south. The Shabab controls much of southern Somalia; northern Somalia is run by two autonomous governments that are opposed to the Islamists but are not allied with the Ahmed government.

Mr. Mohamud also told The Associated Press that Mr. Indahaadde, the Islamic militant leader, defected to the government side with all his militiamen late Saturday.

Until his reported defection, Mr. Indahaadde led the militia of a faction of a key Islamic insurgent group, the Islamic Party. The leader of that faction, confirmed that his group would fight alongside government forces.

The Islamic Party has been split over whether to work with Mr. Ahmed’s government now that it aims to implement Shariah law. Mr. Amey and Mr. Indahaadde had been pushing for the party to join the government."

- Somalia's president condemned on Saturday a call by Osama bin Laden

TO BE NOTED: From Reuters:

"Somali president condemns al Qaeda meddling

28 Mar 2009 14:41:30 GMT

Source: Reuters

MOGADISHU, March 28 (Reuters) - Somalia's president condemned on Saturday a call by Osama bin Laden for Somalis and Muslims around the world to topple the Horn of Africa nation's new government. Al Qaeda's leader urged Somalis last week to rise up against President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who become the country's first Islamist president when elected in January this year. In an audio tape recording, bin Laden said Ahmed was a surrogate of the group's enemies and warned Somalis not to be taken in by the president's pledge to introduce sharia law. "We are very disappointed with Osama bin Laden's call for fighting in Somalia when we already have a government," Ahmed told reporters in his hilltop presidential palace on Saturday. "Al Qaeda has not taught us religion and they have nothing for us. Now, we have all-inclusive government and hope for lasting peace," Ahmed said. Ahmed was chairman of the Islamic Courts Union that ran Mogadishu in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian forces, wary of having an Islamist state for a neighbour. After forming an opposition party in exile, Ahmed joined the peace process last year. He now faces the task of trying to establish a new security force and persuade Islamist fighters to back the government in the interests of peace. Ahmed returned to Somalia on Friday after visiting Burundi, Kenya, Libya, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. He said Libya and Sudan were working to bring peace to Somalia after 18 years of war and violence. "Sudan and Libya told us that they were in the process of bringing together the government and the opposition groups to reconcile them," the president said. The main challenge comes from Al Shabaab insurgents, who control swathes of southern and central Somalia. The group says it is fighting to impose its strict version of Islamic law throughout Somalia and to rid the country of foreign invaders. The African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia is made up of troops from Uganda and Burundi. More soldiers were deployed in Mogadishu after Ahmed's visit and he said they would stay in the country until a Somali force could provide security. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled; Editing by David Clarke and Angus MacSwan)"

"One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture — but they don’t see what unites them, they only see what divides them"

From the NY Times:

"Somalia’s Fate Still Unclear After Leader Quits

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the cantankerous president of beleaguered Somalia, resigned Monday. The question now is, will it make a difference?

Could it be the death knell of Somalia’s transitional government, whose zone of control is down to a few city blocks in a country nearly as big as Texas? Or will it be the government’s saving grace?

For weeks, Western diplomats, Somali elders and United Nations officials have been crossing their fingers that Mr. Yusuf, widely blamed for trying to block a peace deal with Somalia’s increasingly powerful Islamist insurgents, would step aside.

Mr. Yusuf, one of Somalia’s first warlords, never seemed able to shake his warlord ways. Western diplomats have accused him of favoring his clan at the expense of all others, enabling corruption and too often trying to solve knotty political problems, which called for a little finesse, with the business end of a machine gun.

Kenyan officials even threatened sanctions against him this month, calling him “an obstacle to peace” and warning that unless he changed tack, he would no longer be welcome in Kenya. That was a serious threat because Mr. Yusuf, who claims to be 74 but is widely believed to be several years older, has gone to Kenya several times for lifesaving medical treatment for an ailing liver.

In stepping down, Mr. Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia’s feuding leaders, news agencies reported, and as soon as he resigned, the United Nations’ top official for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said that “a new page of Somalia history is now open.”

But what will be written on it?

The scramble to succeed Mr. Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top Somali officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.

Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists who behead opponents and have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped.( GOOD LORD )

Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, which tracks conflicts worldwide, said Mr. Yusuf’s resignation was “good news” because “it may create the opportunity to put a more conciliatory figure in charge of the government.”

That figure could be someone like Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a well-respected, moderate Islamic cleric who has struggled to walk the tightrope between negotiating with the transitional government and being dismissed as a sellout.

Earlier this year, Sheik Sharif’s faction signed a power-sharing agreement with the transitional government, despite the president’s objections, and many Somalis are hoping the deal will stick.

“If that power-sharing deal is applied, it will help a lot,” said Muhammad Dheere, a pharmacist in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scarred capital. “Then the other problems could finish soon.”

Somalia certainly has a lot of them. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people. Pirates off Somalia’s coast have netted countless headlines and as much as $100 million in ransoms. Violence is rising again and finding new forms, with Islamist factions now fighting one another to take over the areas the government no longer controls.

Over the weekend, in two towns, a moderate Islamist group routed the Shabab, one of the nation’s most fearsome and radical Islamist militias. But the Shabab were fighting back fiercely on Monday, and they also took over a United Nations food distribution office, imperiling a critical lifeline.

The thousands of Ethiopian troops who have been in Somalia for two years are threatening to leave any day now. If they do, the transitional government may have no one to protect it from Islamist insurgents, except a relatively small contingent of African Union peacekeepers( LIKE IN THE CONGO? ) and a few ragtag Somali militiamen.

It will not be easy finding someone qualified — and willing — to serve as president, considering all this. Somalia’s transitional government, created four years ago (with Mr. Yusuf at the helm) as a temporary solution until Somalia could hold elections, is carefully balanced on a formula that divides power among Somalia’s four major clans.

One considerable strike against Sheik Sharif is that he is not only from the same clan, but from the same subclan as the prime minister, who is well regarded and not believed to be going anywhere.

Many people expect that the next president could come from the same clan as Mr. Yusuf, to minimize clan friction. The speaker of Parliament will take over the presidency for one month until Parliament elects a new president.

Yet, after nearly 18 years of unbridled anarchy, many Somalis have lost hope.( WHO COULD BLAME THEM? )

“Somalis are a God-forsaken nation,” said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, a Canadian-Somali who used to work with Mr. Yusuf and is now looking for a job. “They are so oblivious to what is happening. One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture — but they don’t see what unites them, they only see what divides them.

“Maybe on the outside, to the international community, the resignation will matter,” he said. “But not on the inside.”

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia."

This is a terribly difficult and unending situation. How often are we encountering that now?