afrol News, 8 June - The Islamist takeover of Somalia's capital Mogadishu already is widely described as a "painful" setback for the United States. While the Islamic Courts' leader has sent a letter to foreign diplomats assuring they did not support terrorism, Washington remains sceptical and will not accept an Islamist attempt to gain power beyond Mogadishu. At least two Mogadishu court leaders are suspected of having supported al-Qaeda terrorists, the US holds.

Islamist Courts chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, known to be a moderate voice within the movement, yesterday met Western scepticism in a diplomatic way. "We share no objectives, goals or methods with groups that sponsor or support terrorism," Mr Ahmed assured in an open letter to Western diplomats. This had earlier been doubted by US intelligence.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack yesterday evening reacted carefully to the letter from the Islamists, saying Washington had received a copy. He said the US government had by now understood the courts movement was "not a monolithic group, that it is really an effort on the part of some individuals to try to restore some semblance of order in Mogadishu, to try to lay the foundations for some institutions in Somalia that might form the basis for a better, more peaceful, secure Somalia where the rule of law is important."

Despite the new "understanding", Washington remains strongly sceptical towards the movement, or at least many of its leading individuals. Two of the eleven Mogadishu Islamic court leaders have been suspected to harbour terrorists and are known as Islamist radicals by US intelligence.

Court leader Hassan Dahir Aweys is on an official US list of suspected terrorists. He is the former leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a radical group with links to al-Qaeda that now is dissolved. Further, the commander of the Islamist militia, Adan Hashi Ayro, has been a fighter in Afghanistan and is accused of standing behind the assassination of five foreign aid workers and one foreign journalist in Mogadishu. Both men remain strongly anti-Western.

The Islamic courts have also demonstrated their intentions of profoundly Islamising society in traditionally liberal Mogadishu. They have called for the introduction of Islamic Shari' a laws, which they have started practicing. Death sentences have already been carried out, and alleged criminals have been maimed.

Finally, Mogadishu residents generally react positively to the Islamists' victory and the city has started adopting values from the movement. After 15 years of war and anarchy, people long for law and order - even if it may be harsh - and also for spiritual impulses. Islam has gained much ground in Mogadishu, as have conservative practices. During the last decade, women have started covering their hair and increasingly their faces - a practice without much tradition in Somalia.

All these reports from the Somali capital have raised serious concerns in the US and Europe that the Islamic courts may become a popular Somali version of Afghanistan's radical Taliban movement. Could the Islamists even use their popular support in the capital to spread their influence to the rest of the country? A popular demand to end the misrule, abuse and destructions of the warlords and clan leaders in war-tired Somalia could point in that direction.

Mr Ahmed, the courts' chairman, has indicated that the Islamist militia would expand the territory it controls "if attacked" by the defeated warlords that are regrouping in Jowhar, a town located 90 kilometres north of Mogadishu. This, however, could provoke a foreign intervention.

The US government is already under pressure to react to the spread of Islamist power in Somalia. Most reports indicate that Washington had directly aided the Mogadishu warlords - grouped in an "anti-terrorism alliance" to fight the courts - in an attempt to prevent the Islamists from taking control over the Somali capital. As this intervention failed, Washington again stands out as defeated and discredited in Somalia, thus further nourishing the international Islamist movement.

Critics inside the US and in other parts say the US government has made grave mistakes. In the current situation, Washington should not have backed the hated Mogadishu warlords, but given support to the weak transitional government, based in the town of Baidoa, to fight the Islamists. This had been urged by Somalia's transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf, who has no sympathy with the Islamist movement. After the Islamist victory, the same was said by current African Union (AU) President Denis Sassou-Nguesso and parts of the US press.

'Washington Post' today in an editorial strongly criticised the US Republicans' failed strategy over Somalia over the last 13 years, from the point when Republican pressure forced thus-President Bill Clinton to withdraw American troops from Mogadishu in 1993. "It is now painfully clear why the United States was wrong to abandon nation-building" in Somalia, the editorial concludes. "What remains to be seen is whether the Islamic Courts Union will impose a Taliban-style regime or protect al-Qaeda militants believed to be based in Mogadishu."

"We do have concerns about the presence of al-Qaeda in Somalia," State Department spokesman McCormack confirmed. He however hit back at those saying Washington should have channelled aid to the transitional government, charactering it as "very, very weak". But Mr McCormack added that the strategy now was to help build up the transitional government to assist it "fight the presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia."

By Rainer Chr. Hennig

© afrol News

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