Somali Islamists cement control of south amid border tension
The leader of the Islamists who now control most of southern Somalia accused the United States on Saturday of orchestrating what he called a border incursion by hundreds of Ethiopian troops.
“We want the whole world to know what’s going on,” Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, told reporters in the provincial town of Jowhar. “The United States is encouraging Ethiopia to take over the area.”
American officials said they were not involved in an incursion, and Ethiopian authorities denied the claims that several hundred of their soldiers had entered Somalia in the southwestern Gedo region on Saturday morning. What had occurred, Ethiopian officials told reporters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, was that their troops had massed on their side of the border to prevent an incursion from the Islamists in Somalia.
iht.com
Americans ignored pleas to stop funding warlords, Somalians say
MOGADISHU, Somalia – In March, nine of Mogadishu’s most prominent community leaders secretly flew to neighboring Djibouti and pleaded with U.S. officials to stop funding the warlords who were devastating the city. Backing the warlords, they said, would end up strengthening an Islamist militia with a shadowy radical wing.
The Americans ignored their warnings, three of the Somalians at the meeting told Knight Ridder in separate interviews, and the community leaders’ fears came to life this month when the Islamic Courts Union militia defeated the warlords and took control of the Somalian capital.
Now the Bush administration’s Somalia strategy is in tatters. And the Islamist militia is poised to extend its control to all of southern Somalia, where intelligence officials think at least two senior al-Qaida operatives are hiding.
It was impossible to confirm the Somalian leaders’ version of events. U.S. officials in Washington have declined to comment on whether the United States provided aid to the warlords. However, two U.S. intelligence officials, speaking anonymously because they aren’t authorized to talk to journalists, confirmed that CIA financial support was coordinated by the agency’s station chief in Nairobi.
Somalia: Who supports who?
…President Abdullahi Yusuf’s first visit was to Addis Ababa, and it was reported that he wanted a 20,000-strong mainly Ethiopian force to reinforce his government.
This was strenuously resisted by many Somalis, and by a number of neighbouring governments.
So who is arming President Abdullahi Yusuf and the transitional government? Apart from the support his government has received from Ethiopia, there are a number of reports of Yemeni planes arriving in Baidoa, bringing arms and ammunition.
Finances for the courts are reportedly being provided by rich individuals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
There have also been reports that Eritrea – which has a long-running border dispute with Ethiopia – has been supplying arms to the Islamists. This is denied by the authorities in Asmara.