Nairobi, Kenya – After months of fierce fighting, Islamic militias declared Monday that they had taken control of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, defeating warlords widely believed to be backed by the United States and raising questions about whether the country will head down an extremist path.
“We won the fight against the enemy of Islam,” Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the alliance of Islamists – known as the Islamic Courts Union – said Monday in a radio broadcast, according to The Associated Press.
The battle for Mogadishu has been a proxy war of sorts in the Bush administration’s campaign against terror, with the warlords echoing Washington’s goal of rooting out radical Islam and al-Qaeda’s regional presence.
But as the warlords who have ruled over Mogadishu for the past 15 years went on the run Monday, it appeared that Washington had backed the losing side, presenting the administration with a major setback at a time of continued sectarian violence in Iraq and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
One warlord was holed up in a hospital north of the city Monday, surrounded by his enemies. Others fled the capital after their forces had been pushed from the strategic center.
The heavily armed militias driving them back are allied with the Islamic courts that have grown in influence throughout Somalia in recent years, filling a void left by the lack of a central government since 1991. The courts are made up of a loose coalition of religious leaders who have put forward Islam as the way out of the country’s long decline into anarchy.
On Monday, at least, the capital appeared to be calm, after hundreds of civilian deaths there in recent months.
“The people of Mogadishu have finally gotten some peace today,” schoolteacher Ali Mohammed, 32, said in a telephone interview from the capital Monday night. “We’ve had war for so long, and we’re tired of it.”
But he also said he and others worried that the Islamic courts might now clamp down and impose a stricter form of Islam on residents. “We don’t know what’s next,” he said.
U.S. officials have said they fear that the country may descend into a situation similar to that of Afghanistan, where the Taliban seized control and then gave safe haven to al-Qaeda. The U.S. believes a handful of foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda are being shielded by Mogadishu’s Islamist leaders.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack echoed those concerns at a news briefing Monday. “We don’t want to see Somalia turn into a safe haven for foreign terrorists,” he said. “We do have very real concerns about that.”
Ted Dagne, Africa analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, expressed doubt that the takeover marked the rise of extremists in the capital. “Somalis are secular Muslims, and the presence of the so-called Islamists is not an introduction of new ideology or religion,” Dagne said in an e-mail.
Initial statements from the Islamic Courts Union emphasized a need for dialogue instead of warfare.
“We want to restore peace and stability to Mogadishu,” Sheik Ahmed said in his radio broadcast. “We are ready to meet and talk to anybody and any group for the interest of the people.”
Since February, more than 300 people have been killed and more than 1,700 injured in what was called the fiercest fighting that Mogadishu had seen in the 15 years since Somalia’s central government collapsed.
Backing the Islamists have been business leaders, eager to end the arbitrary rule of the warlords as well as freelance gunmen willing to work for anyone who pays them.
Now that the Islamic Courts Union has taken over, it remains to be seen how it will choose to govern and whether infighting among the group may send the city back into the chaos it has long known.
“We have to appeal to the moderates in this Islamist movement,” said Mario Raffaelli, the Italian special envoy for Somalia. “We have to make clear that we are supporting the government” in Mogadishu.
The outcome in Mogadishu occurred as a transitional government created after two years of peace talks struggled to establish a toehold. That government is based in Baidoa, 155 miles from Mogadishu, because it lacked the strength to take on the warring gunmen based in the capital.
In a late-night Cabinet meeting Sunday, as the victory by the Islamists became clear, the government decided to open talks with Mogadishu’s new rulers.