An Islamist victory of convenience in Somalia

Businessmen backed the Islamists to free Somalia from the grip of hated warlords. Picture / Reuters.

MOGADISHU - They wave their Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, proclaiming they are the new Mujahideen. Their leaders talk international power politics while imposing strict sharia laws.

Yet some of the fighters we speak to do not want to be photographed, in case they want to emigrate to the West should events in Mogadishu take a turn for the worst.

There are also tales of al Qaeda moving in the shadows inside Somalia's capital, a city now in ruins, and a potent symbol of a failure of United States foreign policy.

The blasted buildings and shattered streets, the burned and looted factories, the lack of any kind of infrastructure, the gun-toting militants. These are devastating legacies of a failed US intervention more than a decade ago.

Now Somalia, a country the West subsequently chose to forget, is the sudden recipient of frantic attention following the resounding victory of Islamist forces over US-backed warlords after months of fighting.

President George W. Bush has declared he will not tolerate Somalia becoming a Taleban-style Afghanistan. Neighbouring states are pouring in money and arms.

The United Nations and aid agencies are setting up emergency programmes. Somalia is now the subject of a New York summit.

Yet in Mogadishu, the focus of so much fevered international analysis and speculation from the outside, there is a marked absence of foreign diplomats, aid workers or statesmen to gauge what is really happening.

Here among the streets, shattered and blasted by years of lawlessness, there is a momentary respite from the fighting, especially after the recent bout of ferocious violence.

Shops are opening and families venturing out of their homes.

But no one believes that peace is about to break out. "We have learnt not to believe that good things will happen to us. I have seen too many people killed for that," said 28-year-old Hassina Ali, as she walked heavily laden with groceries back to her home, stumbling in the hijab, which has recently become the standard dress for women in Mogadishu.

"In the last days of fighting my sister was killed, she died while I was holding her. We fled. We spoke to aid workers in Merka, but they had no idea what was going on in Mogadishu. We came back, but we do not know what to do. We have no future."

There is also little food or water, or power; some is getting through but Mogadishu is still largely cut off.

Concentrated firepower

Most of the destruction inflicted in the latest bout of fighting has been through the use of anti-aircraft artillery and mortars in an urban landscape of dense and crumbling housing.

The pulverising effect of such concentrated firepower can be seen everywhere - homes collapsed and solitary walls sticking out like jagged teeth.

There is an acute shortage of medicine, but now at least patients are freer to seek treatment in filthy, bloodstained corridors in hospitals.

"My mother was trapped in our house for four days with broken bones, said Mohammed Khalid, a 47-year-old carpenter. "We have taken her to hospital. But there is no medicine."

What happened in Mogadishu has, local people say, much more to do with Islamists, clan chiefs and the business community united in an alliance of convenience against the depredations of warlords the US has backed.

The business leaders who have bankrolled the Islamists say they did so to get a modicum of stability. They also described how they secretly met US officials in Djibouti less than three months ago to say that an Islamist takeover could be averted if the US stopped supporting the warlords.

They were snubbed and, for now, the Islamists are triumphant.

Their militias parade through the muddy pot-holed roads in their gun-mounted trucks, Somalia's famous "technicals", declaring their intention to take the jihad to the rest of Somalia and the Horn of Africa beyond.

They are a mixed bunch. Many are in their teens, their fedayeen scarves and bandoliers of bullets incongruous against bright T-shirts and sandals.

The constant theme is that they joined the Islamists because of warlord corruption and a sense of Somalian nationalism. There is also simmering anger about the "disappeared", men abducted by militias who then turned up in Guantanamo Bay.

Abdul Fadih Ali Ahmed, a member of the bodyguard of Sheikh Ahmed Sharif, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement, said: "My older brother was killed in the fighting between the warlords; he was just 30 years old.

"I know so many who suffered so much. No one was doing anything to stop them. I was angry that they were kidnapping good Muslims, holy men, and selling them to the Americans.

"I felt that as a Muslim I must do something about it. I was injured in the fighting of the last few days, but I was so happy when we finally won."

Standing beside his Toyota "technical", clutching a machine gun almost as big as himself, Ibrahim Daoud Mohammed lowered the red-checked scarf around his youthful 17-year-old face.

"I took part in the fighting in north Mogadishu and I was among the first when we made the push to the south. I killed the enemy," he said.

"My family are proud of me because I was fighting for my country. I do not know anything about Afghanistan and Iraq; the warlords here were corrupt and they were supported by foreigners. I do not want to continue fighting for ever. I want to have a good job and a family, but for now we must continue."

The warring sides

The Islamists Pledged to restore order in Somalia. Could introduce sharia law. Backed by Somali business leaders.

The secularists Warlords backed by Baidoa and the US. Disliked for years of infighting and terrorising ordinary Somalians.

The United States Fought against the warlords in the 1990s. Now supports them, fearing another Islamist "Taleban state".

- INDEPENDENT