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SOMALIA - Standing amid a pile of rubble on a Mogadishu street corner two young men, faces covered by red scarves, loaded their rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Three spare grenades and an AK-47 were slung over their backs.
By their feet lay a box containing a remote-controlled mine similar to the improvised explosive devices that have proved so deadly to British and American soldiers in Iraq. A second pair of similarly armed men stood at another junction 200m down the road; two further pairs were stationed nearby.
Watching the fighters take up position in the Black Sea area of southern Mogadishu, 37-year-old tea shop owner, Nuuro Mohammed Diirive, called for a "resistance" to drive Ethiopian troops out.
"Somalia has been confiscated by Ethiopia," she said, waving her arm in anger. "We are not free people. We are under the colonial master. We must find an army to resist them."
Diirive, a mother of seven, said Somalis should be prepared to lay down their lives to defeat Ethiopia.
"We will use suicide bombing. Maybe my children will do that."
The same pattern was occurring across the battle-scarred Somali capital . In the north of the city 10 masked men stood outside a mosque waving their AK-47s in the air and chanting "Allahu Akbar".
In the past few days the price of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in Mogadishu's Bakara arms market has risen from US$400 ($576) to US$1000. More than 700 AK-47s were sold in one day alone. "The Islamic Courts are arming now," said one trader.
A decade and a half of civil war takes its toll - on a people and on a city. Once upon a time there was a beauty to Mogadishu. Now, it is a city utterly destroyed by war. Through the bullet-riddled walls, crumbled houses and crater-filled streets it is possible to see how far the city has fallen. The remains of an ornate white-washed baroque balcony sits above destroyed shop fronts where malnourished goats are now the only customers.
Despite there being no central bank or functioning ministry of finance, Somalia's black economy continues to thrive. Market stalls are crammed on to every major street, many of them selling khat, the mild narcotic banned by the Islamic Courts.
For the six months that the Islamic Courts were in control of the city there was a level of peace and security here that had been absent for the preceding 15 years. Even those who soon tired of the courts' increasingly radical leadership and their insistence on banning music and World Cup matches agree that their rule made Mogadishu more stable.
Less than a month ago Ethiopian and Somali government troops rolled into Mogadishu driving out the leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts. But now the insurgency against Ethiopia's occupation has begun. Members of the radical Islamic group, al Shabaab, have re-emerged in Mogadishu vowing to ambush Ethiopian and Somali Government soldiers.
Al Shabaab's leader, Arun Ayro, who with other Islamic Courts leaders, is back in the capital. Fighters on the street said yesterday that Ayro would not leave until the Ethiopians had been defeated.
The only piece of clothing which signifies the fighters' membership of al Shabaab is the red scarf wrapped around the face and head.
The start of the insurgency came with leaflets warning Somalis to stay away from Ethiopians "and their stooges", a reference to Somalia's weak Government, which was only able to defeat the Islamic Courts with the backing of neighbouring Ethiopia.
- INDEPENDENT
