Garowe Online (Garowe)
28 February 2008
Mogadishu — The supreme leader of Somalia's short-lived Islamic revolution says his group has not given orders to attack the 2,000-strong African Union Mission in Somalia [AMISOM] continent serving in the Horn of Africa's troubled capital, Mogadishu.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, chairman of the Islamic Courts movement, told Voice of America's Somali Service program that the main problem in Somalia remained the presence of Ethiopian troops.
"We Somalis do not have big problems in the middle. We are one people, with one religion, who are relatives and brothers," said Sheikh Aweys.
African Union peacekeepers in Somalia
He indicated that the Somali people need a chance to resolve their own differences, but that foreign interference is ruining any chance at peace in a country suffering more than 17 years of conflict.
"It is a must that the group that destroyed the peace leave the country so Somalis can have control," Sheikh Aweys said, while speaking about the Ethiopian army.
The Islamist chief said he is now a member of the Eritrea-based Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), a political coalition formed by exiled Islamic Courts officials, dissident parliamentarians and Diaspora activists last year.
"I was the leader of al-Shabaab when they were part of the [Islamic] Courts," Sheikh Aweys said when asked about the young guerrilla fighters leading the Mogadishu insurgency.
He stated that "most of the al-Shabaab fighters" are still part of the ARS, but admitted that there are "a few dissidents."
Earlier this week, al-Shabaab commander Moallim Hashi distanced his group from the Eritrea-based Somali opposition alliance and spoke unfavorably of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a close Aweys ally and the former executive head of the Islamic Courts administration that governed Mogadishu and the south-central regions in 2006.
Sheikh Aweys told the VOA interviewer that the armed opposition has not seen the AU peacekeepers take sides in the Somali conflict.
"We do not feel that they [AMISOM peacekeepers] have taken sides. So I don't see any reason to attack them, but I don't feel any love [for them]," Sheikh Aweys said.
But his feeling towards Ethiopian troops backing the weak interim government remained clear and consistent.
"Our target is those men [Ethiopians] who invaded our country illegally and who are our enemies."
Political violence raging between Islamist-led rebels and Ethiopian-backed government security forces has killed more than 6,500 people since January 2007, when Mogadishu's Islamic rulers were overthrown in a two-week war with Ethiopian troops.
The country now faces what some UN officials are calling Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.
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