MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said yesterday his military had defeated Islamist rebels battling to overthrow his Western-backed government after the al Shabaab group began withdrawing fighters from the capital Mogadishu.
Rejecting Ahmed’s claim to have quashed al Shabaab’s four-year insurgency, the militants’ spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, said their retreat was tactical only and they were holding their positions elsewhere in the anarchic country.
A 9,000-strong African peacekeeping force and Somali government forces had been steadily wresting control of rubble-strewn Mogadishu from the militants this year. Al Shabaab’s pullout followed a string of fierce gun battles late on Friday.
Somalia has been without effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre 20 years ago.
Al Shabaab’s retreat from the Somali capital Mogadishu signals an acceptance it cannot militarily defeat a government propped up by foreign muscle and firepower, but raises the spectre of an escalation in al Qaeda-inspired raids.
Winning Mogadishu might expand the government’s prison capital a little, but it is unlikely to bring any tangible peace to the rest of the Horn of Africa country.
“It was not the strength of al Shabaab that kept them in Mogadishu for so long, it was the incompetence and weakness of the (Somali government),” said Afyare Elmi, a professor at Qatar University’s International Affairs department.
“I’m worried the (government) may not be able to step into the vacated areas and other clan militia step in. The challenge … is to expand into these areas and install law and order.”
