Author: Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Publication: Middle East Times
Date: October 25, 2006
URL: http://metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061025-090639-1467r
Somali Islamists have begun recruiting thousands
of young fighters to fight a jihad against Ethiopia, officials said Wednesday,
amid fears of all-out war across the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
A day after claiming to have captured an Ethiopian
military officer in fierce weekend battles with a militia allied to Somalia's
weak government, the Islamists said that at least 3,000 people had enlisted
for combat in the holy war.
Many of the new recruits have signed up in
the last two days, since the supreme leader of the powerful Islamist movement
announced the start of a threatened jihad against Ethiopian troops alleged
in Somalia, officials said.
"We have at least 3,000 young fighters
who have now registered to fight the enemy of Allah," a senior official
with the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SICS) official said in Mogadishu.
The newcomers, including women, will join
what the Islamists claim are tens of thousands of battle-hardened gunmen who
seized Mogadishu in June from warlords and now control most of southern and
central Somalia.
"We have trained them to fight and that
is religious obligation," said Sheikh Abdinur Farah, a senior Islamist
commander who runs a jihad recruitment center in Qoryoley, about 120 kilometers
(75 miles) south of Mogadishu.
"Ethiopia has made clear its intention:
that is a war against us," he said from the town. "So we are calling
an open war against Ethiopia and every young fighter is welcome to join the
jihad against the Ethiopian invaders."
Ethiopia and the Somali government have repeatedly
denied eyewitness accounts of Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia, although Addis
Ababa has said several times that it has sent trainers and advisors.
But mainly Christian Ethiopia has vowed to
protect itself and the Somali government from the jihadists, whom, together
with the transitional government, it accuses of links with Osama Bin Laden's
Al Qaeda network.
On Tuesday, the Islamists claimed to have
seized the Ethiopian officer in clashes that killed at least 51 people north
of the southern port of Kismayo.
Ethiopia has not yet responded to the alleged
capture of the officer who was not identified by name or rank.
On Monday, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, chief
of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) and a hardline cleric designated
a "terrorist" by the United States, urged Somalis to take up arms
against Ethiopian troops.
Several recruits from Qoryoley Wednesday said
that they had been inspired to join the jihad by Aweys' speech in which he
vowed that the graves of Ethiopian troops would "be littered everywhere
in Somalia."
"I have been looking for somewhere to
devote my passion for my religion and country," said 23-year-old Abdullahi
Sidow Hassan. "Now that the righteous jihad has started, I have found
it.
Fadumo Isaq Duale, 20, a female student, echoed
that sentiment. "I am ready to die for my religion because it is a religious
obligation on every Muslim, be it man or woman," she said. "We have
nothing to lose because Ethiopia is violating our religion and our land."
Soaring tensions between the Islamists and
the government and worsening security in south and central Somalia have forced
tens of thousands to flee into neighboring Kenya and added to concerns of
widespread conflict.
The deteriorating situation threatens to scupper
a planned third round of Arab League-mediated peace talks between the government
and the Islamists set to begin October 30 in Khartoum.
Somalia has been without a functioning central
administration since 1991 and the government, formed in neighboring Kenya
in 2004, has been wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over
much of the country.