I don’t remember Somalia joining “George Bush’s so-called war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe the crack squad of anti-Bush polemisists at the state-run CBC could delve into this after they connect the dots linking Islamist train bombings in India to George Bush.
Somalia’s Islamists demand control of government facilities
MOGADISHU (AFP) – Islamists tightened their grip on the Somali capital, Mogadishu, taking control of its main port and demanding that all government property be turned over to them.
In separate developments, Islamic militia opened fire to quell a tax protest in a former warlord stronghold north of the capital, shooting dead at least one person, wounding several others and arresting dozens, witnesses said.
And heavily armed Islamic gunmen stormed a village in Somalia’s central Galgudud region after receiving reports that several warlords were attempting to regroup there, residents said.
The Islamists took custody of Mogadishu’s port from a local militia leader, witnesses said, two days after they ousted the last remaining member of a US-backed coalition of warlords from the capital. The other warlords were routed in June.
As a local militia chief peacefully surrendered the port, a senior official from the Islamist union, the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), ordered that all public facilities in Mogadishu be ceded to the SICS, a demand likely to further antagonize the country’s transitional government.
“The other remaining government properties must be handed over to the Islamic courts,” SICS executive committee chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said.
“Mogadishu is right now under control of the Islamic courts,” he said. “We will control every other important thing in Mogadishu. I encourage everybody who is opposed to the Islamic courts to change that stance and support them.”
[…] [A transitional government] has watched warily as the Islamists have moved to fill the power vacuum, defeating the US-backed warlords in months of bloody fighting, extending its reach and imposing strict Sharia law in areas it controls.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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