Somali Forces Set To Battle For Capital

Somalia government soldiers, joined by troops from neighboring Ethiopia, advanced toward Somalia's capital Wednesday as Islamic fighters dug in and promised a "new phase" in the war — a chilling pronouncement from a movement that has threatened suicide attacks.

Somalia called on the Council of Islamic Courts militias, bloodied by a week of artillery and mortar attacks, to surrender and promised amnesty if they lay down their weapons, government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.

Ethiopian and Somali troops entered the strategic city of Jowhar, the last major town on the northern road to the capital, routing Islamic militiamen and forcing them to retreat, residents said.

A former warlord, who ruled Jowhar before it was captured by the Council of Islamic Courts in June, led the Somali government troops as they drove into the city, resident said. "Ethiopian troops and Mohammed Dhere have entered the city," said Abshir Ali Gabre.

Meanwhile, Francois Lonseny Fall, the top U.N. envoy to Somalia, said 35,000 Somalis had crossed into neighboring Kenya to escape the fighting, which forced the U.N. to suspend aid delivery to two million Somalis.

As many as 1,000 people may have been killed and 3,000 wounded in the fighting, many of them foreign radicals, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said.

Meles said about 3,000 to 4,000 Ethiopian forces, which entered Somalia on Saturday, may soon wrap up their offensive against the Islamic militias that until recent days controlled most of southern part of the country.

"As soon as we have accomplished our mission — and about half of our mission is done, and the rest shouldn't take long — we'll be out," Meles told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The U.N. envoy, Fall, called the fighting "disastrous" for the Somalian people and asked the Security Council to call for an immediate cease-fire.

The council took no immediate action on a draft presidential statement circulated by Qatar calling for a cease-fire and withdrawal of foreign forces, specifying Ethiopian troops. The United States and several other nations objected to singling out Ethiopia and the call for a truce, saying talks and a political agreement are needed for stability before foreign forces can leave. The council agreed to continue discussions Wednesday.

A U.S. State Department spokesman in Washington appeared to endorse Ethiopia's military action, saying it had "genuine security concerns" about the growth of powerful Islamic militias next door.

The spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said he had no information on whether the U.S., which is concerned about the militia's ties to foreign Islamic militants, was aiding the Ethiopian military with supplies.

Ethiopia sent fighter jets streaking deep into militia-held areas Sunday to help Somalia's U.N.-recognized government push back the Islamic militias. Ethiopia bombed the country's two main airports and helped government forces capture several villages.

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a top leader of the Islamic group, accused Ethiopian troops of massacring 50 civilians in the central town of Cadado. Ethiopian officials were not immediately available to respond.

Ahmed said his fighters are in tactical retreat in the face of superior Ethiopian firepower. But the military struggle has just begun, he added.

"The war is entering a new phase," Ahmed said from Mogadishu, the capital. "We will fight Ethiopia for a long, long time and we expect the war to go everyplace."
Ahmed declined to elaborate, but some Islamic leaders have threatened a guerrilla war to include suicide bombings in Addis Ababa.

Ismael Mohamoud Hurreh, Somalia's foreign minister, said Tuesday that the government's small military force has been training for this offensive for five months.

"We will hold our line very, very well, don't worry about that," Hurreh told reporters in Nairobi, Kenya.

Experts fear the conflict in Somalia could engulf the region. Islamic courts leaders have repeatedly said they want to incorporate ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya and Djibouti into a Greater Somalia.

For months, foreign Islamic radicals — including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens — have been trickling into Somalia to fight on behalf of the Islamic movement. According to a U.N. report in October, Eritrea — Ethiopia's neighbor and longtime adversary — has dispatched 2,000 soldiers to Somalia to fight against the Ethiopian-backed central government.

Ethiopia's Meles said his goal is not to defeat the militias but severely damage their military power — and allow both sides to return to peace talks on an even footing.

"The rank and file of the Islamic Courts militia is not a threat to Ethiopia," he said Tuesday. "Once they return to their bases, we will leave them alone."

Ethiopian troops will not enter Mogadishu, he said. Instead, he said, Somali forces would encircle the city to contain the militias that control it.

Any effort by the Somali government or Ethiopia to take the capital risks a disaster similar to the U.S. intervention in Somalia in 1992.

That U.N.-sponsored mission ended in 1993, after Somali militiamen shot down a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. Eighteen American servicemen were killed in the crash and vicious street fighting that preceded and followed, made famous in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, pushing the country into anarchy.

Two years ago, the United Nations helped set up a central government for the arid, impoverished nation on the Horn of Africa. But until the past week, it had little influence outside of its seat in the city of Baidoa, about 140 northwest of Mogadishu.

The country was largely under the control of warlords until this past summer, when the Islamic militia movement pushed them aside.

One critical issue is whether the central government can win the support of Somalis. Many resent Ethiopia's intervention because the countries have fought two wars over their disputed border in the past 45 years.

Hurreh, the Somali foreign minister, said Somalis will embrace the fall of the Islamic militias. Their severe interpretation of Islam is reminiscent, to some, of Afghanistan's Taliban regime — ousted by a U.S.-led campaign in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden.

"A lot of people in Mogadishu will be very happy to chew some qat and have the Islamic courts out of their way," Hurreh said, referring to the narcotic leaf banned by many of the Islamic courts.