Somalia Struggles For Order
Six people were killed in fighting between Somali police and militiamen Thursday as the country's fledgling government launched the first crackdown on crime in Mogadishu after a decade of anarchy.
Witnesses said four of the dead were policemen killed in day-long battles with followers of the powerful warlord Hussein Aideed wielding anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns.
More than 20 people, most of them civilians, were wounded in the fighting in south Mogadishu. The forces used heavy machine guns and anti-tank rockets, terrifying civilians in the capital throughout the day.
President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan's Transitional National Government (TNG) launched a major police action in the capital on Wednesday, seeking to tighten its tenuous grip on a city where rival warlords are vying for control.
Police in dark green uniforms riding "technicals" — pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns — set up checkpoints on major roads.
The operation by the 2000-member police force marked the effort to police the capital in 10 years.
More than 100 people, mostly gunmen, were arrested and the police met very little resistance until Thursday morning, when the fighting began
Aideed said government security forces had attacked his Mogadishu headquarters and killed many people, but he did not give a figure for the number of casualties.
"The attack against my supporters was an indication of the TNG's real motive — to destroy all opposition groups and subjugate the Somali people," Aideed said from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
Aidid called on Arab governments financing the government to rethink their support.
Aideed is the son of the slain warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, whose followers killed scores of U.S. troops on a humanitarian mission to the Horn of Africa country in the early 1990s.
Ibrahim Omar Sabriyeh, a police commander, said Aidid's militia provoked the battle when it attacked a police patrol near a key intersection in Mogadishu. He said two police officers were wounded, though witnesses said two officers were killed.
"Everybody knows that Hussein Aidid's men oppose the pacification of the capital," Ibrahim said. "We have been cracking down on the banditry, and we have had no mandate to fight the opposition leaders or to instigate any political wars."
Aideed was in the Ethiopian capital for a meeting of a group of militia chiefs known as the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council, which wants to set up a rival authority to Abdiqassim's government.
The warlord's followers also clashed with government troops in mid-May, when more than 40 people were killed in two days of fierce fighting around the capital's port.
Abdiqassim's government was set up after a long meeting of clan leaders in neighboring Djibouti last year, becoming the country's first internationally recognized administration since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Barre was ousted by rebels whquickly turned against each other, dividing the country into personal fiefdoms. The new government, supported by civilian leaders and businessmen, has tried to return normalcy to the country, but most of the faction leaders, including Aidid, oppose it.
The government only controls pockets of Somalian territory and is opposed by many powerful warlords who control swathes of the anarchic country.
The government's short-term priority is dealing with Mogadishu, and it has little influence outside the capital in this African nation of 7 million.
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