Islamic militias remove Mogadishu roadblocks

Militiamen loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which currently controls the Somali capital of Mogadishu, have started removing checkpoints manned by armed groups in order to restore security in the war-torn city.

"We have removed most of them and we intend to remove the remaining ones," Shaykh Abdulakdir Ali, the UIC vice-chairman said on Thursday from Mogadishu. "We are giving priority to areas of high insecurity, such as the Bakara market [the biggest market in the city] and other business centres."

Shaykh Ali said gunmen often set up checkpoints to intercept and extort money from people coming or going to the markets.

"Every time roadblocks were removed in the past, they were immediately re-erected by freelance militias [those not under the control of any of the former faction leaders]. Now it is different," said a local source, who declined to be named.

Halima Ali, a small trader, said. "In the past I was robbed a number of times as I went to the market. Today [Thursday] I went and came back with everything. I was not attacked or threatened like before."

However, the danger remains that "if the courts do not set up a workable administration soon, the roadblocks will return," a civil society source said. "So far, they [UIC] have been operating in an ad hoc fashion. They need to speed up the process of setting up an administration."

Meanwhile, the UIC has rejected Ethiopian government claims that it plans to destabilise that country. "Ethiopia is the one destabilising our country. They have been providing weapons to the warlords and yesterday Ethiopian troops entered the village of Jawiil, [15km inside Somalia, in Hiiraan region]," Shaykh Ali said.

Speaking in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his country had beefed up its forces at their common border because "terrorist groups had taken the leadership" of the Islamic courts.

"With regards to the resurgence of terrorist groups within Somalia and their implication on the security and stability of Ethiopia, we reserve the right to defend ourselves against all attempts to destabilise our security and stability," he said. "To the extent that they deploy their forces in such a way as to be an immediate, clear and present danger to our security, to that extent we reserve the right to act."

Ethiopia, Meles added, had boosted military deployments along its more than 1,000 km long border. "At the moment, they are not a clear and present danger to us, they may become so if they cross a line," he said. "They know that line, we know that line, so far they have not crossed it. We are simply watching developments in Somalia carefully, patiently in the hope that there won't be any need for us to act."