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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Aug 07 2011 - 16:46:54 EDT
ANALYSIS-Somalia fighters quit capital but remain a threat
Sun Aug 7, 2011 11:45am GMT
(Corrects Somali president's name in second paragraph)
* Militants say shift in tactics behind withdrawal
* President claims victory over rebels
* Famine deepened rifts among senior commanders
By Richard Lough
NAIROBI, Aug 7 (Reuters) - African peacekeepers have forced Somalia's al
Shabaab Islamists to abandon their campaign to hold the capital Mogadishu,
but the fighters' retreat hardly ends the country's bloodshed and could
herald a wave of al Qaeda-style suicide attacks.
As convoys of al Shabaab pickup trucks with mounted machine guns sped from
Mogadishu, President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed -- whose rule is limited to the
capital and propped up by 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops -- held a news
conference to declare victory.
The fighters, who still control most of the south of the country, insisted
they would fight another day.
"We aren't leaving you, but we have changed our tactics," spokesman Sheikh
Ali Mohamud Rage said on local radio.
Many Somalis and outside experts said it was too early for the government to
declare a triumph. In a country long without effective central government
and now suffering mass hunger from the worst drought in decades, peace
remains a distant prospect.
But rifts among al Shabaab's leaders, exacerbated by their handling of the
famine, could also provide an opportunity to loosen the militia's grip on
the areas it controls.
RIFTS AMONG SHABAAB COMMANDERS
A string of offensives this year -- led by the African peacekeeping force
with Somalia's army in tow -- gradually tightened the noose around al
Shabaab's forces in Mogadishu.
Last month, the fighters lost control of the capital's Bakara market,
nerve-centre of their Mogadishu operations and a crucial source of revenue.
That left them with little more than a few mostly-empty neighbourhoods of
little strategic interest.
Those losses exposed rifts in al-Shabaab's leadership between an
international wing influenced by foreign fighters who favour guerrilla
tactics like suicide bombings, and others who sought a conventional military
strategy of holding territory.
The abandonment of Mogadishu suggests the international faction won the day.
"If that is the case then al Shabaab might leave other cities (under their
control) like Baidoa and Afgoye, melt away in the population and turn to
guerrilla warfare, explosions, assassinations or suicide attacks," said
Afyare Elmi at Qatar University's International Affairs department.
Since 2007, Ahmed's authority has effectively stretched only as far as the
territory held by the peacekeepers. Winning Mogadishu might expand the
government's sway, Horn of Africa experts say, but there is little guarantee
it will bring peace elsewhere.
Some even question the government's ability to fill the power vacuum in the
neighbourhoods abandoned by al Shabaab, warning that other militia could
fill the void.
Ahmed "had to make that statement, he has to appear that he is in control.
But Somalis will be laughing," said London-based Somali analyst Hamza
Mohamed. "There is not one single area of Mogadishu controlled solely by
government troops."
The militants still hold sway over much of central and southern Somalia, and
have other sources of revenue, including taxes from ports and a cut of some
ransoms paid to pirate gangs.
But al Shabaab is also confronted with mending internal rifts, made more
stark by the famine gripping the south, where 2.8 million people require
lifesaving food aid.
Early last month al Shabaab appeared to lift a ban on food aid, only then to
seemingly backtrack. Its legitimacy has been shredded by attempts to halt
people fleeing areas to seek food, said J. Peter Pham with U.S. think-tank
the Atlantic Council.
"The ongoing hunger has exposed divisions between the hardline core
leadership of al Shabaab which denies the crisis and refuses to allow aid
in, and clan-based militia forces in various places ... who have announced a
willingness to allow humanitarian assistance to come in," he said.
The famine is depriving al Shabaab of revenue and decimating its recruitment
pool as hundreds of thousands of hungry people flee to Mogadishu and
neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.
The erosion of legitimacy may offer Somalia's government and Western powers
an opportunity, said Mark Schroeder of global intelligence company Stratfor.
"(There are)foreign elements trying to figure out how to take advantage of
the famine to undermine al Shabaab, not necessarily in a military way but
more politically." (Editing by James Macharia)
C Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved
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