Somalia's Islamic Militias Reaching Out to the West

NAIROBI, June 13 -- The Islamic militias that took over the capital of Somalia last week are seeking to solidify their rule while reassuring Western leaders that they do not intend to impose an extremist, Taliban-style government on that battered East African country, diplomats, analysts and militia officials say.

In a coordinated effort including private conversations and public declarations, the Islamic Courts Union is portraying itself as a moderate force capable of stabilizing a blood-soaked land that has endured 15 years without a central government.

A letter sent by militia leaders to foreign governments said they want "a friendly relationship with the international community." The chairman of the militia group, Sharif Ahmed, has made conciliatory comments in interviews with several Western journalists and invited others to visit Mogadishu, long among the world's most dangerous cities but now transformed to peacefulness, militia officials say, by their rule.

"It is my pleasure to invite you to came to Mogadishu and see it yourself what we have achieved," Ahmed said in an e-mail to Western journalists based in Nairobi.

Abdurahman Osman, a Somali-born U.S. citizen representing Ahmed and the Islamic militias, said in an interview here: "They want to open up. They want the world to come to them."

This contrasts starkly with initial reports that the loosely organized militias are dominated by religious fundamentalists bent on delivering a purist vision of Islamic law, including the banning of certain films, the chopping off of robbers' hands and the public execution of murderers.

That image was enhanced by reports over the weekend that militia members in Mogadishu had shut down public viewings of World Cup television coverage, deeming the broadcasts decadent.

The Islamic Courts Union is a coalition with roots dating to the mid-1990s, when religious courts brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, an impoverished seaside city of 1.2 million people, after the United States and the United Nations ended a troubled military intervention and nation-building experiment and abandoned Somalia to the rule of warlords.

Among the backers of the courts were Islamic extremists, including Hassan Dahir Aweys, who U.S. officials say was an associate of Osama bin Laden and who today is suspected of harboring fugitive members of al-Qaeda.

According to widely circulating reports, the CIA has backed secular Somali warlords in recent years, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to help track suspected terrorists. U.S. officials speaking publicly have neither confirmed nor denied this, but the reports have gained wide currency in Somalia and the region.

The triumph of the Islamic Courts Union over the secular warlords on June 5, following months of fighting that killed more than 300 Somalis, has been seen as a defeat for the United States.

The United States and other Western powers have been reassessing the militias, recognizing that the warlords are unlikely to regain power in Mogadishu. Many diplomats acknowledge the popularity of the Islamic Courts Union and say it is not clear whether moderates or extremists such as Aweys are in charge.

"That's one of the things we're trying to figure out," said a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He certainly is laying low."

Others analysts said the militias have not settled on their leadership but, for now, are eager not to be seen as resembling the strict Taliban rule that allowed Afghanistan to become an operational base for bin Laden -- and, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a target of the U.S. military.

"They are trying to show their good face," said Mario Raffaelli, the Italian special envoy to Somalia. "It would be wrong to target all these people as extremists."

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, said the administration had three objectives in Somalia: finding and eliminating what he called an "enduring, resilient" al-Qaeda cell; helping a U.N.-backed transitional government to "gain traction"; and providing humanitarian assistance.

In statements since the Islamic takeover of Mogadishu, administration officials have made clear they are prepared to work with whatever groups can help achieve those objectives. "What we'd like to do is establish some kind of viable political actors" on the ground, one senior administration official said.

In that vein, the administration last week announced establishment of a "contact group" of interested outside parties to come up with a coordinated strategy. The U.S.-led group, which includes representatives from the United Nations and Europe, expects to meet Saturday in New York, the official said. "We want to be open-minded to a variety of options," he said.

While encouraged by the letter from the Islamic courts -- which it decided to answer with public statements rather than a private missive -- the administration believes that the courts' leadership is "clearly lying when they say they don't know where al-Qaeda is" in Somalia, Crumpton said. "Our interest is solely in the al-Qaeda fighters," he said. The administration believes there are "a half-dozen or less" senior al-Qaeda leaders currently or recently in Somalia, along with a fluctuating number of "operatives."

The transitional government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf, was created with U.N. assistance in 2004 and was initially based in Nairobi. In February, it moved to the Somali town of Baidoa, 155 miles northwest of Mogadishu, but it still has little power, few resources and no ability to protect itself against the Islamic Courts Union.

As Western officials and the Islamic Courts Union have traded tentative communications in recent days, officials from the transitional government have pleaded for more international help.

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Tuesday accused foreign governments of dawdling as the militias came to power in Mogadishu. "If we sit, wait and see, the situation for the people of Somalia will get worse," he said, addressing a meeting of regional leaders in Nairobi. "It will be a regional problem. It will be a global problem."

At the request of the transitional government, seven East African nations agreed to impose travel bans and banking restrictions on the Somali warlords in an effort to push them into peace talks.

But officials of the transitional government are seeking much more extensive help, including the partial lifting of the U.N. arms embargo so that the government can import arms for its own defense, an idea given tentative support Tuesday by Louis Michel, the European Union's commissioner for development and humanitarian affairs.

The transitional government also has debated seeking peacekeeping troops from the African Union, despite vehement opposition by the Islamic Courts Union to the presence of any foreign troops.

The transitional government and the Islamic militias have expressed interest in negotiating with each other as well. Analysts say that the government craves the real power that entry into Mogadishu would allow, and that the militias are seeking legitimacy and extension of their authority throughout the country.

The Islamic militias control much of the southern part of the country. But in the north, the regions of Puntland and Somaliland are beyond their reach. It is not clear, however, that the Islamic militias have the military might to move far beyond Mogadishu. And even there, their support is based more on their history of providing legal structures and social services than on firepower.

"You're actually seeing the beginnings of governance," said John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official who is now an analyst for the International Crisis Group, speaking from Washington. But he added: "The Somali allegiance to any authority is as fickle as it gets. This is very tricky terrain."

By Craig Timberg

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.