The Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca militia, which is aligned with Somalia’s weak Western-backed government, has been fighting al Shebaab insurgents in central Galagadud region. The US says al Shebaab is al Qaeda’s proxy in the country.
Ahlu Sunna’s spokesperson said it had captured many rebels during clashes last week around Galgadud’s capital Dusamareb, including the commander who was sentenced to die by firing squad after he refused to renounce al Shebaab’s hardline ideology.
“We don’t normally kill al Shebaab members. We arrest them and make them understand that Islam means peace. We have detained and then released many of them,” the spokesperson, Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf, told Reuters by telephone.
“This commander insisted that all people were infidels except his group … We will execute al Shebaab members who insist that it can be right to kill the innocent. What else are we supposed to do to those who believe they will go to paradise for killing us and the whole human race?”
Al Shebaab and another rebel group, Hizbul Islam, want to impose a harsh version of sharia law across the nation, and have previously carried out executions, stonings and amputations in southern and central regions under their control.
Sunday’s was the first known execution by Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca. It came as residents said Somali government troops and Ahlu Sunna fighters also battled Hizbul Islam insurgents for hours for control of another strategic central town, Baladwayne.
The rebels want to extend their area of control from the south towards the pro-government northeast region of Puntland. The UN-backed administration of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed controls just a few blocks of the coastal capital Mogadishu.
Fighting has killed 19 000 Somalis and driven 1.5 million from their homes since the start of 2007, and Western security agencies say the country has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who use it to plot attacks.
Dozens of Qaeda militants ‘hiding out in Yemen’
by Hammoud Mounassar
Sun Jan 10, 7:38 am ET
SANAA (AFP) –
Dozens of Al-Qaeda jihadists are hiding out in a remote area of Yemen, a top official said, as President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday urged militants in the conflict-ridden country to lay down their arms.
Al-Qaeda fighters, among them Saudis and Egyptians, have streamed in from Afghanistan and have joined local members of the jihadist network in lairs carved out in the rugged Kour mountain in southern Shabwa province, said provincial governor Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi.
“There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian Al-Qaeda militants who came to the province,” Ahmadi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily.
“This is in addition to Yemenis who came from Marib and Abyan (provinces) and a number of militants from Shabwa province itself,” he added.
Among them, he added, are the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Nasser al-Wahishi, his number two, Saeed Ali al-Shehri, a Saudi, and radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.
The Egyptians and Saudis, Ahmadi said, had travelled to Yemen from Afghanistan.
AQAP group has claimed it was behind the botched Christmas Day bomb attack onboard a US airliner, while Yemeni officials have said the would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been in contact with Awlaqi.
The United States has accused the Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen of training Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Northwest Airline flight before it landed in Detroit, but was overpowered by passengers.
It has also accused Awlaqi of instigating “terrorism” and has said he had links with the man suspected of shooting dead 13 people at a Texas military base in November, Major Nidal Hasan.
President Saleh, meanwhile, said he is prepared to hold talks with the jihadists if they turn their backs on violence.
“If Al-Qaeda (militants) lay down their arms, renounce violence and terrorism and return to wisdom, we are prepared to deal with them,” Saleh told Abu Dhabi TV in an interview carried by Yemen’s Saba news agency on Sunday.
“We are prepared to deal with anyone who renounces violence and terrorism,” he said.
But the president, whose country is also facing a Shiite rebellion in the north and a movement for autonomy in the south, stressed the government will crack down heavily on those who resort to violence.
“They are a threat not only to Yemen but also to international peace and security, particularly Al-Qaeda. They are ignorants, drug dealers and illiterate. They have no relation with Islam,” he said.
Saudi analyst Anwar Eshki said Al-Qaeda militants have been fleeing to Yemen after they came under tremendous pressure in Afghanistan and Pakistan in addition to a crackdown in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
“The (Al-Qaeda) network is trying to establish itself in Yemen,” Eshki, head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Strategic Studies Centre, told AFP.
Eshki believes Al-Qaeda in Yemen “will be far more dangerous than in Afghanistan because of its proximity to Gulf oil resources and transportation lines.”
The oil-rich Gulf region provides just under one-fifth of the world’s crude oil supplies.
Saleh said security forces and air force have achieved “impressive victories” against Al-Qaeda in the provinces of Abyan, Shabwa and the capital Sanaa.
Yemeni security forces insist they are winning the war against the jihadists, pointing to two separate air raids in December that killed more than 60 suspected Al-Qaeda members.
On Wednesday, Yemeni officials announced the capture of key Qaeda leader Mohammed al-Hanq and two other militants believed behind threats against Western interests in Sanaa that caused embassies to close for several days.
Yemen insists it can win the war against the militants without US military intervention, but analysts fear Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland cannot tackle the jihadists on its own.
Britain and the United States have already announced plans to fund a counter-extremism police in Yemen and Washington is sharply increasing military and economic aid to the impoverished nation, officials have said.
