Friday, February 09, 2007
As they marched through the streets of southern Mogadishu Friday, some 600 demonstrators warned that Somalia, which has been ravaged by internecine violence for the past 16 years, would be a "graveyard" for the planned 8,000-strong peacekeeping force.
"We are against any kind of foreign military intervention and we are ready to fight them," Mohamed Farah Nur, one of the organisers of the protest that began shortly after midday Friday prayers, said.
"Somalia will be your graveyards," the crowd chanted in a rare non-violent demonstration seen in the Somali capital.
Mogadishu has seen a rise in violence since the arrival of a joint Somali-Ethiopian force late December when they toppled a then powerful Islamist movement which has since vowed to wage a guerrilla-style insurgency.
The protestors burned US, Ugandan and Ethiopian flags along the streets.
So far, the AU has been able to secure troop pledges for an African force from Uganda and Nigeria, with Malawi, which earlier pledged it would deploy, saying a final decision is yet to be made.
The Islamists, who abandoned several of their strongholds in central and southern Somalia, have disintegrated into clan militia, with many opposing the government, based in the backwater town of Baidoa, and its Ethiopian backers.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has pledged a national reconciliation conference to heal rifts in the country torn apart by years of anarchic bloodletting.
Somalia, home to 10 million people, has lacked an effective central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre that plunged the country into chaos.
Source: AFP, Feb 09, 2007