KISMAYO, Somalia (Reuters) -- Somali Islamists disarmed hundreds of militiamen in the port of Kismayo on Wednesday, seizing battlewagons and guns in a move to cement their control over the city they took this week. Officials from the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority which controlled the region around Somalia's third largest city before Islamists took over on Monday, gathered in an open field to present their weapons.
"It is a big relief for me," said Yusuf Mire Mahmud, a lawmaker and deputy to the warlord who had controlled the region before fleeing. He said he had handed over 18 technicals -- trucks mounted with guns -- and 300 militia fighters.
"I'm a free man. Now I can do anything I want or go anywhere I want," he told Reuters at the field where the Islamists then tested the machine guns. The Islamists seized Kismayo without firing a shot, expanding their control of south central Somalia since capturing Mogadishu in June, and effectively flanking the weak interim government, based in a provincial town, on three sides. Their takeover of Kismayo was met with two days of protests, one of them violent. They have since imposed an overnight curfew and arrested several protesters.
One Islamist official said remaining Juba Valley Alliance officials were free to stay in Kismayo as long as they did not interfere with security. "They can stay on if they want, but there are no longer part of the administration here," Ibrahim Shukri said. Shukri added that the militiamen who handed over their weapons were pro-Islamist and would be taken to a "rehabilitation" center where they will be weaned off khat, a mild leafy stimulant, among other things. | Hundreds of khat junkies, going cold turkey. I'd take the guns far away too. |
Somalia's weak central government, the 14th attempt at effective central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator, views the Islamists' capture of Kismayo as breaching a ceasefire agreement reached at peace talks in Sudan.
But diplomats who met Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi in neighboring Kenya said on Tuesday he was still committed to the talks, despite expressing pessimism the day before. Analysts fear the Islamist-government standoff could spark a major regional crisis in the Horn of Africa. | As opposed to the current festering boil |
The Islamists and the government are due to meet in the Sudanese capital Khartoum at the end of October for a third round of talks. |