Somali Jihad Update from AFP: “Islamist movement tightens Sharia law”
SOMALIA’S powerful Islamist movement says it will tighten Sharia law on its territory and has vowed to fight the proposed deployment of foreign peacekeepers.
Already in control of the capital Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia, the Islamists said they would seize the port of Kismayo and close the nation’s border with Kenya to prevent an east African peacekeeping force entering the country to shore up the
Government’s limited authority.
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Sheikh Mohamed Nur Duale, a top SICS member in the Lower Juba Valley, said the Islamists had surrounded Kismayo, about 500km south of Mogadishu, and would soon take it from a local militia.
“We will not attack our Muslim brothers in Kismayo or any other place in the region. Our objective is to defend the country from the enemies of Allah,” he told AFP.
“No-one should dare stand in front of this holy objective.”
Kismayo is currently held by the Juba Valley Alliance, a militia led by the defence minister in the government. But it has been encircled for several days by Muslim forces, who are negotiating what they say will be a peaceful handover.
Duale said the Islamists were intent on taking Kismayo because African Union-backed plans for the regional peacekeeping mission called for troops to land there.
Meanwhile, witnesses and Muslim militia commanders said the Islamists had boosted their presence along Somalia’s remote and largely unpatrolled frontier with Kenya, where the vanguard of the 8000-strong peacekeeping force from the seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is to gather.
“We will close our border with Kenya before foreign troops can set foot on our soil,” said one commander from the town of Dhobley, close to the Kenyan border.
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SICS Sharia law enforcers also arrested a karate instructor and six female students at a training facility in Mogadishu, alleging they had violated Koranic precepts on the mixing of the sexes and dress, officials said.
“The detainees were involved in un-Islamic behaviour,” said Sheikh Kadar Abdirahman Keyse, who runs the Islamic court in the capital’s southern Hamarweine district.