Bloomberg
By Hamsa Omar
Monday, August 02, 2010
Somalia’s two main insurgent groups said they intend to join forces to oppose the country’s Western- backed government and a rejected a report by a domestic radio station that talks on the proposed merger were in jeopardy.
Al-Shabaab, which the U.S. accuses of having links with al- Qaeda, and Hisbul Islam, said they began talks last month aimed at amalgamating their operations. Spokesmen for both groups denied a report yesterday by Radio Shabelle, a Mogadishu-based broadcaster, that the negotiations had failed.
“There have been meetings for the past eight days to amalgamate the two sides’ holy mujahedeen brothers into one gigantic powerful unit,” Sheikh Hassan Mahdi, an official from Hisbul Islam, told reporters today in Mogadishu.
Somalia’s government has been battling insurgents opposed to the rule of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed for the past three years. Most of southern and central Somalia has been seized by the militants, while Sharif’s administration controls only portions of Mogadishu, with support from African Union peacekeepers. The country hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Shabelle reported yesterday that a “great dispute” had derailed talks between al-Shabaab and Hisbul had failed.
The report is “null and void,” Sheikh Muktar Robow Ali Abu Mansor, a spokesman for al-Shabaab, told reporters at the media briefing today.
Last week, African leaders meeting in Uganda agreed to a recommendation by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African body grouping six countries, that 2,000 peacekeepers be sent to bolster the existing 6,100 African Union force already in Somalia.
The decision came after a bomb attack in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, a week earlier that killed 76 people and which al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.