From: RCIRIT%DENVER@VAXF.Colorado.EDU (REMZI CIRIT)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Somalia News-2
Date: 30 Dec 1992 01:01:12 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

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                                          Fwd by Remzi Cirit

SOMALI MUSLIMS SEEK FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMIC STATE

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post

     MERCA, Somalia - At the run-down port in this steamy coastal
town, scores of workmen, shirtless and sweating, struggle under
silver tins of cooking oil and heavy sacks of rice. They are
unloading a Red Cross barge, under the watchful eye of a handful of
sullen sentries, some with red-and-white Arab-style kaffiyehs
covering their heads, all with AK-47 automatic rifles dangling from
straps on their shoulders.
     The port guards are members of the Islamic Union Party, or
Ittihad, Somalia's armed Muslim fundamentalist group, which has
established a toehold here in this Indian Ocean trading post where,
according to legend, Islam first touched Somalia's shores. Since
their arrival here earlier this year, the fundamentalists have been
credited with establishing a strict security system that has all but
eliminated wholesale looting of relief food meant for the country's
millions of starving people. Food still gets stolen in Merca, usually
from truck convoys the moment they exit this port. But inside the
port's perimeter, the Union Party exercises strict discipline and
control. "For security, they are good," said Jama Ali Kahin of the
Somali Red Crescent relief group. "They are popular because before
they came there was a lot of looting."
     Elsewhere around the country, cities have been torn by anarchy,
looting and clan violence; in the few pockets where the
fundamentalists have moved in, they generally have managed to impose
order on the chaos. The Union Party arrived in the small Wadajir
district of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, six weeks ago and imposed
its own strict brand of sharia, or Islamic law, and, said Somali
journalist A.M. Ali, "it was very, very successful - no theft, no
problem."
     In accordance with sharia, however, Ali and others said, looters
captured by Union Party members in Wadajir had their hands amputated.
"They are harsh, but they are extremely structured and they are
disciplined," said Rakiya Omaar, a human rights activist and former
executive director of Africa Watch. "People are sick and tired of
war, they are sick and tired of looting, and no one is providing
social services." The Union Party is still considered a minor faction
in Somalia, a fringe movement at best that so far has attracted
little popular support. But its method in Merca, in its northern
stronghold and elsewhere has been to move into locations where there
is a power vacuum and win converts by demonstrating how a return to
Islamic fundamentals can bring an end to the kind of violence and
banditry that have wracked this country for nearly two years.
     The fundamentalists' goal in Somalia, according to a Union Party
spokesman here, is to establish an Islamic state based on sharia.
"Islam and sharia," said spokesman Abdulkadr Abdulle. "We want people
to obey the sharia." But now, the Union Party feels a threat from  an
unexpected source: the intervention in Somalia of U.S. and other
foreign combat troops who have come to protect relief supplies and
help feed this country's starving millions. The Bush administration
and U.S. military officials have called the intervention strictly
humanitarian, a response to the searing images of emaciated, starving
women and children digging into the ground for a few extra grains of
rice. But to the Muslim fundamentalists, the intervention is akin to
an invasion, whose ultimate goal is to crush the budding Islamic
movement.
     "Of course it's an invasion - nobody asked us," Abdulle said.
"Strange enough, the Americans during the Reagan administration used
to help (ousted dictator Mohamed) Siad Barre. But when the war came
to Mogadishu, they left. Now they are coming with 30,000 men. Most of
the guns are from the United States. Most of the mortars that
destroyed Mogadishu are from the United States." During Siad Barre's
rule, according to Abdulle, Islam was suppressed as the regime tried
to impose the ideas of the West. After two years of bitter clan
warfare that has created one of the modern world's worst famines,
Abdulle said, "Now, we are seeing the whole society wants Islam as a
way of life. . . . Everybody is saying they want sharia. We have
tried capitalism - it failed. We have tried communism - it failed. We
know there is no other solution but Islam.
     "That is why the West is intervening," he added. "Because they
see Islam coming to power in Somalia." His viewpoint is shared by
other fundamentalists and their sympathizers. "We are very
suspicious," said Abdikhadir Abdi Gutali, a reporter for Qaran, one
of Mogadishu's daily newspapers. "We worry they will be here a long
time, and maybe make a new colony."
     During the 12 days since the first Marines came ashore, the
troops have been greeted like conquering heroes. But if there is any
opposition from any sector, if the initial heady expectations wear
thin, it will likely come from these fundamentalists.
     Union Party adherents are not saying they will fight the
American intervention. They concede that the arrival of U.S. troops
here is still widely popular among a people beaten down by continuous
warfare and hunger. But that popularity, they predict, will change.
"We want to orient our people," Abdulle said as other Muslim clerics
and Koran scholars seated around him nodded their heads in agreement.
"If the society becomes ready, maybe we'll fight."
     Abdulle said the Union Party already is working to turn Somali
opinion against the U.S.-led intervention. "We know how to propagate.
We know our society," he said. "We go to the markets. We go to the
old people. We write."
     The prospect of Islamic fundamentalists waging a holy war
against U.S. Marines on a faraway, hostile shore immediately raises
the image of Beirut in the early 1980s, where U.S. troops first
arrived as "peace keepers" and later became the target of terrorist
bombs and mortar attacks.
     Here in Somalia, the threat looks distant. The intervention is
still welcomed, the fundamentalist movement still considered small.
But it is a threat that lurks in the minds of many American military
and diplomatic policy makers. During the recent Somalia aid
conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, special U.S. envoy Robert Oakley
told a reporter he was "sure" the American military presence in
Somalia would be used as a propaganda tool by the fundamentalists.
But he said he also was certain that an "overwhelming majority" of
Somalis would reject the fundamentalist appeal. Other analysts are
not so certain the fundamentalists can be easily dismissed. They
point out that in neighboring Sudan, the fundamentalists were
considered only a minor irritant, but through discipline and sheer
tenacity they have managed to outlast the old dictatorship and
establish in its place one of the world's staunchest Islamic
republics.
     Here in Somalia, in the view of some foreign and Somali
analysts, the fundamentalists' anti-American message may find a more
sympathetic audience depending on how long the U.S. forces stay and
how effective the troops are at meeting the heightened expectations
for change. "If they don't meet the expectations of the people, the
only way to challenge the Americans will be through fundamentalism,"
said Hussein Mursal, a Somali working with the Save the Children
Fund.  Omaar said the fundamentalists may be a small minority now,
but "you don't need a lot of people. . . . They are potent. They are
extremely disciplined, and they are answering deep-seated social
grievances."
      "Somali people like the Americans," journalist Ali said. "I
don't think (the Union Party) or any other organization can fight
against them. People are welcoming them." But, he added, "maybe in
the long run, the fundamentalists will grow in number. This
fundamentalist way of Islam in Somalia has just started."