No mean feat from Mogadishu as moderate and militant Islamists do battle for political supremacy enlisting the support of foreign backers, notes Gamal Nkrumah This week, Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabab laid their cards on the table. Al-Shabab, Somalia's most powerful and politically influential paramilitary group, pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. The latter obliged with its leader, Egyptian-born Ayman , appearing on a widely publicised video egging Al-Shabab on to victory over its secular foes. The question screaming for a credible answer is what will happen next? Somalia's fragile coalition government the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) responded by urging the international community on Monday to lift a United Nations arms embargo imposed on the country in 1992. The inescapable truth, though, is that Somalia has been a political football in the Horn of Africa for too long. The big players are outsiders, Western powers and their African proxies in particular Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda -- in this case it is a question of the tail wagging the dog. The three aforementioned East African countries have large and restive Muslim communities, and in as far as Ethiopia is concerned Muslims may constitute a slight majority of the population. In short, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda fear the militant Islamist contagion and have good reason to be afraid of the spread of terrorism. Uganda and Kenya have in the past been subjected to devastating terrorist bombings. Their unconditional backing of the TFG of Somalia promises to upturn regional perceptions of both political Islam and Islamist militancy. The geopolitical landscape of East Africa has been radically transformed by the emergence of Al-Shabab (The Youth) on the perilous arena of Somali politics. Like its counterpart in Afghanistan, the Taliban, Somalia's Al-Shabab is composed in the main of youngsters, overzealous militants and desperadoes disgruntled by the lawlessness in the country, joblessness, abject poverty and destitution, and the incompetence of the Somali political establishment. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman has chosen to put his organisation on the wrong side of the epochal change shaking the Horn of Africa. Now, albeit after a stumbling start, the countries of East Africa are embarking on democratisation. None of the three countries most concerned with developments in Somalia is particularly democratic. Yet Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have firmly aligned themselves with secular reformists and moderate Islamists in Somalia much to the consternation of Al-Shabab and have unwittingly turned themselves into the target of the Somali street. The leader of Al-Shabab, Ahmed Abdi Godan, better known as Mukhtar Abu Zubayr, has vowed to inflict death and destruction on the infidels. "Muslims share the Islamic religion. Any Muslim from anywhere in the world must unite with his Muslim brother and we have to become one," ominously warned an official spokesman of Al-Shabab Sheikh Mohamed Osman Arous in an interview with the Voice of America's Somali Service. Ethiopia has kept a lower profile than that of its East African allies in Somalia after a string of stinging military setbacks three years ago. Yet Addis Ababa betrays the same misreading of Somali opinion. Like Kenya and Uganda, Ethiopia regards the doctrine of neighbourly non-interference as a licence for Somali Islamists to utilise the disaffection of politically disfranchised or peripheralised Ethiopian Muslims and especially those of ethnic Somali origin in Ethiopia's easternmost region to rebel against the authorities in Addis Ababa. Amid the finger-pointing about the failures of a smooth democratic transition in East Africa, the militant Islamists of Somalia have emerged as a bogeyman of sorts. I am not attempting here to excuse Islamist militancy or its principal actor Al-Shabab from a considerable portion of the blame for political instability in East Africa. Even so, there must be a reason why Al-Shabab remains hugely popular among many Somalis -- and perhaps does have a considerable following in neighbouring East African countries. In many respects, the governments of East African countries have let their Muslims down, and especially the poorest and most downtrodden. They do not quite know whether to treat their own Muslim communities as friends or foes. Small wonder then that Al-Shabab controls much of the Shabelle and Juba River valleys, the most fertile areas of Somalia -- that dominate the topography of the southern and central parts of the country. Yet its adversaries insist that the militant Islamist movement must run aground. Al-Shabab was founded on the ashes of the now defunct Union of Islamic Courts of Somalia in 2006. It represented the younger and more militant hotheads of the movement. Al-Shabab adheres to the Saudi-inspired Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and Al-Shabab activists have destroyed numerous Sufi shrines throughout the vast area they control. Al-Shabab imposes a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law including the amputation of limbs and the stoning to death of adulterers. The moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is trying desperately to drive a wedge between moderate and more militant factions within Al-Shabab. "We must identify Al-Qaeda as the last colonial power that invaded our country," the Somali President Sheikh Ahmed declared on Monday. Al-Shabab's move to join Al-Qaeda erodes all hopes for peace talks. I believe that Godane (the popular Somali name for Al-Shabab's leader Mukhtar Abu Zubayr) led a minority of the fanatical movement to join Al-Qaeda," the Somali president lamented. "I urge the majority of Al-Shabab loyalists to come forward and unite with the TFG," he concluded. This call is misplaced. It cannot make the hardliners, the followers of Godane, go away. Somalia's neighbours are anxiously awaiting the results of President Sheikh Ahmed's bidding for moderates to join him. It seems, however, that the Somali president's invitation for Al-Shabab's rank and file to listen to reason has fallen on deaf ears. A conference on Somalia is scheduled to convene in London next week. "Let participants not waste time at the London conference," Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mahmoud Rage told supporters of Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda in Elasha, barely 15km from Mogadishu on Monday. Meanwhile, Uganda's Minister of State for Foreign and International Affairs Okello Oryem flew to Mogadishu, also on Monday, to discuss the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the Horn of Africa. Uganda and Burundi provide the bulk of the 9,000 African Union troops stationed in Somalia (AMISOM). Spokesman for AMISOM Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda warned that the merger announced this week between Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda will undoubtedly complicate AMISOM's already tricky peacekeeping task in Somalia. In August Al-Shabab announced a "tactical" withdrawal from Mogadishu amid intensified firepower by the AMISOM forces. The TFG forces, backed by AMISOM now control most of Somalia's capital city. However, Uganda's participation in AMISOM came at a terrible price. During the 2010 football World Cup, Al-Shabab killed 76 people in a double attack in Uganda. Political observers in Kenya and Ethiopia, too, are jittery. Not only must they press on with fixing Somalia's rickety political system, but they must also devote equal attention to the economy of the country. An increasingly integrated regional East African political structure must be paired with an equally integrated economic apparatus if the terror of Islamist militancy in the region is to be held at bay.
