Al Qaeda suspect takes Somalia postion

AP/Washington Post:

An Islamic fundamentalist who is listed by the State Department as a suspected al-Qaeda collaborator was named Saturday as the new leader of a Muslim militia that has seized control of Somalia's capital.

The militia, which changed its name Saturday from the Islamic Courts Union to the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts, said in a statement it had appointed Hassan Dahir Aweys as its new leader. The Bush administration said Aweys was an associate of Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s.

The Islamic militia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia from an alliance of secular warlords this month. Aweys's appointment makes it unlikely that the increasingly powerful militia will govern using the moderate brand of Islam practiced by most Somalis.

Aweys appeared on a list of people and organizations accused of having ties to terrorism that the United States released after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A conservative Somali group called al-Itihaad al-Islaami, and its founder, Aweys, were featured for their alleged links to bin Laden while the al-Qaeda leader was living in Sudan in the early 1990s.

Aweys, a cleric believed to be in his sixties, has said in past interviews that al-Itihaad no longer exists and that he has no ties to al-Qaida.

In recent years, he helped establish the Islamic Courts Union militia and continues to be one of the group's most influential and fundamentalist leaders, strenuously advocating a strict Islamic government to end 15 years of anarchy.

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This wretched country continues to be plagued by an Islamist infestation to its detriment. The only thing that keeps it from being on a target list is that to date there has not been enough competancy to gather an organization worth toppling. If ever there was a failed state it is Somalia. It is desperately in need of colonialism to pull it out of its ridiculous condition. One thing is certain. Islam is not the answer. The country is already backward enough and pushing it back to the middle ages will only make it worse. One of the problems with the Islamist is that when things do not go well, and they never do when they are in charge, they believe it is because they are not Islamic enough so they tighten down further and push the doward spiral further. Little good for the Somalis will come from the current situation. If they start harboring terrorist again, they will get more outside attention than they want.