SOMALIA: Sharif Returns to Power as Militants

NAIROBI, Jan 31 (IPS) - A rare sense of optimism rose in Mogadishu in the early hours of Jan. 31 as people learnt that the leader of a moderate faction of the Union of Islamic Courts, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, had been elected as head the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).Sharif defeated Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who was strongly backed by the international community, and General Maslah Mohamed Siad, son of Somalia's last pre-war president Gen. Siad Barre. "The only period of peace in Mogadishu's 18 years of civil war was in the second half of 2006 when Sheikh Sharif's Islamic courts were in power," Mohammed Ali Siad of the Banadir Business Association told IPS over the phone from Mogadishu. "Now, two years later, no one seems better placed to reach out to Islamic insurgent groups and handle the crisis than him." He added that "the toughest and most urgent challenge for the new president comes not from his enemies, but his erstwhile friends and allies" in the breakaway radical faction of the Islamic courts, called the Alliance for Re-liberation of Somalia-Asmara Group (ARS-A), which fought against the Ethiopian troops for two years, opposes the Djibouti process and vows to enforce its peculiar brand of Islamic sharia. ..more..http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45623