Somali rebels to join govt in peace deal

MOGADISHU: Somalia’s government is negotiating with insurgents and has persuaded some of them to join its administration, the foreign minister said Saturday.

Somalia’s UN-backed administration is facing a stubborn insurgency by rebels whose ranks include foreign militants who Western security agencies say use the Horn of Africa nation as a safe haven to plot attacks in the region and beyond.

“Some Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam (members) have joined our government,” Foreign Minister Ali Jama Jangili told reporters in Mogadishu.

“We are negotiating with these two groups.” It was not clear how many rebels were joining the government, and in what roles.

Washington accuses Al-Shabab of being Al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia. President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government controls only a small part of the central region and a few districts of the bullet-scarred capital.

Jangili’s comments came after a relative lull in the fighting that has devastated the capital since the Al-Shabab and the more political Hizbul Islam movement launched a military offensive on May 7.

“We are working closely with community groups and the country will be under government control soon,” Jangili said.

Both insurgent groups have vowed to continue their struggle against the internationally backed transitional federal government of Ahmed until the departure of African Union (AU) peacekeepers.

Since he was elected president in January, Ahmed has failed to assert his authority on the troubled Horn of Africa nation and owes his survival chiefly to the AU contingent’s protection.

Neither insurgent group immediately reacted to the government’s announcement but an Al-Shabab commander said his group was continuing to beef up defenses to prevent a counteroffensive.

Al-Shabab fighters on Saturday started digging trenches to block the streets in some neighborhoods of the capital. “This is a military tactic. We are pre-empting any attacks from the enemies of Allah and have dug new trenches near the streets leading to their (the government’s) positions,” one commander said.