Rejecting Ahmed’s claim to have quashed al Shabab’s four-year insurgency, the militants’ spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, said their retreat was tactical only and that they were holding their positions elsewhere in the anarchic country.
A 9,000-strong African peacekeeping force and Somali government forces had been steadily wresting control of rubble-strewn Mogadishu from the militants this year. Al Shabab’s pullout followed a string of fierce gunbattles late on Friday.
Somalia has been without effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre 20 years ago.
Winning Mogadishu might expand the government’s capital prison a little, but it is unlikely to bring any tangible peace to the rest of the Horn of Africa country.
“The Somali government welcomes the success attained by the Somali government forces backed by AMISOM who defeated the enemy of al Shabab,” Ahmed told a news conference at his residence.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali estimated the militants now have vacated 90 percent of the capital and said forces were checking the rest. Ali said the government wants to send security forces into the new areas vacated by Al-Shabab, describing the withdrawal as the "first phase of the new war."
Al-Shabab controlled around a third of the capital until Saturday morning. They carried out public amputations and executions, and forcibly recruited children as fighters. They still hold most of southern Somalia, where tens of thousands are estimated to have starved. Desperate families are streaming into the capital from the country and setting up shelters made from twigs and tattered plastic bags.
Sodio Omar Hassan, who was seeking treatment for her child’s malaria at a free hospital set up by AU peacekeepers, said people were incensed because Al-Shabab had refused to allow aid agencies to distribute food.
“People are angry now they are dying,” she said, as other patients nodded around her. “They (Al-Shabab) don’t bring us anything.”
A year ago, even mentioning the word Al-Shabab in the heavily guarded hospital — one of the most secure places in Somalia — would make patients fall silent or hide their faces. But in recent interviews with The Associated Press, men and women fleeing the famine gathered around to denounce the militia, which they said had tried to prevent families from seeking help, and stopped and sometimes killed the male family members.
“They tried to stop us so we came the back way around,” said Mumino Bury Adan, waving her hands to demonstrate how she weaved through the streets with her three children into government-held territory. “They don’t want to give us food and people do not agree. They just want us to stay there and die.”
Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage told a local radio station that the forces had made a tactical withdrawal and would soon launch a counter attack.
“We shall fight the enemy wherever they are,” he said.
Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the 9,000-strong AU force, said the Al-Shabab has melted into the population and will become more difficult to deal with. Since it was born from the ruins of another radical Islamist group in 2007, Al-Shabab has never abandoned Mogadishu entirely.
“We need more troops now than ever before. The area has become too big for the force to cover,” Ankunda said, looking out at the ruined city from behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass.
The militia’s withdrawal appeared orderly and coordinated, following a four-hour assault on several AU positions overnight. Witnesses spoke of seeing large numbers of Al-Shabab fighters moving in vehicles or on foot with their weapons.
Mohammed Ali said he saw about 150 Al-Shabab fighters leaving the northwest part of the capital. He said they may have left town due to a lack of money and disagreements between top leaders, explaining that he had an insight into the militia because “our brothers are that side.”
“We understand there is disagreement among their top leaders,” Farhan Ali, who lives in what was an al Shabab controlled neighborhood, told Reuters. “They were not displaced by force.”
Similar sentiments were expressed by Somalis with links to al Shabaab in other parts of the country, including in the southern port city of Kismayu, the nerve center of al Shabaab’s operations in the south of the country.
“We have abandoned Mogadishu but we remain in other towns,” Rage said on the Al-Shabab-run Andalus radio station.
“We aren’t leaving you, but we have changed our tactics. Everyone of you will feel the change in every corner and every street in Mogadishu. We will defend you and continue the fighting,” Rage said.
Witnesses said convoys of al Shabaab “technicals” — open-top 4x4s mounted with machine guns — headed south from Mogadishu toward the al Shabaab-controlled town of Baidoa, 250 km (150 miles) southwest of the capital.
“I saw 50 armed al Shabaab vehicles heading toward Baidoa shortly after morning prayers,” Aweys Sharif said by telephone from the town of Afgoye, 30 km (18 miles) south of Mogadishu.
Residents in Mogadishu’s northern districts watched from the streets as the rebel fighters, many covering their faces with masks, left with the families.
“Today is a different day. We never dared watch them and their families like this. But still we are afraid to enter their bases. We cannot dance or rejoice yet,” said Ali.
President Ahmed urged those who had fled their homes not to rush back to the city neighborhoods now empty of militants until they had been cleared of explosives.
In recent years, the Somali government has made little effort to provide services to its citizens despite receiving tens of millions of dollars in cash from foreign donors. Ali said he would declare such donations in the future, making it easier to see how the government was spending the money.
