War is deceit

Al-Shabab said they were pulling out of the capital, Mogadishu as a "tactical retreat", except when they don't.  They are like a bad penny; always returning to screw things up.

One thing is for sure, it will be the locals who will suffer the most when Al-Shabab comes back to fight.

From Reuters/Yahoo August 7 by Abdi Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed

Fighting erupts in Somali capital after rebels say leaving

MOGADISHU - Fighting erupted on Sunday in Mogadishu between government troops and al Shabaab insurgents a day after the rebels said they were leaving the Somali capital and the government declared it controlled most of the city, residents and officials said.

 

A spokesman for the African Union (AU) peace keeping force, AMISOM, said al Shabaab fighters had attacked them in one district late on Saturday, but that they and the government now controlled most of Mogadishu.

 

After al Shabaab started its withdrawal, President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said his troops had defeated the rebels intent on overthrowing his Western-backed government.

 

Al Shabaab, which has its stronghold in the south of the anarchic country, denied this and said it would re-group and fight on.

 

Of course they will, and if President Ahmed believes his own propaganda then he and his country are truly doomed.

 

Somalia has been without effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre 20 years ago, and is now suffering mass hunger from the worst drought in decades. Peace remains a distant prospect.

 

"Last night al Shabaab fired mortars and attacked us... they were not so strong, we chased them immediately," an AMISOM spokesman, Captain Ndayiragije Come, told Reuters on Sunday.

 

"AMISOM and the government forces now control 90 percent of the capital. We are very sure we shall uproot the few al Shabaab elements remaining in the few parts of the capital."

 

Residents said the fighting had continued into Sunday and that in some areas al Shabaab fighters had the upper hand.

 

"Now there is fighting near the football stadium. Organized clan militia and al Shabaab remnants have repulsed the advancing government troops," one resident, Somow Ali, told Reuters by phone from Huriwaa, in the north of Mogadishu.

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