Somalia's transitional government shut three of the country's biggest radio stations on Monday, accusing them of broadcasting incendiary propaganda.
Then, in a show of force, hundreds of government soldiers stormed into the streets of Mogadishu, the capital, as tanks from neighboring Ethiopia, which has been providing military support to the government, chugged through downtown, drawing crowds of onlookers and the occasional rock.
Somalia's government, which declared a state of emergency on Saturday, seems intent on using its newfound powers to crush the seeds of a growing insurgency. On Sunday night, gunmen attacked an Ethiopian convoy, setting off an intense hour-long firefight in one of Mogadishu's ramshackle neighborhoods.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Ethiopian troops last month helped rout Somalia's Islamist forces, which had controlled much of the country, but the Islamists have vowed to regroup underground.
More frequent
As the days pass, the insurgent attacks grow more frequent and more lethal. The government has not released casualty figures, but Mogadishu residents said more than a dozen people had been killed in gunbattles over the past week.
Executives of the radio stations, however, said that was no excuse to force them off the air.
"All we have done is voice different opinions," said Mohammed Amiin, deputy chairman of Shabelle Media Network. "We never expected this to happen."
Abdirahman Dinari, spokesman for the transitional government, accused Shabelle, along with the other stations, of making false reports to stir up the people against the government.
"They said our soldiers were looting the markets and harassing people, which was totally untrue," he said. "They are using the media to undermine the government. They have been doing this for months."
Security officials have summoned station owners to a meeting on Tuesday, and Dinari said there was a possibility that the stations would soon be back on the air, after they were given a warning.
In a land of rival clans, there is a clan dimension to all this. The owners of both Shabelle and Horn Afrik, another station that was closed down, are members of the Ayr, a branch of the powerful Hawiye clan, and many government officials blame the Ayr for the rising level of violence.
"The Ayr clan is part of the problem," Dinari said.
Suspicions
The Ayr was closely associated with the Islamist movement, with several top Islamist leaders from the Ayr. Many residents say they suspect that Ayr members are the backbone of the insurgency, though Ayr elders vehemently deny this.
So far, the most intense fighting -- and the most intense crackdowns -- has been in Ayr neighborhoods, and it is beginning to fuel Ayr resentment.
"We are being harassed simply because of our clan," said Abdi Ali Halaneh, an Ayr businessman who sells building materials in north Mogadishu.
Halaneh said that many of his friends now wanted to leave Somalia.
"There may be no place for us here," he said.
The government also closed the Mogadishu office of al-Jazeera and a Somali religious radio station, which some people feared could play into the hands of the Islamists.
In the Bakara market, where even the tiniest tin kiosk has a radio, shoppers and shopkeepers moaned and hissed when the music and news turned to static. Many shook their radios.
Some derided the government and accused it of being hypocritical because, just a few months ago, government officials had criticized the Islamists for not allowing radio stations to play Western music.
Now the government was going further by closing the same stations.
"Totalitarian rule has arrived," said Asho Elmi Ahmed, a shopper. "And it didn't take long."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS