Somalia: Mujahidin Youth Movement Appoints Leader With Al-Qa'ida Connections
Al-Sharq al-Awsat
Monday, December 31, 2007

Unattributed report from Cairo: "Somalia: Mujahidin Youth Movement Appoints Al-Qa'ida-Affiliated Amir"

Somalia's Mujahidin Youth Movement, which opposes the Somali interim government and the Ethiopian military presence in the country, has announced that it is appointing a hard-line leader with Al-Qa'ida connections as its amir. Meanwhile the United Nations avoided getting involved in an argument with the Ethiopian prime minister over the extent of the Ethiopian forces' responsibility for the deterioration of humanitarian and security conditions in Mogadishu. The Ethiopian forces have been present in Somalia for nearly one year.

The Mujahidin Youth Movement is a splinter group that seceded from the Islamic Courts organization. It has not yet joined that the alliance of Somali opposition, which uses the Eritrean capital Asmara as its headquarters. Yesterday the Mujahidin Youth Movement issued a statement stating: "After a year full of battles and victories over the Abyssinian crusaders (Ethiopians) and their apostate collaborators (Somali army forces), we have decided to proclaim Sheikh Moukhtar Abdurrahman (Abu-al-Zubayr) as amir of the movement."

The brief statement did not include any details on the manner in which Abdurrahman was appointed as leader or his current whereabouts. Meanwhile informed Somali sources reported that Abdurrahman, who is believed to have received military training in Al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, is present somewhere in the south of the Somali capital and is making preparations for a major offensive that units of the Mujahidin Youth Movement plan to carry out against the Somali and Ethiopian forces.

Abu-al-Zubayr is regarded as the first openly acknowledged amir of the new organization, which confined itself a few months ago to the appointment of Moukhtar Robo (Abu-Mansur), another Al-Qa'ida-affiliated figure, as its official spokesman.

Abu-Mansur declined to answer Al-Sharq al-Awsat's question about the significance of appointing an amir of the Mujahidin Youth Movement at this time in particular. Sources close to Sheikh Abdurrahman told the newspaper, however, that the movement is now planning to proclaim its presence through the media as a political organization, rivaling the alliance of Somali opposition, which adopts Asmara as its headquarters.

While the new movement has threatened to launch a major attack on the Somali and Ethiopian forces, Somali Interior Minister Mohamed Mohamud Guled Gamadhere told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the government forces are prepared to repel this attack and repulse those whom he described as terrorists who want "to turn Somalia into a safe haven for all the world's terrorist groups," as he put it. In a telephone conversation with our newspaper from the headquarters of the interim Somali government in Baidoa, Gamadhere denied that elements of the Mujahidin Youth Movement (sentence unfinished as published).

(Description of Source: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic -- Influential Saudi-owned London daily providing independent coverage of Arab and international issues; editorials reflect official Saudi views on foreign policy.

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