Gordon Brown pledged British support for the transitional government of Somalia yesterday as its Western-backed president prepared to launch an offensive to seize control of Mogadishu from al-Qaeda linked fighters.

Britain has offered £5.7 million to fund the build-up of an official Somalian security force and has dramatically increased British aid to Somalia tenfold to £30 million since Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was installed as president last year.

President Ahmed said he welcomed foreign support as he targets al-Shabaab, the fundamentalist movement that has appealed for British Somalis to train as suicide bombers.

Gen Mohammad Gelle Kahiye. the commander of the Somali forces, revealed last week that the Americans are "helping us" with drone operations and air strikes in a Mogadishu offensive to be launched this month. A US official told the New York Times that special forces would be "moving in, hitting and getting out."

President Ahmed said yesterday his forces needed help to conduct operations on the ground. "If the US government provides us with the air support, it will help the situation," he said.

The struggling forces are heavily dependent on foreign assistance to carry out the assault. Kenya is widely reported to have trained 2,500 men selected from refugee camps at the Manyani Kenya Wildlife camp on its northern coast. In addition to cash for African Union forces, Britain has provided advisers to commanders establishing the new Somali army.

The writ of the Transitional Federal Government barely extends beyond the boundaries of the presidential compound, Villa Somalia and bases maintained by United Nations and African peacekeepers. Al Shabaab control most of the capital and central and south Somalia.

President Ahmed has told Western officials that his government plans to push back his enemy "block by block."

Key targets of the offensive are the University and Bakara market, which are dominated by al-Shabaab, the key al-Qaeda ally in Somalia.

Western intelligence reports estimate that as many as 70 British residents travelled to Somalia for jihadist training in the last year.

British officials opposed the election of President Ahmed over suspicions of his background as a leader of the Islamic Courts, a militia that was ousted by the US-backed Ethiopian army in 2006.

But President Ahmed used his religious credentials to appeal to British Somalis reject the fundamentalists. ""I want to prevent people from using religion for their own purposes," he told Chatham House, the London think tank. "We do not have this concept of suicide in the holy books. I urge my people to look, it is not there."

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Share this article with others: