Somalis living in the capital,Mogadishu are expressing optimism that ongoing talks among different Islamicgroups in the country about the future of the country would yield positiveresults. The conference, which was instigated by new President Sheikh SharifSheikh Ahmed and is being attended by both moderate and hardliner Islamicgroups operating in the country ends Monday. Discussionsare largely focused, among other topics, on the new government and theimplementation of Sharia law. The conference also condemned ongoing insurgentattacks on ordinary Somalis by Islamic hardliner al-Shabaab. But al-Shabaab,which has been excluded from the ongoing talks, denounced the meeting andpromised more attacks. Described by Washington as a terrorist organization,al-Shabaab has vowed never to recognize the new Somali president and his chosenprime minister.
DjibrilAhmed is a political analyst. He told reporter Peter Clottey there are strongindications that Somalia might be tilting towards an Iranian-style government.
"Theongoing conference has a lot of scholars from overseas as well as scholars fromthis country. And they are trying to interpret the current situation we are innow, and the conference will end on Monday. As you know the new PresidentSheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed appointed this group to come out and discuss thesituation in the country. But we don't know if we are going to have a systemlike the one they have in Iran. As you know in Iran there are three powers: thegovernment and then the Islamic powers," Ahmed noted.
Hesaid the conference has condemned some of the activities of Islamic insurgents,including the dreaded al-Shabaab.
"Thisgroup that is meeting here denounced some of what al-Shabaab has been doing butat the same time they gave some suggestions to the government to change a lotof things like the United Nations or the African Union have to go. So, we don'tknow if we are going to have the same style of Iran that there would be aCouncil of Islamists. So that could be another power that we would have toface," he said.
Ahmedsaid the new president has a lot of challenges to contend with in the comingyears.
"Thequestion we are facing here is that Sheikh Sharif himself came to power withfour point five (constitutional provision) but this group wants a change to theconstitution. They don't believe in the constitution so the president has big,big challenges ahead of him," Ahmed pointed out.
Hesaid the ongoing Islamic conference is proposing an imposition of the Sharialaw across Somalia.
"Thatis the big question everybody has been asking because there seems to be toomany things going on that I don't know how it is going to be possible. But thisgroup wants the country to be ruled by the Sharia law. So that means theconstitution has to go out of the window, but we are yet to know whetherSomalis would accept it," he said.
Ahmedsaid it seems most Somalis are not against the full implementation of theSharia law.
"Mostof the Somalis or a 100 percent are Moslems and don't seem to have problemswith the Sharia law. But the problem is the government itself is based on thefour point five (provision in the constitution) and the constitution whichbrought the TFG (Transitional Federal Government). So, the question that ariseshere is those two would not go on the same page," Ahmed pointed out.