October 28, 2005
By Mohamed Ali Bile and Guled Mohammed
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somalia's government ordered two warlord-owned airports closed on Friday in an effort to boost its tax revenues, prompting an ally of the airstrips' owners to threaten to shoot down any plane diverting to obey the order.
A government statement said it had informed trading partners Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates that the private airstrips at Daynile, outside Mogadishu, and at Merca, south of the capital, would shut from November 1.
"We are closing these airstrips for security reasons, and some other airstrips in southern Somalia will follow as soon as possible," Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayr, speaking by telephone from Somalia, quoted the statement as saying.
"We contacted the (foreign) governments ... to discuss the support of Somalia's new government and resume the taxation system of the country, which collapsed during the civil war."
The two airstrips are lucrative ventures run by militia bosses who have campaigned for months to persuade Ethiopian-backed President Abdullahi Yusuf to base his year-old transitional federal government (TFG) in the lawless capital Mogadishu.
Yusuf instead works from Jowhar, a town 90 km (55 miles) to the north of the capital, arguing Mogadishu is too dangerous and that it is the base of many of his political opponents -- among them dissident ministers in his own government.
The airport order prompted Mogadishu-based warlord and Commerce Minister Muse Sudi Yalahow to threaten to down any plane known to have diverted to other airports in compliance with the order.
"We will shoot the planes trying to accept the new rules of airplanes," Muse Sudi said on Somali radio monitored in Nairobi.
"PLANES WILL FALL"
"If an airplane changes its usual flight, we will use the anti-aircraft missiles which we have," he said. "The planes will fall on the ground if they accept the orders from the TFG."
The country disintegrated into anarchy after former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991 as clans pressured by famine and political turmoil launched battles for territory.
The country now comprises two self-declared enclaves in the north and a patchwork of quarrelling clan fiefdoms in the south.
Somali businessmen normally have the pick of about 240 bush airstrips to trade an array of produce -- including contraband and hard drugs -- without hindrance from any central authority.
Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority official Anthony Mwandikwa confirmed that Kenya had received the Somali notification.
Daynile and Merca's el-Ahmed airstrip are among the busiest and have proved lucrative for their owners, respectively Mogadishu militia boss and Internal Security Minister Mohamed Qanyare, and Islamist warlord Sheikh Yusuf Inda'adde.
Qanyare declined immediate comment. Inda'adde was not immediately available for comment.
Experts say both factions of the government are gearing up for a military showdown, and a U.N. report by a panel of experts said government ministers on both sides had bought large amounts of weapons flooding into the country in recent months.
Source: Reuters, Oct. 28, 2005 | 
