Battle for Baidoa looming

says Major General Mohamed Nur Galal

Militiamen of Somalia's Rahanwein clan are preparing for a battle to retake the strategic inland town of Baidoa following the death of warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid, a retired general said Sunday.

Aidid, who died on Thursday a week after being wounded in a battle in Mogadishu, captured Baidoa from the Rahanwein in September last year at the head of a column of 600 men.

Baidoa, northwest of Mogadishu, is the main town of the fertile Juba River valley in this largely arid Horn of Africa nation.

Major General Mohamed Nur Galal, is a member of Aidid's Habr Gedir clan who served under dictator Mohamed Siad Barre as a minister and intelligence chief but led the first wave of the popular uprising against him which was to result in Siad Barre's ouster in 1991 after a bloody civil war.

Galal told journalists at a press conference that Rahanwein militiamen in north Mogadishu had already left to return to the Baidoa front. Aidid's men were still holding Baidoa -- known as the "city of death" during a disastrous famine in the early 1990s -- but the Rahanwein Resistance Army continued harassing attacks.

But Galal said Aidid had recently withdrawn most of his militiamen from Baidoa to fight on other fronts, including battles which have been raging in Mogadishu, which has been calm since Aidid's death.

Galal said 30 of Aidid's faction's militiamen were killed four days ago in ambush near Hoddur, close to Baidoa, and that their situation was critical in both towns, with roads mined, fuel and ammunition short and supply lines vulnerable.

Galal added that the unpaid militiamen of Aidid's faction had not been provided with food since his death, and that many had abandoned their posts. It was possible that some might switch to backing Osman Hassan Ali "Atto," Aidid's former financier turned bitter foe and a fellow member of the Saad sub-clan of the Habr Gedir, he said.

But Galal added that he thought a rapprochement between Osman Atto and Aidid's faction leaders was unlikely.

Aidid is said to have been shot in the chest, stomach and leg while leading an attack on the Medina enclave of south Mogadishu.

That enclave is held by Abgals, but Aidid had penetrated to its centre when he was shot, Galal said, adding wryly that having a commander-in-chief on the front line was not good military strategy.

Galal said Aidid had made the mistake of spreading his forces too thinly. "He was not a very good calculator," he said. "He was an impulsive man."

Galal, a member of the Ayr sub-clan of the Habr Gedir who maintains that he himself is neutral, said he believed Aidid's supporters would probably fragment into clan and sub-clan groupings, but that all-out fighting was unlikely.

"Every clan wants its own candidate," he said, "and the other Habr Gedir clans will not accept another Saad president. It may be a week before it's resolved."

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