In Baidoa, 250km northwest of Mogadishu, Al Shabaab insurgent groups announced it has completed militant training for 300 insurgents who would be sent to Mogadishu to fight the TFG and its African Union allies, the 8,000-strong AMISOM peacekeeping force.
Sheikh Abdullahi Gaab, Al Shabaab's governor in Bay and Bakool regions in southwestern Somalia, said the new insurgents were “recruited from Bay and Bakool regions,” the ancestral homelands of the Digil and Mirifle clan-family.
Witnesses said most of the recruits were between “age 15 and age 20” and they performed military marching and showed off their newly acquired tactics.
Al Shabaab commanders who addressed the public rally in Baidoa, capital of Bay region, urged the Somali people to "join the jihad" against what they called "foreign invaders" and a "puppet government," a direct reference to the TFG in Mogadishu.
The TFG is Somalia’s 15th attempt to restore national order, but it faces violent insurgency led by Al Shabaab and other groups like Hizbul Islam. Observers say the TFG weakness is not limited to the insurgency, but point to the endless internal squabbling and widespread corruption as factors that have severely weakened the TFG ability to re-introduce governance in Mogadishu.
