By Hamsa Omar and Jason McLure | Bloomberg

Insurgents in Somalia captured a town on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu, in at least the sixth incident this week in which the nation’s transitional government was unable to defend territory it controlled.

Elasha Biyaha, 17 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of Mogadishu, was seized late yesterday by members of al-Shabaab, the militant wing of the Islamic Courts Union, Faadumo Khali Siad, a resident, said by phone today. The town is strategically important because it is situated on a route that connects Mogadishu to Baidoa, seat of the nation’s parliament.

“Our forces took control of Elasha Biyaha last night after we received complaints from residents about insecurity there,” Sheikh Abdi Rihin Isse Adow, a spokesman for the Islamic Courts, said in a mobile-phone interview today. “We removed a checkpoint in the area from the regional administration.”

Yesterday, al-Shabaab captured the port of Marka, 90 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu. The town is used as an entry point for humanitarian agencies, such as the World Food Programme, that provide assistance in the country. The UN estimates as many as 3.25 million people, or 43 percent of the population, will need food aid until the end of 2008.

Towns Captured

On Nov. 11, the towns of Koryoley and Buulo Mareer, near Marka, were seized by al-Shabaab. Yesterday, the town of Janaale, 90 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, was captured by the militia, Salad Ibrahim Muhiden, a local elder, said by phone. Awdheegle, 80 kilometers south of Mogadishu, was captured by Jabha al-Islamia, a faction of the Islamic Courts, Elmi Shino Farey, a local elder, said by phone from the town.

“Clearly the transitional federal government doesn’t have the capacity to defend its territory on its own,” Roger Middleton, Africa researcher at Chatham House, a London-based research group, said by phone today.

The transitional government, or TFG, was created in 2004 with a mandate to create a central administration. Last month, it completed a peace agreement with a splinter group of the Islamic Courts, known as the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. The accord, which calls for power sharing between the two sides and for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, has been rejected by al-Shabaab.

`Lack of Capacity’

The government “has exhibited, since its creation, a lack of capacity in terms of defending territory and ability to establish itself as a significant force in Somalia,” Middleton said. “The government hasn’t brought stability, it hasn’t brought development.”

Al-Shabaab will impose Shariah in Marka, Sheikh Abubakar, a spokesman for the group, said in remarks broadcast today on Radio Shabelle. Shariah is a system that operates under a code of Islamic principles first established in the Arab world by the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

“From now on, you have to close all business centers at prayer time,” Abubakar said. “We have to modify the behavior of the youth in the town.”

Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Ministry spokesman Wahde Belay said the withdrawal of troops from Somalia would be done in accordance with last month’s peace agreement, which was signed in neighboring Djibouti.

“We will stick to the Djibouti agreement,” Belay said by phone from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. “There is not any change of policy on our side.”

Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said in October his country would support any government that could bring stability to Somalia, as long as it didn’t include al-Shabaab.