A column of 200 Ethiopian troops left Mogadishu yesterday less than a month after they helped to rout Islamist militias and deliver the capital to Somalia’s Government.

Ethiopian commanders said that it was the beginning of a withdrawal from the country, but they offered no timetable amid fears that too rapid a departure could hand Somalia back to the warlords who kept it in anarchy for almost 16 years.

At the same time, a video message released by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’a second in command, emphasised the risk in staying. He claimed that Ethiopian forces were becoming “bogged down” in Somalia as they tried to finish off fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts.

“The Mujahidin will break their back,” he said in a message released on the internet.

Islamic militias seized Mogadishu in June and conquered a large area of central and southern Somalia, leaving the interim Government in control of a single town, Baidoa.

That changed at the end of December when Ethiopian troops and aircraft began a whirlwind assault on Islamist positions.

Yesterday Somali and Ethiopian officials said that the country was beginning to stabilise. “Starting today we will withdraw our forces from Mogadishu,” Suem Hagoss, an Ethiopian general, said at a ceremony in the capital in which warlords surrendered their arms.

Several hundred people gathered to see off the Ethiopian trucks and tanks. “Leave us alone and let us solve our problems,” they chanted.

The presence of Ethiopian troops, veterans of border wars with Somalia, was deeply unpopular in some areas of Mogadishu, particularly among those clans that offered support to the Islamic courts.

The Government remains jittery at the prospect of losing Ethiopia’s firepower. Speaking at a press conference in Nairobi, Ali Mohamed Gedi, Somalia’s Prime Minister, insisted that Ethiopian forces would not be leaving until a peacekeeping force from the African Union was deployed.

“We are trying to avoid any vacuum,” he said, referring to the clan-based militias and warlords whose rivalries had made the country ungovernable.

He said that his administration had re-opened police stations but still needed international support.

His view is shared by analysts who say that extremists, such as the Shabbab youth militia within the courts could resurface under a nationalist banner and that the warlords were waiting to flex their muscles.

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