Canadian Abdullahi Afrah, widely known as Asparo, left Toronto a decade ago. Sept. 28, 2006

Ethiopian troops killed Canadian Abdullahi Afrah, 56, late Tuesday during fighting in central Somalia, according to local media reports and various members of Toronto's Somali community.

Known widely as Asparo, he had left Toronto a decade ago to return to his birthplace in support of an Islamic group that fought to bring leadership to a country without a stable government since 1991.

He became a high-ranking member of the Union of Islamic Courts that held power in Mogadishu for six months in 2006. The group's strict adherence to sharia law – such as the public executions of criminals and flogging of women who failed to don the hijab – drew comparisons to the Taliban.

Others say the killing will undermine efforts to bring peace as Afrah was among the moderate voices within the Islamic movement.

"It is not clear why Ethiopian troops went there at this particular time. ... This will reinforce the position of the hardliners who were arguing against any peace deal while the Ethiopians are inside Somalia," said journalist Sahal Abdulle, who returned to Toronto last year after surviving a bombing that killed Canadian journalist Ali Sharmarke.

"(Afrah) was one of the few intellectuals within his organization that had weight to move this peace process forward."

Afrah had initially immigrated to Canada when Somalia's government collapsed in 1991 and Toronto became home to thousands of Somali immigrants and refugees. He is best remembered here for running a halal grocery store on Dundas St. W. His friends say that, while he lived in Canada, he wasn't overly political or religious.

When the Union of Islamic Courts was in power in 2006, there was tentative support for Afrah's group since their authoritarian rule had brought stability. Somalis celebrated the Islamists' defeat of the rival warlords, whose fighting had left the country in shambles.

"There's a bright future if things go on like this. We can say people will be saved, resources may come back, international relations may improve, construction may happen, people's trust in each other may be renewed," Afrah said in an interview with the Toronto Star from Mogadishu in October 2006.

Two months later, Ethiopian troops moved into Mogadishu in support of the country's fledgling transitional federal government and crushed the Islamic group, sending its leaders fleeing.

Afrah had remained in hiding in Mogadishu with his family.

During a 2007 cellphone interview, Afrah had warned that Somalia would descend into chaos if the U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops wouldn't leave the country and vowed to have them removed by force if they refused.

Somalia has seen some of its worst fighting in the past 18 months, with almost daily suicide and bombing attacks that have made the country more unstable than Iraq or Afghanistan, according to some international observers.

But a key step toward peace was taken last month during a conference in Djibouti, where Somalia's transitional federal government signed a ceasefire agreement with the opposition group of moderate Islamists, the Alliance for Reliberation of Somalia.

But the June 9 agreement split the insurgents; radical leaders vowed to continue fighting and called Somalia's interim government a puppet regime for Ethiopia and the U.S.

Source: Toronto Star, July 03, 2008