WELL, THAT WORKED ABOUT AS WELL AS YOU'D EXPECT IT TO:

Mogadishu on the Brink of a New War: As the African Union hesitates over sending a peacekeeping force into Somalia, Islamists and warlords are launching attacks against the government as the Americans hunt terrorists in the country's south. (Thilo Thielke, 2/08/07, Der Spiegel)

Only a month after the so-called transitional government and its Ethiopian backers assumed power, it seems clear that another armed conflict is brewing in Somalia. The clan militias, still well armed, are slowly emerging from the ruins now that the Islamists and their al-Qaida allies, who had previously ruled the country, have been defeated.

The Islamists have also begun re-emerging from their hiding places, now that the first 50 military trucks loaded with Ethiopian soldiers have left the city. Unless an agreement is reached quickly over a peacekeeping force for Somalia, the country could sink into civil war once again.

DER SPIEGEL
Nevertheless, it was business as usual at a summit meeting of the African Union (AU) in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last week. Instead of the 8,000 soldiers that are needed, five nations have only tentatively committed to sending a total of 4,000 troops to Somalia.

However, these countries have made it clear that they are only willing to send troops to keep the peace in a fellow AU member state if they receive European and American support. But so far the industrialized nations have offered only €15 million (European Union) and the equivalent of €31 million (United States). It appears that this is not enough for the Africans to intervene in Somalia. With each day that the AU delays its intervention, the risk of war grows.

The latest chapter in the war on terror being waged by the Americans and their Ethiopian allies could quickly end in a debacle. New attacks are already being reported almost daily -- be it a bazooka attack on a police station in the capital or a mortar attack on a barracks.

The presidential palace has been attacked with grenades and, according to the United Nations' "Situation Report No. 26," clan warfare -- Somalia's age-old problem -- has escalated in the Juba regions to the south. At the same time, an American AC-130 gunship has apparently launched repeated bombing strikes against presumed al-Qaida hideouts in southern Somalia from the US base in Djibouti. Because nomads and their goats and camels are often the collateral victims of such campaigns, threats against the foreigners, "these infidel devils," are on the rise.

"The entire country is on the brink of war," complains Abukar Sheikh Ali of Daryeel Bulsho Guud, a relief agency supported by German disaster relief organizations Diakonie Emergency Aid and Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World). "The government is weak and the militias are war-hardened," says Guud, adding that it is a huge mistake "that the Americans, with their continuous bombing campaigns, are hunting down a few individuals, all the while incurring the wrath of ordinary people."

This anger is reflected in daily protests against the new government, which began behaving dictatorially shortly after assuming power and promptly closed radio and television stations operated by Al-Jazeera, HornAfrik and Shabelle because of their critical reporting.

Having shown them that they govern at our sufferance, it's a perfect time to cut a deal with the Islamists.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2007 8:47 AM