Somalia is getting overlooked with all the other crises

Taliban redux? War involving Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia? Unpleasant prospects.

Somalia's central government was destroyed when President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown 15 years ago. This created a vast power vacuum, filled by an ugly assortment of warlords...

...the latest entrants into this vacuum are very different. They are Islamist radicals, styling themselves the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts. In June, this well-funded coalition managed to capture the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the city's surrounding territory. They are now bidding for total control of southern and central Somalia - and the official government in Baidoa is all that stands in their way...

What is at stake? First, a word of caution. There is no immediate chance of Somalia falling into the hands of Muslim extremists. Two relatively stable enclaves, known as Somaliland and Puntland, have emerged in the northern half of the country. For the moment, they are unlikely to succumb to Islamist expansion.

But the radicals, led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who appears on an American "watch list" of suspected terrorists, are extending their hold over southern Somalia every day...

...The parallels between the radicals of Mogadishu and the Taliban, between southern Somalia and pre-2001 Afghanistan, are obvious. The danger is that southern Somalia becomes a new haven for Islamist terrorism, a vast centre for recruiting and training volunteers and for arming and financing their campaign across the world...

...Ethiopia has a vital interest in stopping the Islamist advance. It has a large Muslim population of its own and a longstanding territorial dispute with Somalia over the Ogaden, a region controlled by Ethiopia but inhabited largely by Somalis where a war was fought between the two countries in 1977.

Ethiopia has already deployed troops inside Somalia to prop up Mr Yusuf's government. If the Islamists advance on Baidoa, direct clashes between their militias and Ethiopian troops may take place. A regional war may then engulf the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia's arch-rival, Eritrea [which fought a very serious war with Ethiopia, 1998-2000 - MC] , is believed to be supplying the Islamists with arms, on the principle of "my enemy's enemy is my friend"...

Mark C.

Posted by markc at August 8, 2006 12:13 PM