Once again in Somalia, a struggle for control that is to some degree a proxy war has begun to build up this week.
Ethiopia, with some presumed quiet backing from the Bush administration, has stepped up its military intervention in support of the shaky Somali transitional government, headquartered in Baidoa, against the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), which controls the national capital of Mogadishu and much of the south of the country. Ethiopia denies that it is invading Somalia, but the Guardian, the BBC, and Reuters all report otherwise.
From the Guardian:
The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people had been killed, and more than 200 wounded, since Wednesday. It could not say how many of these were civilians. Agency reports, quoting aid workers, said civilians were fleeing for the relative safety of Mogadishu. Ethiopia continues to deny that it has military forces in Somalia, but makes no secret of the fact that its sympathies lie with President Abdullahi Yusuf's secular transitional government.Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, has branded the SCIC a terrorist organisation that threatens his country and the western world. The United States, which regards Ethiopia as an ally in its "war on terror", has made similar claims.
By continuing to expand its territorial control and talk of war, the SCIC has done little to advance its cause with the international community. Seen from afar, its military face-off with Ethiopia is a brave or foolish strategy. The SCIC has no air force or tanks, and is greatly outnumbered in trained soldiers.
But it has two powerful weapons: the popular dislike within Somalia for Ethiopia, and religion. Senior clerics in the movement are pitching it as a holy war against infidel invaders.
Some analysts say it is a war neither can win. Ethiopia may inflict severe damage on the battlefield, but can never destroy the support for the courts. The SCIC, for its part, is unlikely to be able to defeat Ethiopia militarily. And even if it did manage to topple the government in Baidoa, it would be seen as an international pariah, surrounded by hostile neighbours.
"Sooner or later the courts and the government will have to get back to the negotiating table," said Matt Bryden, a consultant to the International Crisis Group, based in Nairobi.
"The only question is how long this type of fighting can go on for."
Both the BBC and Reuters report that SCIC leaders have sent out calls for international help, some of them appeals to the world, some open appeals to foreign Muslim fighers to engage in "holy war." From Reuters:
The Islamists accuse Christian-led Ethiopia, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, of invading Somalia and deny claims by the United States that the group is led by an al Qaeda cell."We told the world to stop this problem," Inda'ade, a hardliner known for belligerent rhetoric, told reporters in the Islamist stronghold of Mogadishu. "We told them to do something before it becomes a blazing fire that would engulf the region."
Escalating tension prompted medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres to withdraw its international personnel, although local staff were still running MSF's programmes.
"The operations are ongoing and we're ready to take war wounded from either side," MSF head of mission for Somalia, Dave Michalski, told Reuters.
For deeper background on the long-standing crisis in Somalia, I would urge people to read the reports of the International Crisis Group, who have been very tough-minded in their assessments of the outside players in this potentially devastating conflict. And for recent updates, the Guardian links us to the allAfrica aggregator, which includes reports from scores of African news organizations as well as the UN's integrated regional information network (IRIN).
I'm trying to think of a concluding line for this post. And I'm failing.
Thanks for keeping such a close-eye on this, skdadl. McClatchy News also provided some of the convoluted Bush/Ethiopia background re: the backfiring of US funded anti-"Islamist" warlords in Somalia and former GOP congressman Dick Armey working as a lobbyist for Ethiopia. 'Tis bleak, indeed!
Great link, Godammitkitty. Thanks very much.
Sheesh. It is hair-raising. How do they get away with it? Stupid question, I know. We let them, is how.
Two things jumped out when I read this post and the article Godammitkitty so kindly supplied:
"We (the United States) are now giving a yellow-slash-green light to Ethiopia's policy of containment by intervention,"
and
"Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in a tape issued in June, welcomed a conflict in Somalia"
I guess in infinity all things come together - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here?
croghan27
The only weapon we Americans must have in the so-called war against terror must be a hammer because all we see is nails. We have to understand that everything that has Sharia does not have al Qaeda, unless we make it so.
oh the hell with war.....it's sunny and warm , i'm in hawaii.....and oops, totally wrong thing to say :)
have a good season, people,
aloha!
Well said, Vigilante. At the moment, though, the disasters feel so inexorable, don't they? I don't see how the logic of long-standing American foreign policy can be stopped until ... it is stopped. Somehow.
Aloha, scout! Well, you might as well, eh? Lucky you, and have a good holiday.
Jeeze, can't the bastards ever give it a fucking rest?! You know, just for once give a country a few years to recover from their last fuckover before they start to shit on them all over again?
%$#@!!!!
Two fold problems here,
1. The americans are still using the black/white "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" guiding principle without realizing that not every Islamic group is their enemy (they are now) and that makes them friends with some pretty nasty people.
2. The only stable form of government that can arise out of a sustained period of anarchy is tyranny, whether theocratic or autocratic. You can't have a peaceful democracy pop up from uncontrolled chaos, it just doesn't work that way.
Once the Islamic Courts proved that it could control Somalia, the US should have worked to unite the provisional government and the courts, and then slowly worked to moderate the courts more extreme views. They might not have made any friends, but at least they wouldn't have made any more enemys.
Well said, Yeti:
Once the Islamic Courts proved that it could control Somalia, the US should have worked to unite the provisional government and the courts, and then slowly worked to moderate the courts more extreme views.
That is exactly what should have happened, could have happened.
Well said, Yeti.
As an American I admit to the FACT that current misleaders of my country are responsible for much of the calamity in the Middle East. But not all. Bush and Cheney are not responsible for many people in the world for turning their own minds off. Here is Abeje Tesfaye
trying to cobble together a long piece on how Ethiopia's un-provoked, unnecessary, largely unilateral invasion and unplanned occupation of Somalia (UULUIUOI) was self-defensive, humanitarian and proportionate. For your reading pleasure.
From Stars and Stripes: U.S. trainers prepare Ethiopians to fight
Via Matthew Good
Thanks for this documentation, Matthew.