Somalia – Gone to Hell for the Status Quo

By BJ

Just under two years now since the Ethiopian Army, with US backing, invaded southern Somalia to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union in control of most of the country.  The Islamists, not being complete morons, mostly refused to fight the advancing Ethiopian troops and faded back into the population so as to live on to fight another day.  That day has long since come and what was hailed then as a swift victory has now all but reversed itself.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has said Islamist insurgents now control most of the country, and have advanced to the edge of Mogadishu.

Mr Yusuf said there was no effective government in Somalia, and that insurgents were now able to carry out attacks in the capital at will.

So short of the capital itself, things are right back to where everything was before the Ethiopian invasion, with the added caveat that the Somali people are in far worse shape.

And ordinary Somalis, as usual, are dying in huge numbers from hunger and conflict.

. . .

The UN says more than three million Somalis are in acute need of aid.

Their requirements include shelter - for those who have fled their homes in the ruined capital and elsewhere - medical care and, simply, food.

The Islamists appear to have grown ever more radicalized as the conflict has continued, and may now be in fact the threat the Bush administration claimed they were when they supported the Ethiopian invasion, but I’d say the appetite for another large scale intervention is pretty much dead.

In its wake, another country destroyed by war with a traumatized population harbouring great ill-will towards the United States.  If you reap what you sow, the Bush administration will have bequeathed America’s enemies with many fertile fields.