Washington Post:
FOUR MONTHS ago an Islamic fundamentalist movement gained control of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, after defeating an alliance of local warlords backed by the United States. Since then the Islamic Courts Union, as the alliance is called, has expanded its control over much of southern Somalia, including the port city of Kismaayo. It has alternatively negotiated and skirmished with a rival, internationally backed government that clings to a base in the western town of Baidoa. It has come to the brink of war with neighboring Ethiopia, which reportedly has sent troops into Somalia, and has won the support of Ethiopia's hostile neighbor, Eritrea.
The Islamic courts' central council has meanwhile come under the control of an extremist who is on the U.S. government's list of terrorists. One of its principal militia commanders is linked to murders of Western aid workers and journalists and is believed to be sheltering three members of the al-Qaeda movement who were involved in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. There are reports that more foreign fighters are arriving in Mogadishu to join the movement, drawn by its call for jihad against Christians in Ethiopia.
And what is the US doing in all this? "The sad and alarming answer is next to nothing," WaPo reports. "Since its allies were driven out of the Somali capital in June, the Bush administration has had few contacts and obtained scant intelligence about the Islamic courts. Officials maintain they don't even know for sure whether Ethiopian troops are in the country; the Somalis say they have seen and even fought them, but the Ethiopian government denies it."
So, not only aren't we addressing a new Taliban rising in northeast Africa, we don't even know for certain what's happening there.
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Tags: news politics Bush terrorism war Iraq Somalia Africa Ethiopia
