The Expansionist

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Good News in the Horn of Africa. The Associated Press reports:

For the first time in more than a decade, an internationally recognized government is operating in Mogadishu after driving out the Islamic courts movement that wanted to rule Somalia by the Quran. Although trouble is always lurking in this violent, gun-infested country, the reign of the widely feared Islamic courts appears to be over.

The group had imposed its strict interpretation of Islam on Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia since it took power in June, banning movies and Western music and terrifying residents into submission with the threat of floggings and public executions.

Not all is rosy.

Gunshots ring out daily on city streets, and three warlords who once ruled the capital are back now that the Islamists are gone. Many fear the warlords are gathering their forces and might challenge the government.

Perhaps the most insidious threat is from an Iraq-style guerrilla war, which the Islamic group says it's planning with fighters it claims are hiding in Mogadishu.

This great move toward civilization and away from barbarism came via intervention from feeble Ethiopia, a half-Moslem, half-Christian country nextdoor that allied with the Somali government to restore governmental authority. Little, starving Ethiopia did what the great big United States could not do: restore order to Somalia. How long that order continues, remains to be seen.
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For now, the hopeful lesson is that local, willing alliances of people interested in regional stability because it is their region, are likely to be far more effective than an intervention from a distant and perceived-alien invader. Let the Arab world unite to replace the United States in Iraq, and Iraq too might expel its extremists. Not only is it worth the try, but it may be the only alternative to chaos.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,003 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:48 PM

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