It's the holidays, which means I'm at home, which means I can watch a TV, and the news is all about Eid al Adha, Saddam's imminent execution, and the fall of Mogadishu.

Somalia is one of those troubled countries. Large numbers of Somalis are refugees living outside of Somalia, in countries as far as the Scandinavias, Canada, and the USA. Somalia has had chaos, civil war, warlords, and tribal conflict since the early 1990s. An attempted intervention was a disaster back then.

This year, after years of negotiations and outside pressure, some of the main faction leaders and warlords came together to form a so-called Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Needless to say, this 'government' only legitimised some of the corrupt and cruel factions who were involved in its formation, and wasn't popular at all. The reason they finally banded together, was to fight the group threatening their power, the UIC.

Somalia is nearly completely Muslim, if not 100% Muslim, and over the years of chaos, local communities started to form their own courts of justice, to settle disputes amongst themselves in the absence of a government or law. The courts were naturally based on Sharia, Islamic Law, which is what Somalis have lived by for centuries. Over the years, many of these Islamically minded groups, courts, clerics, and scholars started to get together to discuss solutions to ending the corruption, rampant violence and tribal warfare plaguing the country. They joined together to form the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The UIC gained popularity because of it's reputation of diffusing disputes and serving justice, and soon it had a basic militia/army, which eventually took Mogadishu in May 2006.

Now with most of the country (the South at least) firmly in UIC hands, the warlords and other clan leaders who have been fighting each other for years saw an end to their power if the UIC was allowed to continue it's push to stamp them out, so united to form the TFG for survival.

One would think that after years of civil war and insecurity, the world may welcome a stable power in Somalia. Somalis refugees finally started to return as the areas under the UIC became safe. Businesses started to reopen. "Somalis... welcomed the Union because it had banished the warlords who had reduced their country to mayhem during 15 years of civil war. For the first time in a generation people could walk the streets in safety. Gone were the ubiquitous checkpoints where the warlords’ militias extorted and killed. Guns had been banned. Somalis who had fled the violence were returning from abroad."

So what was wrong? Why were the Courts defamed in the press? Just because they're Islamic?

Well, right after September 11th, when the USA was launching it's global 'War on Terror', governments and factions the world over were accusing their rivals of being terrorists, or of harboring terrorists, in the hopes that the USA would side with them against the other. Immediately reports out of Somalia started to surface, every clan, warlord and faction was claiming that the next one over the bend (or the Horn of Africa in this case), was hiding Al Qaeda operatives, or was terrorist in the sinister sense, or whatnot. Not much was done though, at least not openly or directly, until the UIC started to really prove its mettle. There were reports earlier in 2006 that the US was arming the anti-UIC factions, and the propaganda against them started to be streamed out in earnest after the UIC took Mogadishu. 'Islamists take over Somalia!', 'They're the new taleban!', 'They're going to breed terrorists! Because you know, that's what they do!'

It was obvious the USA among other world and regional African powers were taking sides against the UIC, even if it meant allying with corrupt, murderous warlords and unpopular 'government'. And after the UIC started their final push to take the TFG strongholds next to the Ethiopian borders, in comes the vastly superior Ethiopian army to save the 'government', with American diplomatic and intelligence/military support, and routs the UIC militias until it took Mogadishu yesterday for the TFG.

The UIC claim that they performed a tactical retreat due to their inferiority in conventional warfare. I suspect a guerilla war to break out between the UIC and the TFG and their Ethiopian backers.

We just witnessed another invasion happen on fast forward over Christmas. Ethiopia, or the US or anyone really, don't have a right in choosing who rules Somalia against Somalis' will. Finally, after 15 years of civil war, Somalia gets some stability and a semblance of a popular government with the UIC, and this is quickly ruined by foreign illegal intervention.

Of course the hated warlords are referred to as the 'government' by the biased Western media, which serves the same interests of those who wanted to delegitimize and remove the UIC. Looting and violence is already returning under the 'liberation' of Ethiopia. "The African Union has called for Ethiopian forces to leave Somalia,, but the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a statement calling for the withdrawal of all foreign forces." So the Africans are calling Ethiopia to end its illegal occupation, but the UN yet can't unite on a stance towards the issue.

I wonder which non-African countries are supporting Ethiopia's actions?

Submitted by MonkeyZerg on Fri, 2006-12-29 23:53

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