(Pic: An armoured personal carrier is parked outside Villa Somalia, the former presidential palace of Somalia in Mogadishu, July 27, 2006. Forces allied to Somalia's interim government in the northern Puntland region are ready to repel any attack by Islamists, a regional police chief said on Friday. REUTERS/Shabele Media)
A new report is warning that Somalia's political standoff may erupt into a region-wide conflict involving al Qaeda.
"Unless the crisis is contained, it threatens to draw in a widening array of state actors, foreign jihadi extremists and al Qaeda," said the report, entitled "Can the Somali Crisis Be Contained?"
Islamists seized Mogadishu and its environs in June after routing warlords who had ruled Somalia since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
"The prospects for a peaceful resolution of the present crisis are poor," the report said.
Somali crisis "could spread across E. Africa"
UPI’s take: The simmering stand-off between the weak Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts that control the capital, Mogadishu, could lapse into renewed fighting, paving the way for jihadist forces that may include al-Qaida, an International Crisis Group report released Thursday warns.
There is also coverage on Somalia: Can the Somali Crisis Be Contained? AllAfrica.com, Washington
There is obviously more going on out there than Western governments admit to, or perhaps even understand. The drive by various extremist Muslim sects dominate their world makes the terrorist threat pale into insignificance.
What is interesting is how a relatively few ultra-extremists can consolidate such disparate forces to operate under the same banner. The shadow remains a shadow while local adventurers are willingly doing the up front dirty work.
That these few can continue to operate doesn’t say much about Western intelligence services, or perhaps Western strategic thinking. While, for whatever reason, they have failed to neutralize the shadowy leadership, the bumbling approach to various regional tensions is creating an even greater base of willing martyrs.
In the end it is our leaderships which are being neutralized and the potential outcome isn’t looking rosy.
3 comments:
Hey! This seems like the place to send US troops if we want to nail alQaeda! We do want to nail alQaeda, right? Oh, only in places they're not. like Lebanon and Iraq.
So succinct! I expect there is more value in inflaming this problem than solving it.
I am now convinced the administration and it's one party rulers don't want to nail Al Qaeda, Lew, they want to inflame Al Qaeda and create more terrorists and terrorist attacks while LOOKING tough on terrorism. It's the only theory that makes sense to me watching these stupid fcukers inflame Muslims with the Iraq war, the Lebanon bombing, etc while ignoring Osamam and friends in Pakistan and the Al Qaeda takeover of Somalia.
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