Earlier today I hit up Coming Anarchy and found an interesting post on Ethiopia and Somalia. A bit later I found this interview by Ken Menkhaus. He is a former special advisor to the U.N. operation in Somalia.
When asked if the Council of Islamic Courts is controlled by al Qaeda, he states:
“No. Absolutely not.”
That’s not to say the two aren’t in a partnership.
Mr. Menkhaus’s sees this crisis different from Dafur’s.
“Darfur is a manmade crisis, and it’s an ongoing one that is incredibly difficult to access. In Somalia, for the moment, the biggest crisis is a natural disaster, the flooding.”
Here's what the leader of the CIC had to say about the Somali retreat.
"Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, leader of the Council of Islamic Courts' executive body, said the group had told its troops to withdraw from some areas.
"The war is entering a new phase," he said. "We will fight Ethiopia for a long, long time and we expect the war to go everyplace."
Ahmed declined to explain his comments in greater detail, but some Islamic leaders had threatened a guerrilla war to include suicide bombings in Ethiopia's capital."
Could it be a bluff or the start of something much bigger? I’m thinking the latter. They know they can’t fight conventionally and win, as does everybody else.
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Somebody, I think Seymour Hersh, referred to the Congo War as "Africa's WWII". It was certainly the largest loss of life in one conflict since 1945, and involved seven countries. I don't think any potential East African conflict will be able to match the Congo conflict in terms of bloodshed, duration, or number of countries involved. The fact that East Africa is better known than Central Africa and that U.S. troops are already stationed in some of these countries might serve to mitigate the conflict before it gets that bad.
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