Word: islamist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Mohammed Hussein Farah Aidid is still getting used to his transformation from warlord to Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister. But his assessment of the precarious hold the new government has on Somalia, after ousting an Islamist regime, is both candid and grim. "The institutions of the T.F.G. [Transitional Federal Government] are very weak," he said in interview with TIME at his villa in Mogadishu. "It's a symbolic government. Permanence we do not have. We do not have institutions; we do not have a credible force. Unless [we receive outside assistance] quickly, we have no chance of building a nation...
...Sheikh Hassan has now called on all Islamist forces to fall back to Mogadishu and prepare for a long war against the invaders. Whether that materializes remains to be seen. But what is certain is that the strife-torn Horn is more divided today than ever - and is increasingly the arena for an international war between the forces of radical Islam, and the West and its allies...
...recognized - Somali government, in what looks set to be a protracted war that could draw in most of Somalia's neighbors. Washington's reason for supporting the offensive, rather than calling for an end to hostilities, is that the enemies of the Ethiopians and the Somali government are an Islamist movement viewed by the U.S. as in cahoots with al-Qaeda...
...involvement of outside players, however, the Somali conflict remains a domestic power struggle at heart. It pits the Transitional Federal Government, a product of years of painstaking horse-trading among rival clan warlords, against the Council of Islamic Courts, a loose Islamist alliance strongly nationalist in character - which has vowed to break the power of the warlords and unite all of Somalia under Sharia law (although it happens to be led by clan rivals of the dominant clan in the government camp...
...equally unlikely that Ethiopian military power will subdue the Islamist challenge inside Somalia. Indeed, the government's reliance on forces of the old enemy is unlikely to endear it to the Somali citizenry. Although Ethiopia promises to withdraw its forces within days, they had been active in Somalia for months before their presence was officially acknowledged, and a speedy withdrawal would leave a vacuum that the Islamists would once again fill. Yet having effectively repelled an Islamist advance on Baidoa, the Ethiopians risk losing much of their tactical advantage if they tried to capture Islamist strongholds, particularly the capital. Their...