Word: somalia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...backed Ethiopia's military intervention on behalf of the beleaguered and unpopular - but internationally 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...
...support from such quarters as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria and Iran by painting themselves as victims of an Islamophobic Western conspiracy. And Osama bin Laden certainly helped Ethiopia and the Somali government make their case for U.S. support when, in October, he warned Western governments to stay out of Somalia...
...Ethiopia is not simply acting as Washington's regional policeman, however. It has a long-running border dispute with Somalia that led to two years of open warfare in the late 1970s, and it sees the nationalist inclination of the Islamists - and their vow to take control of the Ogaden desert from Ethiopia - as an immediate threat to its own interests. (The Islamists actually back secessionist insurgents in that region.) Given Ethiopia's intervention on behalf of the government, it comes as no surprise that Addis Ababa's fiercest foe, neighboring Eritrea, is supporting and arming the Somali Islamists...
...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...
...Like the Taliban in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, the Islamists' displacement of hated warlords in southern and central Somalia was largely welcomed by the population. However, the strictures they have imposed on the population in the name of a fiercely conservative interpretation of Islam have also generated resentment. But the regional and international context of Somalia is quite different from that of Afghanistan a decade ago: The Islamists cannot prevail as long as Ethiopia is willing to lend the beleaguered government its military muscle - well-armed and trained by U.S. advisers, in contrast to the ragtag and mostly teenage...