Islamic Courts in Somalia might mean war with Ethiopia

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[brief comment: These courts are similar to what we saw with the Taliban. Banning modern technology, subjugating women, instigating middle-ages type punishment for violating Islamic Law, ect...)

(SomaliNet) Threats by the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC), to fight Ethiopian troops protecting the government in Baidoa if they do not leave in a week expires today Tuesday.

The Somali Islamic militia took Somalia Capital Mogadishu in June and controls most of the south.

Meanwhile, the Somalia’s government on Monday said it was lining up peacekeeping forces as the interim administration and Islamist rivals sought a diplomatic way to avert a war that many fear could engulf the region.

However both sides said over the weekend they were still open to dialogue but on the ground the military standoff remained tense as Islamist fighters continued to dig in at positions on three sides of Baidoa, witnesses said.

At some points, government and Islamist troops are just a few kilometres apart.

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told parliament in Baidoa, the government's only outpost, that Nigeria's president had pledged troops for a United Nations-backed peacekeeping force to protect the administration.

"Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo promised me that they will send 1800 peacekeepers to Somalia with their full supplies and will help us financially and politically," he said.

Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said last week his fighters did not plan to attack Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's government but only it is "invading" Ethiopian allies.-Reuters.

(link)

As a quick strategic note the Ethiopian military is currently one of the most advanced on the sub-Saharan African continent. It seems unlikely that the ragtag Somalia forces, which are not organized as a conventional army, could prevent them from occupying the country.

I hate to trump your post, however The Soviet Army got bogged down in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988. Also the most advanced army in the world withdrew from Somalia after a brief foray there in 1993, and is currently bogged down in Iraq. --We didn't exactly fare so well in Vietnam either.

Also, the Somali Islamic Courts are alleged to have Al Qaida ties or at least to sympathise with them. If conflict takes hold between the Jihadi types in Somalia and the Ethiopian Army, I see a long drawn out low level conflict of hit and run attacks coupled with suicide attacks in store for the Ethiopian Army.

I don't entirely disagree with you. My post probably left the wrong impression. They should have no trouble occupying the country, after that, I'm not so sure. I'm not really an expert in the region, and the press coverage is pathetic. The Soviet Union situation is slightly different in that the Soviets were attempting to install a puppet government and insanely try to have that said government install a atheistic state. It seems unlikely Ethiopia will try to do something that drastic (also I doubt they intend to install a Christian theocracy). My guess is they will have somewhat more patience in terms of military causalities but admittedly that is a guess. Three factors make me consider this: 1. Ethiopia is already used to large amount of suffering, unlike the United States (then again you could argue in the opposite direction 2. Ethiopia is not nearly as open or developed a society as the United States (Freedom House gives it a party free 5 on the 1, free, to 7, not free scale). Finally Ethiopia has reason to be worried about the Taliban type regime taking hold in Somalia at this time since it is a Christian country.

It should be noted that unlike Afghanistan Somalia's...

terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains, and highlands. In the far north, however, the rugged east-west ranges of the Karkaar Mountains lie at varying distances from the Gulf of Aden coast. -Free World Maps.

It has begun: AP: Ethiopia attacks Somalia Islamic Council (link)

This week's Private Eye has an interesting article (not online) about the British government's continuing (and actually increasing) funding of the massively corrupt and barbaric Ethiopian government. If I was allowed to post it here, I would.

here's my solution.

squad of f-16's.
attack helicopters
a couple of air support groups off the Gulf.
shell the place, make it clear that we will take over, and then start sending in ground forces if our demands are not met.

Regardless of how bad the Ethiopian government is (and I don't doubt it is) it was far worse say, 15-25 years ago, and the Islamic Court that are in place in Somalia (some reports say fleeing Somalia) are much much worse. Additionally, the Ethiopian forces are attempting to put back into place the much more moderate UN-backed transitional government.

One way to look at it is this. North Vietnam invaded and annexed South Vietnam. They executed something like 60,000 people, and something like 1,000,000 into reeducation camps. They also sponsored the horribly brutal Khmer Rouge that killed somewhere between 2/5 and 1/3 of the population of Cambodia. HOWEVER, the Red Khmers then turned their back on their sponsors and launched raids into Vietnam itself. Vietnam thus decided to invade and occupy Cambodia until Vietnam's own Soviet sponsors decided to stop their own funding in the late 80s and forced them out of not only Cambodia but also Laos. While Vietnam's imperialism was not only defensive in purpose, the final results were nevertheless positive: the ending of the slaughter of the Khmer Rouge. In this case Ethiopia can make sure that slaughter never reaches it peak.

thats why I like my idea.

From Reuters:
UNITED NATIONS: The top U.N. envoy in Somalia urged the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire between Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's weak government and the powerful Islamic militia that controls most of the country, saying talks are the only way to solve the conflict.

But the appeal Tuesday from Francois Lonseny Fall, the U.N.secretary-general's special representative to Somalia, failed to produce immediate results.

The Security Council could not agree on a draft presidential statement circulated Tuesday by Qatar calling for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate withdrawal of all foreign forces, specifying Ethiopian troops.

I don't understand how talks are the only way to solve the conflict. Ethiopian forces are currently routing the Islamic Council forces. It seems likely they will soon occupy the areas controlled by the Islamists. The Ethiopian forces were invited by the UN-backed transitional government. Yet now the two sides are supposed to talk on an equal level? This apparently should includes a Taliban-like government no political internationally backing (although there are allegations of covert military backing (link to Wikipedia) that doesn't even run much of the country.

Furthermore, the Ethiopian troops should just leave. Replaced by whom? The UN? Where in Africa has the UN (the Europeans being the closest to Africa other then say, the Ethiopians) has intervened for peacekeeping successfully? The Sudan? Not exactly. Does anybody trust some institution calling itself the "Islamic Courts Union" to just hang around peacefully and keep their treaties and not try to occupy, and engage in terrorist activity? I mean, honestly? How about the UN just stay out of this for now, and if they are unwilling to be productive, stay out of it entirely.

that seems to be the answeer for everything these days. Start another war. That will take care of everything. When are people going to understand that was is not the answer. There are better ways to handle disputes of this nature.


Peace

The problem, CockneyRebel, is that you are talking about groups of people with profound disagreements. Saying "war is not the answer" does not solve every solution because there are simply some people that have it in their mindset to rule by tyrannical force. If someone believes that the word of Allah must be enforced on everyone and those who do not obey must die, then they are going to do it. Some people cannot be reasoned with. It is how they were raised, what they learned in school. People thought they could reason with Hitler and other megalomaniacs and they were horribly wrong. I'm afraid that I don't think pacifism is the type of response that is likely to gain anything but more tyranny and more brutality on this earth regardless of it's good intentions.

It is worth remembering that perhaps about 169,202,000 people were butchered by their own governments in the twentieth century (this does not include the new upward estimate from 36,702,000 to 76,702,000 of Mao's China). This is perhaps three times as much people as were killed in the ravages of war.
(source link)

Your point is well taken.

I appreciate your candor.

This isn't directly on point however: Whenever discussions of war come up certain related moral dilemmas start sticking in my mind. One of them is regarding the terrible firebombing of Japanese cities in WWII that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Each one of those individual digits is an person like you, or me and they are were horribly killed. On the other hand the cities were where Japanese industry was scattered around in a way unlike in other places. Had the cities not been bombed in such manner (they did not have the methods of today) even more people likely would have died and WWII would have lasted even longer.

But what kind of a choice is that?! Bombing hundreds of thousands of people to death, or not bombing them so even more die later on both sides. It drives me insane that reaches a sort of anguish that is hard to explain. Once I was driving it was going through my mind and started weeping about it uncontrollably like never before. There were mothers in the Holocaust that were forced to choose between there own children (who would live, and who would die)! The world we live in is very disturbing. I don't take comfort in my own conclusions. If someone figured out a way to stop all of this madness tomorrow I would be all for it.