THE United States, heavily engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq in  its global war on terror, is now fighting on a third front in  Somalia (1). Washington assembled an anti-terrorist coalition  in the Gulf of Aden in 2001 and it is clear from recent air  raids and the deployment of US battleships that it regards  the Horn of Africa as part of the theatre of operations in  its battle against al-Qaida.

 

 It is up against the Union of Islamic Courts, funded by  Mogadishu traders who had had enough of Somalia‘s warlords  and their multiple abuses. Union forces drove the warlords  out of Mogadishu last June and began to bring order to  Somalia after nearly 15 years of chaos.

 

 The US takes a narrow view of the fight against terrorism. It  had backed the warlords and was not prepared to accept the  new order, especially as the Islamic Courts were rumoured to  be receiving aid from Iran. The US had run a programme of  military assistance to Christian Ethiopia since 2002 and the  Pentagon encouraged it to launch an offensive against  Somalia, providing aerial reconnaissance and satellite  surveillance support.

 

 The Ethiopian campaign was a blitzkrieg: the areas held by  the Islamic Courts were occupied within a week, Mogadishu was  taken on 28 December 2006 and 20,000 Ethiopian troops are now  deployed in Somalia. The US-led International Somalia Contact  Group, set up last June, met in Nairobi, Kenya, in January  and called for the proposed United Nations peacekeeping force  to be sent in urgently. So far only Ethiopia and Uganda have  agreed to send troops. Washington has agreed to grant $16m in  aid to the interim Somali president, Abdullahi Yusuf, as well  as humanitarian aid and a further $24m, $14m of which is to  be allocated to the peacekeeping force. The Bush  administration has accused the Somali Islamists of sheltering  terrorists Fazul Abdullah Muhammad and Saleh Ali Saleh  Nabhan, involved in the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in  Kenya and Tanzania.

 

 Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida number two, responded by  calling on Islamist fighters to resist: “I appeal to my  Muslim brethren everywhere to respond to the call for jihad  in Somalia. The real battle will begin by launching your  campaigns against the Ethiopian forces.” He recommended  “ambushes, mines and suicide bombs” and urged the Islamists  to employ the tactics used by insurgents fighting US-led  forces in Afghanistan and Iraq (2).

 

 Abulrahim Ali Modei, spokesman for the Islamic Courts, claims  his movement has not lost the battle (3). His men have  regrouped south of the Juba river, on the border with Kenya,  in a zone where the Ethiopians and US special forces have  been pursuing the Islamists with backup from AC-130 fighter  aircraft based at Djibouti. The capture of Kabul in 2002 and  Baghdad in 2003 did not solve the problems of the Taliban or  Iraq, and the capture of Mogadishu by the Ethiopians has not  solved Somalia‘s problems. They are just beginning.  ________________________________________________________

 

 (1) Or possibly a fourth front. Bush declared that Lebanon  was “the third front in the global war on terror” when Israel  launched its offensive against Hizbullah in August 2006.

 

 (2) BBC News, 5 January 2007.

 

 (3) International Herald Tribune, 4 January 2007

 

           

 

      Translated by Barbara Wilson

 

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