Remember Somalia is split
A quick point the old country of Somalia is no more. In the north east and essentially the old British Somaliland is a separate country, albeit not recognized by the UN or AU. Last time I looked it was stable and leaning towards a democracy.
davidbfpo
'US planes' bomb town in Somalia
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Islamist spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow said the US was trying to hit Islamist hideouts in the area.
"The Americans bombed the town and hit civilians targets thinking that they were Islamist hideouts. They used an AC-130 plane," he told the AFP news agency.
Local official Ali Hussein told the BBC that many people were fleeing the town.
The border with Kenya has been closed for the past year.
Full story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7274462.stm
Somalia sinks into greater chaos as Islamist insurgents gain ground
Somalia sinks into greater chaos as Islamist insurgents gain ground, International Herald Tribune, 28 March 2008.
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The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began helping themselves to sacks of grain.
Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops got hammered, taking heavy casualties and retreating all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.
Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a cushy life as a development consultant in Springfield, Virginia. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
"I feel this slipping away," he said.
Dilemmas of the Horn article in newsweek
This was just posted in the latest edition of Newsweek. A pretty provocative sub-title, but clearly, the author wants to send a message. Not sure anyone is listening, though.
Dilemmas of the Horn
Washington wanted to keep Somalia from turning into another Afghanistan. Now it's an African Iraq.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/131836
US air strike kills Aden Hashi Ayro
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Air raid kills Somali militants
The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an overnight air strike.
Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab's military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.
Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7376760.stm
Begining of the end for Ethiopian adventure?
Somali troops 'out of control'
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Somali government troops are out of control, as are their Ethiopian allies and other armed groups says human right's group Amnesty International.
It says the situation is "dire" in central and southern Somalia, with civilians completely at the mercy of armed groups on all sides.
Somalia: not piracy catch all thread
After the successful hit on the Al Quaeda, the response covered on SWJ Bog ranged from the ecstatic to the dismissive with:
and
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Somalia strike and offshore balancing
A helicopter-borne U.S. special operations group, apparently operating from a U.S. warship in the Indian Ocean, attacked and killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan along with several of his associates along a road in southern Somalia. According to the cited New York Times article, the U.S. special operations soldiers recovered the bodies and presumably other interesting intelligence products from the site.
and
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Alternate View: Somalia Strike and Offshore Balancing
OK, I’ll take the bait.
To offer the killing of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan as evidence of the success of a strategy of “offshore balancing” would be myopic in the extreme. By press accounts, it was a very well conducted SEAL raid, but let’s not confuse good tactics with good strategy.
Let’s begin with U.S. strategy toward Somalia. Since the withdrawal from Mogadishu in the wake of the “Black Hawk Down” incident – and let’s remember why this was Osama bin Laden’s favorite movie, an exemplar of America the “weak horse,” unable to run the course – keeping that failed state from becoming an al Qaeda haven has been a very narrowly run thing, at best.
Personally I found the following to be closer to the mark:
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Black Hawk’s Shadow
Why we don't care about Somalia anymore.
Picture Mogadishu in 1992. Marauding militias loyal only to Somali clan leaders stalk the city, looting aid shipments bound for the 1.8 million Somalis facing starvation. Then, from the green-blue Indian Ocean waters, there materializes a flotilla of U.S. transports bearing aid and armed men to deliver it. In the skies overhead, U.S. attack helicopters appear, providing cover for food shipments, while an American spy plane circles the city night and day gathering intelligence on militias trying to disrupt the rescue effort.
Flash forward 17 years to the same city, still surrounded by squalid refugee camps. More than twice as many Somalis are now teetering on the brink of starvation in what many view as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Militias of heavily armed young men still stalk the city hijacking aid shipments. This time, though, no one's coming to the rescue.
Somalia is in dire straits—maybe worse than ever. An estimated 3.8 million need humanitarian aid (fully half the population), according to the U.N.'s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia, which calls the crisis the worst since 1991–92. In the past six months alone, the number of people forced from their homes by fighting—between the country's barely functional transitional government and Islamist insurgents—has grown by 40 percent, to 1.4 million. Most live in squalid camps that a new report from Oxfam calls "barely fit for humans."
So why don't we care anymore? The answer lies not only in how the giant U.S.-U.N. mission to Somalia came undone—in the ashes of the Black Hawk Down firefight in October 1993—but in a legacy of failures by both Somali and Western leaders to cure the country's ills.
Understanding the al-Shabaab Networks
ASPI, 13 Oct 09: Understanding the al-Shabaab Networks
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The decision by the Australian Government on 21 August 2009 to officially list the al-Shabaab group as a terrorist organisation highlights a subject of growing concern in many Western governments: what is the danger posed by the Somali-based group, and is it merely a regional actor? The question is one of growing salience as stories increasingly surface of young Western (or Westernised) men leaving their homes to fight and train with the Islamic warriors in Somalia. Furthermore, the growing parallels with the ‘chain of terror’ that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown highlighted, emanating from Pakistan’s lawless provinces through Europe’s Muslim communities, mean fears are growing that it might result in a terrorist attack on the scale of the Madrid or London bombings.
This article outlines the growing sense of apparent threat in the West from networks linked in some way to al-Shabaab. It offers some brief thoughts on the growing links between what are herein termed ’the Shabaab networks’ and whether the threat from them is one than can be paralleled with the threat from the similarly structured al-Qaeda networks.
ISS, 3 Jun 09: Somalia: Understanding Al-Shabaab
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On 8 May 2009, Al-Shabaab reinforced by a faction of Hizbul Islam and former Islamic Courts Union’s (ICU) leader Sheikh Aweys began what they claimed was a final assault on the capital Mogadishu in an attempt to destroy President Sheikh Sharif’s fragile National Unity Government. A wave of targeted assassinations of ICU officials and Al-Shabaab commanders in mid-April onwards, the reshuffling of military and political alliances among Islamist factions and inflammatory rhetoric that has led to a polarization of political positions has all but eliminated prospects for reconciliation between the government and the opposition.
At the time of writing the government is managing to keep hold of southern Mogadishu. Nevertheless Al-Shabaab continues to gain ground in central Somalia and is positioning itself for what it hopes will be a decisive military victory.
This report briefly examines the nature of Al-Shabaab’s ideological stance, their political ambitions and why this movement constitutes the gravest threat to the survival of Sheikh Sharif’s government and the Djibouti peace process that gave it birth.
NEFA, 5 May 09: Shabaab al-Mujahideen: Migration and Jihad in the Horn of Africa
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Part I: The Early Years - Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI) and “Blackhawk Down”
Part II: Ethiopia and the Ogaden War (1993-1997)
Part III: The Islamic Courts Union (ICU)
Part IV: Rise of the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement
Part V: The Current Status of Shabaab and its Islamist Rivals
Part VI: The Role of Foreign Fighters
Part VII: Shabaab’s Propaganda Strategy and Media Infrastructure
Part VIII: Shabaab al-Mujahideen and the Issue of Ocean Piracy