And paying the bills.
DeBeers?
My sister was going to go to Ethiopia for a medical mission in January so I read up on this stuff pretty closely and as far as I can tell, the Islamic Courts movement started out as a pretty good thing for Somalia. They consisted of Islamic judges who raised militias to enforce their rules. They were principle based and even if we wouldn’;t like the rules, they were consistent and generally incorruptible. The judges formed local armies to enforce the rule of law (Sharia law but law nonetheless). Then a bunch of these courts got together and merged their armies to take on the warlords (who, after years of fighting, banded to fight the Islamic Court movement). The judges took over Mogadishu and then got the bright idea that they would turn Somalia into a Sharia state and force Sharia law on all of Somalia. We (the USA) purportedly supported the warlords (the guys we were fighting against in 1990s because some of the judges had links to al Queda. The Ethiopians saw us trying to meddle and knew that we would just screw up the whole region and invaded in support of the transitional Somali government and threw the judges out of Mogadishu. The judges changed their tune and denounced violence and ask for democratic elections (which they are pretty sure to win considering that everyone sees them as a force for good in the country).
Its going to be hard to argue against calls for a democratically elected Somalian government but we are probably going to try.
Mercenaries.
Soldiers of fortune.
The Dogs of War.
You know…
They were a regiment of the South African army, made up of Angolans - the formation of the regiment was something of an accident.
After SA pulled out of Angola they were moved to an isolated town in SA called Pomfret, and were used internally - hence they were hated by black South Africans and after apartheid ended they were disbanded.
Since they know nothing else they tend to work as mercenaries and in ‘security’, for example they were the guys in the plane in Zimbabwe - Mark Thatcher’s bunch.
One of their specialities was mechanized warfare, since Ethiopia has US ‘advisors’, and the invasion is both slick and mechanized, I would suspect that there is some tie up.
Update: Mogadishu falls.
Google “Battalion 32”
Wow, the Kenyans have a Somali area as well, yet the UIC doesn’t kick up too much of a fuss about that.
are you implying that the Ethiopians couldn’t do it by themselves? Why not?
What’s the UIC?
Ah. Well, when I mentioned “Somalians” have claimed Ethiopia’s Somali region as part of a Greater Somalia, I meant nationalists, not the UIC. And such probably would claim the Somali areas of Kenya as well. But that’s all moot now, isn’t it? Somalia itself is too much of a failed state to start making serious territorial-irredentist claims.
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They had a hard time with Eritrea
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This time they are mechanized and slick - the pilots are supposed to be US trained using Northrop (links further back) but the ground stuff ‘smells’ professional to me. That requires practice.
Also it makes sense, this is one the USA does not want to lose, so stacking the deck is a no brainer.
Well, they could have learned from their mistakes. They are fighting Eritrea as proxy anyway… I’m in Egypt and this is a big topic here. There are no hints of non Ethiopians on the ground or the mood over this would be much diifferent here. Just saying…the Somalies are not that organized or at least not like the Eritrean Affair…
Surely Egypt is like Pakistan, the government is aspirationally 21st century, but a bunch of 7th century religious nuts are trying to stir thing up.
I’ve been doing a little research, it looks like Ethiopia had a rather nasty attack from Somalia in the 1970s ( to be honest at the time I was not really interested in Africa ), yet the Russians moved their support from the Somalis to the Ethiopians - ‘support’ included about 14,000 Cubans.
From what I’ve found, the Ethiopian airforce is American trained, use Northrop kit and interestingly, have been doing so for some time. Like buying Northrops from Iran in about 1976 and Ethiopian pilots landing in The Sudan and claiming asylum - years ago.
Ethiopia is also supposed to have some rather large natural gas reserves.
There is something distinctly fishy about their rapid advance through Somalia, it is too slick. I would like to look at the tracks or wheels of the armoured vehicles.
Here’s a theory I heard on the radio today: Although Ethiopia is a historically Christian country with a Christian-dominated government, its Muslim population is approaching 50%. The main reason they’re intervening in Somalia is to prevent the consolidation of an Islamic-fundamentalist state on their borders that might give their own Muslims ideas.
@BrainGlutton - which radio service ?
Preventing the spread of Moslem dissent sounds plausible, but Moslems are not all nutters, with Africa I would suspect tribalism.
The Somalis have been asking for it for a long time, the American withdrawel was a humiliation, they commit acts of piracy at sea and generally appear obnoxious.
Donning my cynical hat, the situation presents quite a nice diversion from Iraq.
I doubt it was intended to be, or the U.S. media would be paying more attention to it.
Looks like we’ve attacked “suspected Al Qaeda targets” with a AC130 Gunship. We also have a carrier in range, but haven’t used it yet…
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/08/somalia.strike/index.html
This would not alarm me nearly so much if Bush were not scheduled to make a major war-policy announcement the day after tomorrow.