Fall of Mogadishu leaves US policy in ruins

[cal04]

It was a rout. After months of fighting that left hundreds dead Mogadishu fell suddenly this week: pick-up trucks with mounted machine-guns and young warriors scrambled to leave the city. The victors broadcast a triumphant announcement that the warlords had been ousted. In their place a relatively disciplined militia promised order and security after 15 years of mayhem. At a victory rally a militia leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, made another promise: to create an Islamic state.

Mogadishu is now largely ruled by the Islamic Courts Union, a powerful movement that advocates a strict version of sharia law, including public executions, and has alleged ties to al-Qaida terrorists. The Horn of Africa, say some analysts, has just acquired its own Taliban. News of the takeover broke like a thunderclap over Washington. "This is worse than the worst-case scenarios - the exact opposite of what the US government strategy, if there was one, would have wanted," said Ken Menkhaus, associate professor of political science and Somalia expert at Davidson College, North Carolina.

It has emerged that the Bush administration bankrolled the warlords, who are secular, to gain access to al-Qaida suspects and block the rise of the Islamic militia. CIA operatives based in Nairobi funnelled $100,000 to $150,000 (£80,000) a month to their proxies, according to John Prendergast, an International Crisis Group expert on Somalia who has interviewed warlords. "This was counter-terrorism on the cheap. This is a backwater place that nobody really wants to get involved in, so (they)thought, let's just do this and maybe we'll get lucky."

Instead Washington got burned. Amid recriminations policymakers are asking how did the fiasco happen, and just how bad is it for US interests? Somalia has been without effective government since Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Warlords control ports, airfields and roadblocks, gaining great wealth while offering little but trouble to the average Somali. In the vacuum of a failed state Islamic courts were established along clan lines to dispense justice where no other method existed. With financial support from local businessmen the courts, popular with Mogadishu residents for curbing some of the anarchy and providing basic services, built up a militia capable of taking on the warlords.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1794391,00.html

[nealmhughes]

1. From what I've been reading in the Guardian,

the "loss" of Mogadishu is rather moot. There has been no real government there nor economy for several years. The only money coming into the country are those Somalis who are working out of the country and sending back cash/gold as there are no functioning banks in the entire country.
Evidently many in the capital have fled abroad or else to their ancestral lands to seek out a subsistance living amongst their fellow tribesmen.

[MADem]

2. And pirates!! Mustn't forget the pirate booty! Kidnaping, too!

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-11/2005-11-18-voa50.cfm?CFID=15823381&CFTOKEN=59732967

Somalia Pirates Bold and Well-Organized
By Cathy Majtenyi
Nairobi
18 November 2005

The number of pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia has skyrocketed since early this year. Marine officials say the country's factional leaders are increasingly turning to piracy to make more money, most likely to purchase arms.

Captain Sellathurai Mahalingam can still recall the terror he felt on the evening of June 25 as he sailed the M.V. Semlow with 850 tons of World Food Program relief food to a destination in Somalia..."We heard some gunshots. These pirates, they came in three boats fully armed, and within seconds they boarded the vessel," he said. "The head of the gang then came to the bridge and ordered the vessel to be stopped. And they asked me about money, and they put the gun on my face."

He says the Somali pirates who boarded the ship stole $8,500 from the safe and ransacked the crew's cabins. .The hijackers also demanded that the boat's Mombasa-based agent Motaku Shipping Agency pay $500,000 for the release of the ship and crew. Director Karim Kudrati tells VOA his company paid a ransom, but would not disclose the exact amount for security reasons...