Northman's Fury

Well, I guess the Americans don't have to feel singled out anymore,

Somali insurgents have dragged the bodies of two dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu after a day of heavy battles.

Residents say hundreds of people trailed after them, pelting the corpses with stones, chanting "God is Great".

. . .

"They came here in their hundreds just after dawn and met stiff resistance from the insurgents, using rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns," resident Seynab Sheikh told our reporter.

The clashes subsided only after the Ethiopians withdrew.

Which means the Ethiopians are having trouble even getting the tactical successes normally due a conventional force fighting insurgents.

If the situation with Eritrea opens another front for the Ethiopian army, I expect Ethiopia will abandon Somalia rather than fight on two fronts. (I'd say "sooner than expected", except that much like the US in Iraq, the Ethiopians thought they'd already be long gone by now, having handed the situation off to an African Union force that for some reason, can't seem to find countries willing to volunteer their troops to be targets.)

When the Ethiopians leave, the transitional government they've propped up either leaves with them or suffers the wrath and retribution of the Somali people who've been suffering under the occupation. And in all likelihood, the Union of Islamic Courts, or another group not unlike it, reasserts its control over the region, and this time with even less reason to like the US and its allies.

The Bush administration's record for progress is a gift that keeps on giving.

While Pakistan has been hogging the headlines and some have been crowing about the reduction of violence in Iraq, Afghanistan hasn't been doing too terribly well.

Taliban insurgents have captured a third district in western Afghanistan, local officials said on Monday, defying Western assertions the rebels are unable to mount large military offensives.

The hardline Islamist Taliban relaunched their insurgency two years ago to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject the 50,000 foreign troops, expanding their operations further from the mainly Pashtun south where they are strongest.

Western forces say the Taliban's greater reliance this year on suicide and roadside bombs is a result of heavy battlefield casualties they and Afghan troops have inflicted on the rebels and the insurgents' inability to hold ground.

But in the last week, the Taliban have captured three districts in the western province of Farah, bordering Iran, forcing lightly armed Afghan police to flee and defying Afghan and foreign forces to retake the lost ground.

One of the problems with fighting a multi-front war. Even if the reduction in violence in Iraq actually does portend some good trend and not just a temporary lull, the attention focused on it, and on other theatres, has allowed Afghanistan to spiral further out of control.

The story from Afghanistan yesterday:

About 300 Taliban militants believed to be holed up in a district north of Kandahar City were under siege on Wednesday, surrounded by Canadian troops fighting alongside Afghan and coalition forces, NATO officials said.

In three days of intense firefights in the Arghandab district, coalition and Afghan national forces have so far killed 50 Taliban fighters and wounded 50 more, authorities said.

And in today's news:

Insurgents have failed to seize control of a coveted corridor into Kandahar city, leaving only "ineffective" pockets of resistance as they left the scene of a major battle with coalition forces, a Canadian military officer said Thursday.

. . .

"They are trying to leave pockets of resistance but they are being very ineffective and we are pushing them out of the Arghandab district," Landry told reporters at Kandahar Airfield.

About 300 Taliban militants were involved in the fighting over Arghandab, about 25 kilometres north of Kandahar. At least 50 of them were killed and an equal number were injured after three days of fierce firefights with Canadian, U.S. and Afghan forces.

Translation:

The 300 Taliban we said we had surrounded yesterday, slipped past us and escaped back to areas they control to bother us again some other day, while leaving behind a small holding force to keep us distracted.