Somalia
A situation that probably bears watching. I don’t have a complete understanding of the situation, but the broad basics are relatively clear. Somalia is predominantly Muslim, Ethiopia predominantly Christian, which matters to the US but is probably far less important in the region. The Bush administration likes to lump together everything Muslim into one big basket whether they’re actually related or not.
The Somali conflict is better understood as a tribal or ethnic one. The last paragraph alludes to the “Greater Somalia” movement, which is a large part of Ethiopia’s fear of the UIC. There is a good sized chunk of Ethiopia where the people are Somali. There has to be a not entirely unreasonable fear by the Ethiopian government that this area may decide to split off and join their cross-border brethren, much like Turkey fears a independent Kurdistan in Northern Iraq causing their own Kurdish population to (re)attempt a breakaway.
I have no idea how popular or widespread the whole pan-Somali movement is, but reading a bit of the history of the region gives some idea of the forces at work. At the centre of things is the Ogaden region in eastern Ethopia. Its people are mainly Somali Muslims. It was colonized by the British and after the Second World War, it was originally supposed to be joined with British and Italian Somaliland’s in a Greater Somalia. Instead, it was annexed by Ethiopia. Eritrea also found itself annexed by Ethiopia with the backing of Western powers, which led to a thirty year war of independence, and a couple of wars since.
Somalia fought two wars with Ethiopia trying to claim Ogaden as part of Somalia, and there is apparently still a separatist group fighting the Ethiopian government in the area.
The current fighting got going thanks to the US backing of a group of warlords opposed to the UIC. Current US complaints of parties violating arms embargoes when they sent equipment in themselves is a classic example of why people don’t trust the US anymore. When Somalis learned that foreigners were interfering with the conflict, they quickly moved to support the other side. As a result, the UIC quickly crushed the warlords in a few months of heavy fighting.
The US then shifted its backing to the virtually powerless, isolated, and internationally appointed and recognized transitional government, whose current survival depends almost entirely on support from Ethiopia, where, according to the Economist, the CIA is taking over large blocks in hotels to house their advisors to the Ethiopian government.
Whatever the sins of the Somali Islamists, the Ethiopian government is hardly any prize itself. Again from the Economist:
Mr Zenawi has turned Ethiopia into a police state. Many of the opposition are in prison on trumped-up charges carrying the death penalty. Tens of thousands of young Ethiopians were sent to prison camps after last year’s poll. A few still languish there; others have fled abroad. Several judges have defected, fearing for their safety.
The press has been crushed, foreign correspondents expelled and many journalists and editors put in jail. The government has hired foreign specialists to help it shut down dissident websites, tap telephones and track e-mails.
Ethiopia still has troops in Eritrea from their last border war, despite agreements that they were supposed to pull them out. Put everything together and a regional war begins to look likely.
