Nairobi, Kenya, May 31 2007 – IN MARCH and April about 400,000 Somalis fled their capital, Mogadishu, as Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's transitional government razed whole districts in an attempt to destroy the country's remaining Islamist militants. That offensive came only months after the Ethiopians claimed to have defeated Somalia's ruling Union of Islamic Courts in a stunningly swift campaign at the end of last year. Despite Ethiopia's latest claims of success, the country is in as perilous a state as ever.

Peace-making is still fraught. A national reconciliation conference of clan elders planned for June 14th will not take place, partly because Mogadishu remains too dangerous for any public gathering. Little is expected of a forthcoming meeting of Somalis and foreign countries' representatives in London. One stumbling block is that Somalia's president, Abdillahi Yusuf, and his prime minister, Mohamed Gedi, are still reluctant to talk to the more moderate of their Islamist opponents. Instead, they seem keener to divide and rule, especially the powerful Hawiye clan which predominates in Mogadishu.

In any event, it is uncertain whether the Islamist militants are in a mood to negotiate; despite their losses, they are becoming more effective. The remnants of the Shabab, the Islamic Courts' zealous armed wing, are more aggressive and better organized than before. Ethiopia says its troops killed at least a thousand Shabab fighters in March and April, though human-rights groups say most of the 1,670 recorded dead were civilians. Either way, the ferocity of the Ethiopian offensive forced the Shabab (meaning “youth” in Arabic) to adopt Iraqi-style insurgent tactics, carrying out hit-and-run raids, planting land mines and even using suicide bombers, all of which are new to Somalia. Western intelligence sources say the Shabab has turned itself from a conventional outfit that was clobbered in conventional fighting into a terrorist-type group using the al-Qaeda cell system: 20-30 men in a cell, rotating in and out of the front line, with better intelligence and more sophisticated training.

This is bad news for most Somalis—and for Uganda. It has 1,500 peacekeepers in Mogadishu as part of an African Union mission which is supposed to replace the Ethiopians, whom most Somalis detest as invaders. The Ugandans were to have been backed up by other African forces but none has shown up. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has resolved to keep his troops, five of whom have been killed, in the line of fire.

But without a comprehensive agreement over Somalia, the present maelstrom could draw in more east African countries and also America, which has already sent special forces to hunt for al-Qaeda suspects there. Al-Qaeda has long tried to incite a jihad against “Christian” Ethiopia and to foster terrorist cells on the Swahili coast, particularly in Kenya. A religious war in Ethiopia looks unlikely right now; Christian-Muslim relations seem fairly stable. But no one knows what success al-Qaeda has had in finding recruits among Kenya's coastal Muslims. Plainly, potential terrorists can still move easily back and forth between Kenya and Somalia. Islamist terrorism in Addis Ababa and Nairobi now seems horribly likely.

Source: The Economist

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