According to the Jerusalem Post, the next group of people we must be afraid of are inching closer to control of Somalia, whatever THAT means:
A hard-line Islamist militia known as Al-Shabab is capturing key areas throughout Somalia, but analysts differ over whether the group can actually take over the country.
Al-Shabab has become the focus of much Western media coverage recently for its use of Taliban-style justice, including stoning suspected adulterers and severing the limbs of thieves.
The Al-Shabab administration in Kismayo, around 500 kilometers south of the capital Mogadishu, began by clamping down on clothing, making men shave their moustaches, grow beards and wear pants no shorter than ankle length.
Okay, I’m trying to remember — didn’t, at some point a few years ago, a Somali Islamist group called the Islamic Courts Union (or something like that) manage to take control of enough of the country to constitute a government, only to be toppled by a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia, an occupation that became costly for the Ethiopians in terms of men and treasure (as occupations are wont to do)? There’s something that calls itself a government in Mogadishu, and it has international recognition, but it clearly has little legitimacy outside what’s left of the capital, especially if the Shabab are seizing and holding places.
Oh, but this will be yet another place to whine and fret about, to posture over, to lob the occasional missile at and send the occasional sojer to shoot and kill. So many places to wage war in, so little money or men.
5:42 pm on January 5, 2010
