The Making of Another Iraq Abukar Arman January 3, 2007 Foreign Policy In Focus
A new front in the “global war on terror” has emerged with its center in war-torn Somalia. The target of the new front, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), both brought back normalcy to seemingly untamable southern Somalia and anxiously legislated morality to the point of social suffocation. According to the U.S. State Department, its greatest sin was its purported link to al-Qaida.
The military action to crush these “Islamic extremists” is already underway. Washington-supported Ethiopian troops carried out a preemptive attack against Somalia at the end of December. Ethiopian tanks roared all the way to the capital Mogadishu and then on to Kismayo near the Kenyan border. The invasion proved easier than expected. The comparatively more powerful Ethiopian army teamed up with a militia loyal to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to achieve their objective of regime change with an ease ominously reminiscent of the entry into Baghdad of the “coalition of the willing.”
