A Viable Government in Somalia?

Could it be that the Islamists in Somalia were a paper tiger? The New York Times would have us believe that. They also talk about thousands of Somali government troops? I suspect it's the government of Somalia that is the paper tiger and this is just another chapter in the chaos that is Somalia the failed state.

In a matter of five days, the internationally recognized government, a fledging authority that had been so weak it was marooned in a provincial market town, captured the formidable capital and most of Somalia — with more than a little help from Ethiopia.


The Islamists, whom many Western nations had considered a grave and growing regional threat with terrorist connections, were vanquished faster than anyone had expected, or at least removed from power.


[..]On Thursday morning, before most of the troops arrived, the city exploded in anarchy as armed bandits rushed into the streets and fragmented militia units began to fight each other for the spoils of war.


Witnesses said that an intense gun battle raged around a former Islamist ammunition dump, and that clan warlords instantly reverted to setting up roadside checkpoints and shaking down motorists, reminiscent of the years of chaos before the Islamists pacified the city in June.


By Wednesday, the Islamist military had been decimated by Ethiopian airstrikes and mass desertions. Clan elders, traditionally the pillars of Somali society, pulled their troops and firepower out of the Union of Islamic Courts, or U.I.C., after a string of back-to-back military loses in which more than 1,000 fighters, mostly teenage boys, were quickly mowed down by the better-trained and equipped Ethiopian-backed forces.


“Our children were getting annihilated,” said Abdi Hulow, an elder with the powerful Hawiye clan. “We couldn’t sustain it.”


By Thursday, government officials said, many of the Islamist leaders had fled into the thickly forested areas to the south, where the government plans to hunt them down. But there were also worries that the Islamists would wage guerrilla warfare, as they have threatened.


“The U.I.C. may have decided not to fight the Ethiopians and their allies this time around,” said Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist for Congressional Research Service. But he added: “This does not mean the U.I.C. is finished. The U.I.C. fighters simply changed their uniform to a civilian cloth.”


Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, an Islamist leader, said Thursday that his forces had surrendered Mogadishu to avoid a bloodbath. “We don’t want to see Mogadishu destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera television by telephone from an undisclosed location.


Mr. Hulow and other elders said they had asked transitional leaders for positions in the new government in exchange for support. Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister, told the elders that first he needed help in disarming the militias.


Mr. Gedi also gave a short news conference on the outskirts of Mogadishu in which he reached out to the Somali diaspora, saying: “We need your help. It’s time to come home.”


One group was noticeably absent from all these talks: conservative clerics, who seemed to have overplayed their cards. MORE

But Al Qaeda has always had an interest in Somalia and if they are advising, they will tell them to fall back as the Taliban did in Afghanistan, and prepare for guerrilla war. I don't think we've heard the last from the Islamic Courts.
It is interesting like in most parts of Africa, tribal elders hold the real power. The side they take has the upper hand.