Meanwhile, the I.C.C. has been consolidating power, and a faction allied with Al Qaeda and seeking to impose sharia law on the Somali people, who are unlikely to accept it.
Clearly what the US does next may turn the tide.
PINR
Since June 5, when the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.) -- now institutionalized and renamed the Islamic Courts Council (I.C.C) -- took control of Somalia's official capital Mogadishu, routing a rival alliance of Washington-backed warlords, the country has been in an incipient revolutionary situation.
The revolutionary character of Somalia's politics became evident when the hard-line Islamist faction of the I.C.C. led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on Washington's list of al-Qaeda supporters, gained ascendancy over the moderate group headed by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on June 25. Whereas Ahmed had said that the I.C.U. was not interested in imposing an Islamist social model on Somalia and was only concerned with bringing peace and order to the country, Aweys insisted that the new I.C.C. would not be satisfied with anything less than a state governed by Shari'a law.
The rise of the I.C.C. changed the balance of power in Somalia's stateless society decisively, throwing the internationally supported but increasingly impotent Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), based in the town of Baidoa, on the defensive. As the I.C.C. swept through most of Somalia's south and consolidated its gains, the T.F.G. desperately pleaded for support from international and regional organizations in the form of a peacekeeping mission, and was met with a tepid response. Alarmed by the possibility of a hostile Islamist state on its border, Ethiopia sent troops into areas of Somalia as yet outside I.C.C. control and reportedly deployed troops and armored vehicles in Baidoa to protect the T.F.G.
[...]Although most Western analysts have predicted that rifts between the hard-liners and moderates in the I.C.C. would surface, that traditional clan rivalries would hamstring the I.C.C. and that Somalia's generally moderate Muslim population would resist the imposition of Shari'a law, none of those projection has yet to materialize.
[...]Distrustful of Ethiopian intentions in Somalia, the Arab bloc now appears to have taken sides, bolstering the I.C.C.'s position and rendering the efforts of international organizations, the A.U. and Western powers to spur a power-sharing agreement problematic.
[...]Ousted warlord and ex-governor of Somalia's Middle Shabelle region Mohammad Dheere was reportedly shuttling between Addis Ababa and Baidoa in an effort to revive the warlords' alliance and unite it with the T.F.G. under Ethiopia's military and financial support. Warlords Botan Ise Alin and Abdi Nur Siyed reportedly crossed from Somalia into Ethiopia.
The T.F.G. executive's dependence on Ethiopia, which fought a war with Somalia in 1977 and is a prime target of Somali nationalist sentiment, and its collusion with discredited warlords indicates its desperate position. It no longer appears that the T.F.G. is coherent and credible enough to be a negotiating partner in a reconciliation process -- despite the promise of a "joint committee" to meet with the I.C.C. -- leaving the A.U., U.N., and the U.S. and European powers that are working within the Washington-inspired Contact Group (C.G.) with the major pillar of their policy of containing and moderating the I.C.C. shattered. The stage is set for a possible confrontation between Addis Ababa and the I.C.C. amidst the wreckage of the T.F.G.
[...]With the exception of Ethiopia, which has actively supported Yusuf's faction in the T.F.G., and Eritrea, which has a simmering border conflict with Ethiopia and has backed the I.C.C., the other external actors with interests in Somalia have proven unable to adapt to the rise of the Courts and the collapse of the T.F.G. with coherent and decisive strategies, and have remained at least one step behind events on the ground.
Divided within themselves by member states that have taken sides in past internal Somali conflicts, the A.U., and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.), a regional grouping of Somalia and its neighbors, have given formal support to the T.F.G. and have promised to provide troops for a peacekeeping mission if an exemption is made to the arms embargo by the U.N. Security Council. Their support for the T.F.G., however, has not run deep and their effectiveness is dependent on diplomatic and financial backing from Western powers, which have also given formal support to the T.F.G., but have been unwilling to empower it.
The United States, which backed the defeated warlords in an effort to capture al-Qaeda operatives whom it believes are being sheltered by the Islamists, has drawn back and now appears to have decided to work with international and regional organizations and not to follow its former Ethiopian partner on the path of confrontation. Interested European powers, especially Great Britain and Italy -- the former colonial rulers of Somalia -- have done the same, as has the United Nations.
The result of the convergence of the preponderance of external players has not been a firm and resolute consensus, but a tentative and compromised approach that has deprived them of any control over the evolving revolutionary situation in Somalia.
During the week of July 9, an A.U.-I.G.A.D.-European "fact-finding mission" visited Somalia in an effort to determine the feasibility of deploying peacekeepers, and met with pleas for immediate deployment from the T.F.G. executive and outright rejection from the I.C.C., which threatened publicly to wage war against any foreign force. Nonetheless, when the mission released its report on July 10, it expressed "optimism" that the I.C.C. and T.F.G. would be "willing to dialogue."
[...]Analysts tend to underestimate the advantage that ascending revolutionary movements derive from their adherents' sense of advancing toward more successes, the solidarity generated by that sense and the appeal that it has for a dispossessed public. The I.C.C. has internal divisions and external foes, one of which -- Ethiopia, especially if it gained Washington's blessing -- can pose a serious threat to the realization of its aims. Yet the I.C.C.'s weaknesses do not seem to have retarded its forward march. MORE
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