US In Somalia

According to this International Herald Tribune column, the US military is supporting an "illegal" Ethiopian "war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country." Somalia, on the eastern coast of Africa, forms a barrier between Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean.

 

Britain withdrew from the area in 1960 and chaos/war ensued, according to the CIA Factbook. A UN led a humanitarian effort (1993-95), primarily in the south, was not successful in ending the conflict.

The CIA Factbook reports that the Government of Kenya led a two-year peace process that resulted, in 2004, in "the election of Abdullahi YUSUF Ahmed as Transitional Federal President of Somalia and the formation of a transitional government, known as the Somalia Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs)." This government has a five-year mandate. However, "[s]uspicion of Somali links with global terrorism further complicates the picture."

The IHT writer has a different perspective on the provisional government:

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch-enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Ogadenis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.

The UN Security Council -- at the urging of Britain and the US -- has authorized a "peacekeeping" force that is supporting the provisional government, which is fighting Islamic leadership.

As with Iraq, the IHT critic sees oil as a central issue:

As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

Egyptian leadership has similar fears about the Horn of Africa:

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit on Monday warns that the war in Somalia could escalate into a full-blown regional conflict and could threaten the future of the Horn of Africa.

The US doesn't have extra military -- personnel or equipment -- for additional foreign entanglements, UN-supported or not. And Americans remain ill-informed about their government's actions, with home-grown media far more concerned with fomenting false crises (the oath of office conflict, hand-wringing over Senate control) than providing context about world events.