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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
The Islamists were the one hope for Somalia
By Martin Fletcher
01/10/07 "Times" -- -- My colleague Rosemary Righter wrote last
week that the defeat of Somalia’s Islamic courts by Ethiopian forces was
the “first piece of potentially good news in two devastating decades”.
As one of the few journalists who has visited Mogadishu recently, I beg
to differ. The good news came in June. That is when the courts routed
the warlords who had turned Somalia into the world’s most anarchic state
during a 15-year civil war that left a million dead.
I am no apologist for the courts. Their leadership included extremists
with dangerous intentions and connections. But for six months they
achieved the near-impossible feat of restoring order to a country that
appeared ungovernable.
This was not done by “suppressing, with draconian punishments, what
remained of personal freedoms” — unless you count banning guns and the
narcotic qat, which rendered half Somalia’s menfolk senseless. The
courts were less repressive than our Saudi Arabian friends. They
publicly executed two murderers (a fraction of the 24 executions in
Texas last year), and discouraged Western dancing, music and films, but
at least people could walk the streets without being robbed or killed.
That trumps most other considerations. Ask any Iraqi.
The Islamists have now been replaced — with Washington’s connivance — by
a weak, fragile Government that was created long before the courts won
power, that includes the very warlords they defeated and relies for
survival on Somalia’s worst enemy.
For the sake of the long-suffering Somali people I hope it can impose
its authority. But Washington has taken a big gamble, and nobody should
be surprised if the warlords are soon plundering Somalia again or the
Islamists are waging guerrilla war.
The Government’s appeal for Somalis to hand in their vast arsenal of
guns has flopped. The courts’ militiamen have mostly melted back into
the population, much as Saddam’s army did after the US invasion of Iraq.
Mogadishu’s powerful Hawiye clan regards with deep suspicion a
Government led by a Darod, President Abdullahi Yusuf. An African Union
peacekeeping force is far off and Somalis will not tolerate the presence
of troops from (“Christian”) Ethiopia for long.
Washington backed military intervention by Ethiopia’s unsavoury regime
because it regarded the courts as a new Taleban, and accused them of
harbouring al-Qaeda terrorists. It would surely have done better to try
engaging the courts.
The US has a record of confronting Islamic movements. It backed Israel’s
disastrous war against Hezbollah last summer. It never accepted the
Palestinians’ election of a Hamas Government. It cold-shouldered Iran
even when the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was President. In
each case it succeeded only in boosting the extremists.
source:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,30309-2530242,00.html
===
-muslim voice-
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