Somalia, a country of nearly 11 million in the Horn of Africa, faces a legacy of extreme underdevelopment perpetuated by imperialist domination. Until independence in 1960, the country was divided by the British and Italian colonial rulers, who fostered clan and ethnic divisions to maintain their control. In the late 1970s the government of President Mohammed Siad Barre, previously Soviet-backed, became a U.S. ally. Washington encouraged Siad Barre to invade Ethiopia in order to weaken the unfolding Ethiopian revolution. With help from Cuban volunteer troops, however, the imperialist-backed invasion was defeated.

Since 1991, when the Siad Barre regime collapsed, there has been little central governmental authority in Somalia as warring factions have vied for power. The northwest region (previously British Somaliland) broke away and declared itself the Republic of Somaliland. In 1993-94 U.S. troops invaded Somalia but ended in failure, hated by the Somali people. In 2004 the main factions and capitalist politicians signed an agreement to set up a new, interim parliament, which appointed Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed president.

Since then the Union of Islamic Courts has launched a struggle against the interim government that was set up by the long-warring clan bosses. According to a July 11 report by the British Broadcasting Corp., it was organized as “a network of 11 Islamic courts…funded by businessmen who preferred any semblance of law and order to complete anarchy.” The organization’s stated goal is to restore a system of sharia (Islamic) law and end the factional and clan warfare. “As a grassroots movement they have become increasingly popular among city residents and the business community desperate to see an end to the rule of the gun,” the BBC reported. The forces of the Union of Islamic Courts now control large parts of the south, including Mogadishu, while interim president Yusuf’s forces control relatively little territory and have retreated to their base in Baidoa.

In response, U.S. government officials have asserted that the Islamist forces will turn Somalia into a base for al-Qaeda. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last month, “We don’t want to see Somalia turn into a safe haven for foreign terrorists,” the Investor’s Business Daily reported July 20.

The paper’s editors stated, “Al-Qaida, which used Somalia as a base in the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, continues to operate there. A friendly government would guarantee an expansion of al-Qaida’s activities in Africa.” Union of Islamic Courts leaders have denied these allegations.

The fighting in Somalia has also heightened longstanding regional conflicts, including those between the Ethiopian and Somalian governments and between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which won its independence from Ethiopia in 1991.

The Ethiopian government, which previously sent troops into Somalia in 1993 and 1996 to oppose Islamist forces there, has threatened to invade again to defeat the Union of Islamic Courts forces, which have been advancing toward Baidoa. “Ethiopian soldiers have poured over the border to defend the government,” the Reuters news agency reported July 21.

The news dispatch said that, as part of trying to pressure the rulers of Ethiopia, the Eritrean government is “continuing to supply weapons, funds, and personnel” to the insurgents in Somalia.

Both the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments denied any presence in Somalia.

Nonetheless, “Residents of Baidoa reported seeing hundreds of Ethiopian troops, in uniform and in marked armored vehicles, entering Baidoa” July 20, according to the Associated Press.

An editorial in the July 24 Investor’s Business Daily said that Somalia’s “transitional government sought troops from Ethiopia to deter Islamist militia encircling the provisional capital, Baidoa. Ethiopia sent hundreds of armored carriers 100 miles into Somalia.”

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, a central leader of the Union of Islamic Courts, has reportedly called on the group’s supporters to get ready for waging a “holy war” against Ethiopia’s government. “We must defend our sovereignty,” he said, according to the July 22 New York Times.

AP reported that “demonstrators in Mogadishu shouted anti-Ethiopian and anti-U.S. slogans as they marched in the capital” in an Islamist-organized protest.Commenting on the Ethiopian intervention, U.S. assistant secretary of state Jendayi Frazer said July 21, “We have told them not to get drawn into this provocation.”

On July 24 a group of Somali legislators asked that Ethiopian troops leave their country, an admission by government officials of the military incursion, Reuters reported.  
 
 
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