Driving across Mogadishu in a battle wagon full of machine-gun-toting, khat-chewing militiamen, crossing an area of inter-clan fighting involving mortar attacks in densely populated urban areas, we felt we were in a time warp. This could easily have been a decade ago, when 30,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed in Somalia, a country then and still without a permanent national government.
But things have indeed changed, and the way they have changed matters to U.S. national security. During the last decade, international Islamist groups, including Al-Qaeda, have invested with Somali partners, building a commercial empire in the country that rivals that of any other faction and which is increasingly asserting itself as a political and military force.
It is crucial not to paint every Islamist group as an inherent threat to Western interests or values. Islamic organizations of various stripes have been at the forefront of restoring education and health care, Sharia (Islamic law) courts have provided security in some areas, and sheikhs are prominent in reconciliation. But a small network of Islamist extremists in Somalia has helped facilitate the activities of Al-Qaeda in terrorist attacks over the years, namely against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on a tourist hotel on the Kenyan coast, a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli charter flight near Mombasa, and an unrealized plot to crash an airplane into the new U.S. embassy in Nairobi last year. The same extremists are preparing to unleash attacks on Somalia's new government, as well as African Union peacekeeping forces, when they eventually return to Mogadishu. |