In the October 30th issue of The Weekly Standard, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Counterterrorsim Blog and I have an article on the rise of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. The article is reprinted in full below.
The frightening advance of Islamists in Somalia.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Bill Roggio
10/30/2006, Volume 012, Issue 07
|
|
|
Islamic Court Militia cheers during the handing over of weapons by the rivall militia in Mogadishu, Thursday, July 13, 2006. (AP Photo / Mohamed Sheikh Nor.) Click image to view. |
WHEN FIGHTERS from the radical Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, in early June, the Western world briefly noticed. Analysts and talking heads were concerned that the country could become a terrorist haven. Then the media largely lost interest, though the situation remains dire. The ICU is on the verge of winning an even bigger strategic victory, and its links to international terrorism have become impossible to deny.
After Mogadishu fell, Somalia’s beleaguered transitional government holed up in the south-central city of Baidoa and watched as the ICU won a rapid series of strategic gains. It took control of critical port cities–most recently, Kismayo, captured on September 25–that give it access to the Indian Ocean. The ICU’s advances have met with little resistance, as typified by the capture of the town of Beletuein on August 9. The governor, escorted by a couple of “technicals”–pickup trucks mounted with machine guns–fled to Ethiopia shortly after fighting broke out between his forces and ICU militiamen.
Now, in late October, the ICU controls most of the country’s key strategic points. It can move supplies from south to north, and ICU troops effectively encircle Baidoa. In the past month, the ICU has begun to make overt moves against the transitional federal government. The most dramatic came on September 18, when the presidential convoy faced a multi-pronged suicide car bombing attack just minutes after President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed delivered a speech to the transitional parliament. Six government officials died in what was the first suicide strike in Somalia’s history. There were further casualties in an ensuing gun battle, but President Ahmed escaped unscathed.
That attack occurred against the backdrop of ICU-inspired protests in Baidoa. The ICU used local supporters to organize demonstrations against the transitional government, forcing government police to disperse a crowd with gunfire.
The bottom line is that Baidoa is a city under siege, as evidenced by a stream of defections from the transitional government’s military to the more powerful ICU. Over 100 government fighters stationed near Baidoa have defected. All that prevents the transitional government’s destruction is the presence of some Ethiopian soldiers. Early this month, witnesses saw at least thirty Ethiopian armored vehicles pass through Baidoa en route to military barracks about twenty kilometers east of the city, and these troops have set up roadblocks in an effort to protect the transitional government.
Intelligence sources, however, doubt the Ethiopian forces can prevent Baidoa from falling. Some believe that the main reason the ICU hasn’t yet mounted a full assault is a desire to prevent the transitional government from escaping to Ethiopia or another sympathetic country and becoming a permanent thorn in the ICU’s side: The radicals would like to see all major figures in the transitional government killed or captured.
The primary reason Westerners should care about these developments is the ICU’s increasingly clear support for international terrorism. Longtime al Qaeda ally Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has been appointed head of the ICU’s consultative shura council. The United States named Aweys a specially designated global terrorist in November 2001. He is one of three individuals believed responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania who are currently sheltered by the ICU. Aweys’s prot
