Radicals Gain Edge In Somali Capital

The Washington Post has a good article summarizing the recent events in Somalia.

On June 5, Mogadishu fell to Islamic militias affiliated with neighborhood religious courts and backed by a moderate coalition of businessmen, civil society activists and elders from the city's leading families. Ousted was a group of secular and widely hated warlords who benefited from U.S. financial support in exchange for capturing suspected terrorists.

Many people in Mogadishu cheered the change, because the Islamic militias provided the first semblance of a government since 1991.

Street crime plummeted. Shops stayed open past dark for the first time in years. Many residents said they welcomed the idea of sharia , or religious law, in a society where Islam has traditionally been practiced moderately. Few women wear veils in Mogadishu, and schools have typically mixed girls and boys in the same classes.

This fact about veils and mixed schools is going to be the rub between Somalis and Islamists.

While Somalis welcomed Islamists since they brought law and order to Somalia for the first time since 1991, they will soon see that Islamists have more in store for them. Islamic law is not only tolerated but welcomed when rapists will be stoned to death. Heck, I wish we would do the same thing in the United States with rapists. However, once Somalis see they cannot educate their females and these same females will soon get stoned to death for being raped, Somalis, just like Afghanistanis, will realize their mistake.

Somalis will in the short term approve of Islamist. They will clean up their country from the several evil warlords. In the near term, Somalis will provide tacit approval for Islamist out of fear for their lives. In the longer term, they will seek to slowly but surely undermine Islamists rulers.

I for one welcome the Islamists into Somalia. It will help cleanse that country of evil warlords. With all these separate factions gone, it will be easier in the future to deal with one great evil than several smaller evils.

I also welcome the African Union stepping up to the plate to send peacekeeping troops even if it is just a facade to allow Ethiopia a pretext to invade Somalia. Ethiopia has a mainly secular government and is not about to succumb to Islamic extremeism.

For now, the African Union should allow the Islamists to clean house in Somalia. It definitely needs a cleaning. Timed right, the African Union could use the uneasiness of Somalis against Islamists to launch a successful peacekeeping mission just as the Islamist have rid the country of evil warlords and prior to consolidating power.