Holiday Roundup
As you may have noticed, I spent the holiday’s blog free. Therefore, I will now brief some of the main stories that I missed from both the media and blogs. In the likely case that I’ve missed something, please leave a comment. (note: I’m saving a separate post on Saddam Hussein’s hanging for later.)
The Somali War
As mentioned before, the horn of Africa has seen renewed fighting between the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) and the weak Transitional National Government (TNG). Before the TNG was only aided by neighboring Ethiopia. More recently, Ethiopia has increased it’s operations to include air attacks on UIC targets such as UIC controlled towns and villages and the main airports in Somalia.
MENA Blog Roundup (12/20/2006)
The bloggers at Foreign Policy’s passport highlight a different take on the recent elections in Iran.
Friday’s elections for Iran’s local councils and Assembly of Experts were widely reported as a “setback” for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they were. But a more appropriate way to view them, says blogger Jonathan Edelstein, is as a crisis averted for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
As Edelstein, a lawyer in New York with a knack for analyzing Middle East politics, explains, Ahmadinejad’s faction was hoping to take control of the Assembly in order to install Ayatollah Mohammed Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi as the new Supreme Leader. With Yazdi in charge, Ahmadinejad would be free from the shackles Khamenei has placed on him in the realm of foreign policy.
The passport also points out this (via Bloomberg)
In the Tehran municipal election the president’s sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, who is running on a list titled “the Pleasant Scent of Service,” ranks 11th from 15th candidates, state television said. She could fail to win a seat.
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Marc Lynch of Abu Aardvark looks at a new, post Baker-Hamilton study released by the International Crisis Group entitled “After Baker-Hamilton: What to do in Iraq“.
After the disappointing showing of the Iraq Study Group, the ICG makes for bracing reading – and offers a much more serious attempt to find some kind of solution. It eviscerates Washington fantasies in ways far deeper than Baker-Hamilton’s simple admission that things aren’t going well, by going straight to the heart of the political structures which have emerged from the American occupation.
The Fighting Begins in Somalia
A deadline imposed by Islamic forces under the command of the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) demanding the eviction of Ethiopian forces from Somali passed Tuesday. The “heavy fighting” was reported in and around the Transitional National Government (TNG) bases in Baidoa.
(BBC)
All Out War in the Horn of Africa Gets Closer
War will break out “any time now“, says Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf of the Transitional National Government (TNG). Players in the pending conflict are the Islamic forces of the Council of Islamic Courts against the TNG and ethopian forces (who are said to already be in Somalia). The US government is backing the TNG and Ethopia. Yosuf claimed “Al-Qaeda is opening up shop in Somalia” through the Council of Islamic Courts in a statement that coincides with a recent comment made by a US diplomat. The validity of this statement is questionable but I personally tend to agree.
Bill Roggio has much more on the possible relationship between Somali Islamists and al Qaeda…
Somalia and Ethopia Prepare to Face-off
Add this ominous and highly likely scenario to Sudan and Darfur and the Horn of Africa becomes one of the most unstable places on Earth. The combination of Islamists, failed states, oppression, and anti-Americanism and you get a volatile combination that has the potential to spawn regional and international conflict and possible terrorism.
The inevitability of war hangs over Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked seaside capital. But unlike the internal anarchy that has consumed the country for 15 years, the looming battle is now with Ethiopia, threatening to further destabilize the troubled Horn of Africa.
In the past week the increasingly militant Islamists in control of Mogadishu and much of the rest of the country have begun a food drive, a money drive and an AK-47 assault rifle drive, and have sent doctors and nurses, along with countless young soldiers, to the front lines.
For its part, Ethiopia, with tacit approval from the United States, has been steadily slipping soldiers across the border, trying to hold off the Islamists and shore up Somalia’s weak, unpopular and divided transitional government.
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