You probably aren't reading about this unpleasantness in the Town Talk, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
A little country called Somalia has been unstable (truly, really unstable) since the overthrow of the last tin-pot dictator a few years back. The jihadis, in the form of something called the Islamic Courts moved in and set up shop. The Ethiopian government decided that having radical Islamists on their border was a bad thing, so the Ethiop Army decided to run the bastards out of the country. They started on Christmas Eve and the job is just about completed. The remnants of the Islamic Courts are trying to cross the border into Kenya.
I am also told that US NCOs have been training the Ethiopian army for the past couple of years and that most of the tactics used in this latest exercise were learned from American sergeants.
Bill Roggio is covering all of this at The Fourth Rail. Start here for the Dec 24th posting. Or just go to his main page and scroll down to see them all.
The Ethiopians have given the Islamic Courts a serious ass-kicking. I'm told that US Special Forces troops have joined the pursuit, looking for a couple of particularly nasty folks we'd like to incarcerate.
This is a major smack-down for the Islamists and something you won't read in the morning rag.
A little country called Somalia has been unstable (truly, really unstable) since the overthrow of the last tin-pot dictator a few years back
ReplyDeleteThat little country just happened to have the best connectivity to the tubes of Internet and cheapest cellular calling network in all of Africa, so obviously something was going right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Telecommunications
The jihadis, in the form of something called the Islamic Courts moved in and set up shop.
Yea, well we called them “warlords” a few years ago. They were Islamic people who aligned along tribal groups for mutual support in the absence of a national government.
The Ethiopian government decided that having radical Islamists on their border was a bad thing,
Yea, they are Islamic, and they hate the US, so I suppose they are just going to align themselves with any other Islamic group that hates the US too. ”The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
so the Ethiop Army decided to run the bastards out of the country.
With a little help from the US, I see. I'm willing to bet that they didn't have the logistics to do an invasion until we came along and helped, seeing as Ethiopian's tangles with Somalia go way back.
But I suppose our little police action^H^H^H^H^H I mean attempt to feed the hungry that turned into a nation building exercise didn't really work out, and since no one's going to believe anything about movable rail-car factories that grow anthrax WMDs, I suppose we had to find another way. Thus the military aid to Ethiopia.
I suppose the only question now is whether we install a brutal dictator (like Ferdinand Marcos), that we then negotiate for access to the likely oil reserves and a military base so we can have a presence in the Gulf of Aden, or we try the “transplant democracy” route. Regardless, it seems that Ethiopia is a landlocked nation, so I'm guessing that they want at least a port outta the whole deal.
Regardless, It's not like I'm automatically against the war. Heck, if we weren't there mucking around, trying to make friends and influence nations, I'm sure that China would be there instead, (go google how China has been involved in the genocide in Sudan, which is right next door to Ethiopia).
My primary concern is (always) the freedom of the citizens of the nation that we are currently toying with. Let's hope it all works out for the best.