How the US Made Somalia a Terrorist Haven

Coalition overthrown, country is now run by al-Qaeda allies
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 18, 2008 9:35 AM CST
How the US Made Somalia a Terrorist Haven
The Somali militia Al-Shabab during exercises at their military training camp outside Mogadishu. Islamic fighters now control most of southern and central Somalia.   (AP Photo, File)

Iraq and Afghanistan loom largest among the fiascos undertaken in the name of a "war on terror," Martin Fletcher writes in the Times of London, but there has been a third front in that offensive: Somalia. After 15 years of anarchy, the US helped destroy the country's first ever stable government, paving the way for "virulently anti-Western jihadists" who are now taking over. Fletcher calls it the "forgotten debacle" that has provided al-Qaeda with a new base.

Somalia knew peace briefly in 2006 under the so-called Islamic Courts movement, an imperfect but stable coalition. While the EU favored engagement, the US decided they were a new Taliban—and bankrolled the Ethiopian invasion that imposed a reviled government of former warlords. Now Somalia is controlled by the Shabab, a radical, woman-hating insurgency movement that openly praises al-Qaeda: "hardly a resounding triumph for the War on Terror."
(More Somalia stories.)

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