Ainashe.net

The Los Angeles Times says writes:

Somalia’s Islamist movement distanced itself from Osama bin Laden’s view that deployment of foreign troops to the Horn of Africa country would be part of a crusade to crush Islamic rule. “Osama bin Laden is expressing his views like any other international figure. We are not concerned about it,” said Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, former leader of the Islamist group. An audio recording by Bin Laden on Saturday warned the United States and other countries against sending troops to Somalia. It also praised Al Qaeda’s new leader in Iraq. The CIA said a technical analysis confirmed that the speaker was Bin Laden.

If true, it is a wise move by Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union.

Click here for the full dispatch on the LA Times. Please note that the LA Times requires free registration for access.

The BBC News reports:

A two-member United Nations security team has arrived in the Somali capital to hold talks with Islamist leaders. It is the UN’s first contact with Mogadishu’s new rulers since they took over from the warlords a month ago. Earlier one of the defeated warlords surrendered, with some 100 fighters and nine armed pick-up trucks. Omar Finish was one of the key members of the defeated warlord alliance and had been holed up in north Mogadishu, after his comrades had fled the city. “The team wants to check security in the capital before UN agencies can resume their work here,” Abdirahim Isse, a close aide to senior Islamic leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, told Reuters news agency.

Click here to view the full dispatch by the BBC News.

Justin Raimondo of the Anti-War.com has an interested piece on “How we (Americans) messed up Somalia – and paved the way for Islamist domination.” The article has lots of links to references for further reading.

It is a good read..

Click here to view the full article on the Anti-War.Com.

Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, the current chairman of the pan-African body, told a news conference today:

We have decided that the African Union, together with regional groups like IGAD, should take the situation in Somalia in hand.

President Denis Sassou Nguesso went on by saying:

The African Union will give all its support to the interim government, and we invite the international community to join us in supporting them, while favoring internal dialogue in Somalia.

This is, without a doubt, a grave political mistake by an organization run by dictators and oppressors which could have serious security repercussions for Somalia and for its neighbors. Indeed it could inflict damage to the political and security stability of the entire region and to a lesser degree the world as a whole.

Somalia does not need any foreign troops at the moment. The internal political conflict must be resolved by Somalis before armed foreigners can be invited into the country. As Tim Craig of the Washington Post newspaper reported today (see below) the misguided American military involvement in Somalia drastically altered the political landscape in the country-for the worse. A hasty and poorly thought plan to deploy foreign troops into Somalia as peace-keepers will most probably make things much worse. The political fire in Somali does not need more gasoline! Foreign troops must stay out for the moment!

It goes without saying that the fact that the AU will support the TFG is a step in the right direction.

You can click here to view a note I wrote about few days ago

Craig Timberg of the Washington Post writes:

The land was little more than a patch of scrub outside the city. But this being Somalia — lawless, fractured and armed to the teeth — it was a patch of scrub that two of the country’s most powerful families were prepared to fight over. The fighting, which began Jan. 13, quickly took on wider significance because of the presence, at an airstrip just three miles away, of a small team of U.S. intelligence officials, according to Somalis knowledgeable about the events of that day. The Americans were in Somalia because of concerns about terrorism, not land. But when the gunfire rang out, the sources said, the U.S. officials wrongly concluded that they were under attack by Islamic terrorists and abruptly fled. It was a provocation, U.S. officials later told Somalis, that demanded a muscular response. In the weeks that followed this little-known incident, which U.S. officials have refused to confirm or deny, the United States expanded its role in Somalia to levels not seen since it abandoned the country in 1994. The Americans helped organize a group of secular warlords into an “anti-terror coalition” and provided them with a large, steady diet of cash.

This is a very interesting revelation! It seems to me that the Bush administration is making things worse wherever they go. Now we have the Islamic Courts ruling Somalia, thanks to Bush’s misguided foreign policy initiatives.

Click here to view full article. Please note that the Post requires free registration for access.

How much injustice and brutality is carried out in reaction to irrational internal fears? Still, it’s only the most insightful educators or counselors that appreciate this dynamic even on an elementary school playground. Try applying the principle to our adult world, where everyone thinks white men in authority are little less than gods, when in fact they are grown up children who’ve perfected, relatively, the technique of deflection. They deflect their own insecurities by pointing angry fingers at any weakness they can find in others.

Nicholas F. Benton of the Falls Church News Press.

Alisha Ryu of the Voice of America Radio sent following dispatch from Baydhabo.

Residents here received a flood of phone calls Sunday morning from anxious friends and family in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, asking if Ethiopian troops had really arrived in Baidoa. Residents in both cities say they have heard media reports that at least six large Ethiopian military trucks, carrying troops, entered Baidoa late Saturday night. Somalia’s interim Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Geedi, told VOA, the reports are not true. “There are no foreign troops in Somalia, and in Baidoa, as well,” said Ali Mohammed Geedi. “There are no Ethiopian troops in Somalia and Baidoa. These rumors are originating from opportunists, who are trying to create a clash between Somalia and our neighbors.” Two weeks ago, the Islamist leadership that has taken control of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, accused Ethiopia of sending several hundred troops into Somalia in order to prop up the internationally recognized, but weak interim government. Militias loyal to the Islamist leaders in Mogadishu now control a large area of southern Somalia.

To put it politely, I think, Cali Geedi is making misleading statement at best!

Click here to view the full dispatch

The Online Monster and Critics reports:

A decision whether to approve a peacekeeping force for Somalia still looms as African leaders prepare for the second and last day of the annual African Union summit in the Gambian capital Banjul. It was not immediately clear if a purported recording of Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden warning against deployment of foreign troops to Somalia would be discussed. The recording warns Somalis against negotiations with the weak transitional authority. Hardline Islamists, thought by the United States of having links to bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network, currently control most of southern Somalia.

Click here to view the full article.

The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions…. Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world.

J. M. Keynes