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Somalia Takes a Turn for the Worse
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Apr 25, 2008 09:05am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Thursday, April 24, 2008 03:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By NICK WADHAMS/NAIROBI
Thursday, Apr. 24, 2008
Even by the standards of Somalia, a country gripped by chaos for 17 years, it has been a horrible couple of weeks. First came the killings of two British Somali teachers and their Kenyan colleagues, all said to have been shot in the head. Then pirates waylaid a French yacht traversing the country's territorial waters. And now, renewed fighting in Mogadishu has killed at least 100 people and driven thousands more to join the country's swelling refugee population — already estimated at more than 1.5 million. Meanwhile, aid groups have found themselves targets in the fighting across the country, from the north, where foreign reporters and volunteers have been held for ransom by gangs, to the south, where they've been executed to show the low regard their Islamist captors have for the West.
What's going on? No doubt some of the violence can be blamed on the general chaos that has gripped Somalia in the 17 years since it last had a functioning government, the dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre. But there are also fears that recent fighting, and especially the latest in Mogadishu, are signs that Somalia is entering its bleakest chapter yet.
A brief lull followed the invasion by Ethiopian troops on Christmas Eve, 2006 (at the "invitation" of the feeble U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government, or TFG), but recent months have seen a comeback by the radical Islamic groups that had asserted control over parts of the shattered country. Reports from the region suggest that the fundamentalist fighters will capture a town in a lightning raid and then retreat, more to show off their muscle than anything else. According to witnesses, the fighters behind these raids belong to the al-Shabab, a band of mostly young men who adhere to Taliban-style Islamic codes. |
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