Predictably,
Somalia's warlords prospered. But years of constant fighting and
unregulated economic activity have finally taken their toll. The
prolonged closure of Mogadishu's main port and airport, the languishing
banana trade, and a drop in the export of livestock have drained
resources. The warlords became financially weak and increasingly
vulnerable to the emerging power of the courts.
Whether the courts
will succeed in challenging the factional rule of the warlords will
depend largely on Somalia's businessmen, observers say. Exasperated by
the cost of lawlessness, business owners have thrown their financial
weight behind the courts, providing sufficient means for them to acquire
guns and set up their own militia.
Each of the five courts claims to
have between 200 and 250 gunmen and an unspecified number of
"technicals," pickup trucks with machine guns and grenade launchers
mounted on them, and armored personnel carriers.
The gunmen - who
dress in the same torn clothes as the previous warlords - patrol the
areas in which the courts operate. They round up thieves, rapists, and
murderers, and deliver them to the first detention centers set up in
Mogadishu since 1991.
The courts have won the loyalty of the gunmen
with the guarantee of two meals a day and 30,000 Somali shillings ($30) a
month. The businessmen pick up the tab.
"Without the businessmen,
the courts would not exist," says a Western observer. "The businessmen
don't care whether it's Islamic law or Napoleonic law or Common law. Any
law will do."
That, however, is not the way others see it. According
to a Middle Eastern Muslim diplomat in Mogadishu, a growing number of
Islamic countries and organizations - including Somalia's own homegrown
fundamentalist At-Ittihad al-Islam group - are contributing money in the
hope of seeing Somalia evolve into an Islamic state.
Somalia, though, has a history of ingratitude, as well as what appears to be a natural resistance to fundamentalism.
The
court's own interpretation of Islamic law is perhaps the most accurate
measure of the sort of innate religious moderation that has made it
difficult for fundamentalism to gain ground here. None of the five
courts has dared resort to amputation for fear of becoming unpopular.
There have been public executions of felons convicted of murder, 37 over
the past 14 months.
"We don't cut people's hands off because they don't like it," Sheikh Hassan says.
The
courts also have been careful to operate within the confines of
Somalia's clan structure, limiting their jurisdiction to members of the
clan. The court set up by the Murosade clan, for example, is unable to
prosecute members of the Suleiman or Ayr tribe, both notorious for their
violence, and both with newly instituted Islamic courts of their own.
"Very
simply, even though there is an Islamic component, the courts are
clan-based organizations which are imposing discipline among themselves"
says Mohamed Nur Gutale, Somalia's former ambassador to the US.
Analysts
say that if the courts succeed in taking over Mogadishu's main port and
airport as they have vowed to do, the era of the warlords will most
likely come to an end.
[author j janson: Fat chance in a world still
owned by the genocidal, amoral,criminally usurious speculative
investment banking conspiracy of the brutally barbaric, colonial, now
neo-colonial powers.
6
On February 23, 2007, the New York Times
reported that the US government had been secretly training Ethiopian
soldiers for several years, in camps near the Ethiopia-Somalia border.
Support for Ethiopia's invasion began after a failed CIA effort to arm
and finance Somali "warlords."
7
February 03, 2009, Hiraan Online,
Fishermen who fish on the Shore of the Indian Ocean near Mogadishu
complain UNISOM troops often fire on them.
8
click here" International
Crisis Group, "After more than 20 years of internal conflict, it is
perhaps remarkable that Somalia has a government at all, even a weak
one. The current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of President
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is the fourteenth attempt to create a government
after the fall of President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, and it spent
its first three years operating in the neighboring country of Kenya.
When the TFG finally finally moved to Mogadishu in 2007, following
several defeats of a fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union, it did little
to impress Somalis or foreign diplomats. Friendly diplomats and even
government supporters call the TFG "corrupt."
9
The
Taliban (in Pashto language a' Ä libÄ n = "students"), fundamentalist youth group
rose to save Afghanistan from the murderous chaos of US backed waring
factions after the Soviet withdrawal and defeat of the Socialist women
liberating Kabul government two years later. Taliban had formed a
government, ruling as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from September
1996 until December 2001, with Kandahar as the capital. It
gained diplomatic recognition from Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed Omar has been serving as
the spiritual leader of the Taliban since 1994.[
10
According to
the National Counterterrorism Center, the outfit's rank-and-file members
hail from disparate local groups, sometimes recruited by force.[24]
Unlike most of the organization's top leaders, its foot soldiers are
primarily concerned with nationalist and clan-related affairs as opposed
to the global jihad. Schaefer,, Ahren; Andrew Black. "Clan and Conflict
in Somalia: Al-Shabaab and the Myth of "Transcending Clan Politics""].
Jamestown Foundation.
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