The Fall of Islamist Somalia

Ethiopia very correctly recognized that the United Islamic Courts, the al Qaeda-backed Islamist movement that took control of Mogadishu and most of Somalia this past summer, represents a threat. So Ethiopia acted. And now Mogadishu has fallen to the Ethiopian and transitional Somali government forces.

Nine days after the onset of open warfare between the al-Qaeda backed Islamic Courts and the Ethiopian backed Transitional Federal Government, the Islamic Courts have surrendered. “After having crucial and urgent meeting tonight in the capital, the leaders of executive and Shura councils of Islamic Courts Union and deputy leader of executive council of ICU, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed and Sheik Abdirahman Janaqow resigned and issued a joint press statement over the current situation in Somalia particular in Mogadishu.”

There should be no allowance for any cease-fire talks until the Islamists are well and truly crushed. Keep the UN and the Arab League as far from this fight as possible until it’s truly finished. The Ethiopians and the transitional Somali government forces, fighting together against the Islamists in spite of a history of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, should not make the same mistake Israel and the US have made in Lebanon and Iraq and Afghanistan. They should win the fight outright and dictate terms to the surviving Islamists. Foreign fighters should either be imprisoned and tried for their crimes or, well, imprisoned and tried for their crimes. Anything less, and the Islamists will go to ground and come back with an insurgency in a few months or a year.

There’s a lesson in it for us and the rest of the West: Once you decide to fight, fight to win and don’t stop until you have. That’s not a military lesson, but a political one.
What we and the Israelis seem to lack right now, and which the Ethiopians apparently have, is the political will to win without worrying overmuch what the so-called internation community thinks. There is no Ethiopian equivalent of Joe Biden wagging a finger at the Ethiopian leadership over every little thing that isn’t perfect, and there is no Ethiopian equivalent of John Kerry comparing a days-old fight to Vietnam. And aren’t the Ethiopians lucky.

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