Why haven’t we been talking about this:

Somali Government forces enter Mogadishu

I don't know how many of you have been keeping tabs on this, but the Ethiopian people and central government have been backing the official Somali government's war against the Council of Islamic Courts for the past few weeks. The Ethiopian assistance combined with the nationalist forces of the Somali government broke out of their base at Baidoa after the SICC moved against them earlier this month. The aggressive move by the SICC forced Ethiopia to declare open alliance with the central government and declare war on the SICC. Since the break out, Ethiopian and government forces have pushed the SICC out of their stronghold of Mogadishu and most of the SICC local forces have formally surrendered their uniforms and weapons to the coalition forces. While some residents of Mogadishu rallied to the liberating troops bearing flowers and praise for their rescue, others who supported the relative peace brought by the SICC hid amidst fears of wide spread looting and the return of the infamous war-lord fighting that has cause the city to exist as a permanent battleground for over the past decade. Ethiopia has pledged to keep troops stationed in Mogadishu along-side the Central Government forces and pro-government militias to keep the infighting from starting up again. This is the 14th attempt of a central government to re-take the entirety of the country from the hands of warlords or opposing factions since the ousting of Somalia's previous dictatorship in 1991. The SICC leadership declared that they were making a tactical move by withdrawing from Mogadishu in order to avoid getting bogged down in street-to-street fighting much like the US troops did during their attempt to capture Mohammad Farra Aidid, the controlling war-lord of Somalia at the time.

The claim of a tactical withdraw, however, seems thin as the only open route via land to the SICC forces is south to Kenya which is pro-western, anti-ethnic Somali, and pro-Christian in it's orientation. Aid for the SICC has also been effectively cut as it's closest supporting nation, Eritrea, lies due north of Somalia on the other side of war-torn Djibouti. Yemen, the closest non-African center of Islam and Arab-speaking peoples is also opposed to any opposition fighters or refugees even entering their waters.

Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Somali Central Government's western allies have all stated that the SICC is backed and supplied with troops by Al-Qaeda which has itself tied up in both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. The lack of reserve troops to throw-away in street to street fighting has military analysts believing that Al-Qaeda has over extended it's operations and is un-able to recuperate from it's losses in the afore mentioned wars.

tl;dr

I saw it on FARK last week, under the title "Ethiopian planes bomb Somali locations. In other news, Ethiopia has an air force."

I loled.

brihard wrote: At its core this is a religious conflict, and that means we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future. It's probably going to turn into a low level insurgency for the next few years until the next explosion. That's my prediction.

Agreed. It'll be ugly either way. I really only see two possible outcomes... transitional Gubmint continues to be backed by Ethiopia and/or AU peacekeepers and has a religious insurgency to contend with ("low level" I'm not sure about)... or Islamic insurgency folds and we go back to warlord clans fighting amongst themselves in a repeat of past power struggles, rendering the tran gub useless.

I think the Ethiopians will be as professional as can be there. So far, there are no reports coming out of the conflict of rape, murder, or military looting. The Ethiopian Army is probably one of the best equipped and most disciplined on the continent. You have to remember, Ethiopia is about as close to a western power as you'll find in Africa outside of S.Africa. MiG FJ21's are nothing to scoff at, especially when put up against the other airforces present in the area. They were far superior to just about anything we threw up in the sky until the F-16 era.

I think the insurgency won't happen, there are too many Christian countries surrounding Somalia, even Eritrea has been dodgey at best when it comes to support for the SICC. Half of their population is protestant Christian and has no love for the SICC. The only reason they gave them support in the first place is that they aren't big fans of Ethiopia for their own reasons. There isn't a neighboring country with land-access to Somalia that will be friendly with the SICC to the point of harboring their troops or allowing insurgents to pass through.

I have been following this, and am very interested to see how things play out.

Enos Shenk wrote: Who cares? They dont have any oil.

Yeah, but they're potentially another stable, non-radical country just across the water from the Arabian peninsula. Besides, Ethiopia and Kenya = Friends of the US. And they get all twitchy when their neighbors descend into civil war.
___________EDIT_______________

The reason I brought up the Mig-21's Shorty, is that is all they have deployed to the conflict at the moment according to reports coming across the wire. Of course, you probably have better info than I, though if you talk about it, we'll find you face down in the Anacostia the following morning.

Edited by tallen702 - 28 December 2006 at 5:26pm

GThomas wrote: I have been following this, and am very interested to see how things play out. <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymReal; Sym() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymReal != null)      SymReal(); } SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null)      SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymReal = window.; window. = Sym; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->