Somalia has confounded three successive US administrations, but its walk-on role in George Bush's war on terror proved particularly calamitous. Until recently, the policy of Britain, the United States and the United Nations hinged on a 74-year-old warlord who ruled in the sectional interest of his clan, and on an Ethiopian invasion. The presence of foreign troops succeeded only in uniting a disparate Islamist opposition and killing thousands of innocents caught in the crossfire. As international agencies attempted to persuade Islamist militias to allow aid in, US warplanes bombed and strafed the insurgents from the air (as happened in Dhuusamareeb last year), content to use the Ethiopian and transitional government forces as a dragnet. But nothing worked. Somalia's lunar landscape filled only with more refugees and Mogadishu emptied, becoming a ghost capital. Today there are more than two million refugees, with over 1.3 million in need of emergency food aid. Up to a fifth of the population is suffering from malnutrition, according to the UNHCR. Piracy off the coast of Somalia may have galvanised the international community, but the root cause of a failed state in its 18th year of conflict goes largely unaddressed.
Both the Ethiopian troops and President Abdullahi Yusuf are, thankfully, gone. In his place is Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a former schoolteacher and one of the leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts which ruled most of Somalia until the Ethiopians invaded. Mr Ahmed's government wields little control outside Mogadishu and is weak. It is bound to be, after 15 failed attempts to form a national government. Al-Shabab, the radical Islamists who control much of central and southern Somalia continue to attack government forces, as they do journalists and aid workers. Clashes yesterday left 35 more bodies on the streets of Mogadishu. But Mr Ahmed has one weapon which may prove more effective than mortars and machine guns. He too is an Islamist who preaches the virtues of sharia law. He remembers how popular sharia was when the courts were in power among Somalis yearning for order. So the new president has much in common with his former fellow fighters, whom he seeks to integrate into the country's national forces.
Al-Shabab is not monolithic. Some clan leaders regard the president as an apostate, and Amison, the UN force, merely as replacement targets for departed Ethiopian troops. Other leaders are ready to talk. If, and it is a big if, the president succeeds in parlaying his way to some form of ceasefire, the use of sharia under moderate leadership in Somalia could prove to be a telling counterpoint to what is going in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
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