Sadly but not surprisingly, the seriousness of the situation in Somalia gets lost among Americanized images of bandana-wearing buccaneers seeking plunder on the open seas.After all, if Johnny Depp is your biggest problem, how bad can it be?
Piracy certainly adds to Somalia’s problems, but it is the savagery happening away from the water, especially toward Christians, that makes this east African nation one of the most brutal places on earth. The reports are horrific. In one, Islamic extremists pulled three children from a mother and beheaded two of them. The third escaped, screaming all the way home. “I watched my three boys dragged away helplessly. I knew they were going to be slaughtered,” said Batula Ali Arbow, whose husband, Musa Mohammed Yusuf, refused to provide the extremists with information about a Christian church leader. Yusuf, himself a leader of an underground church, had already fled to a Kenyan refugee camp, where his wife and family later joined him. Even in the Kenyan camp, however, the persecution continues. The reach of the extremist group Al-Shabaab continues to expand far and wide. Quite simply, Somalia is a mess. But enough of a mess for the U.S. to mess with? While Darfur attracts our sympathies, Somalia has attracted only indifference. And yet the pot continues to boil. After 19 years of political unrest, the political and religious situation in Somalia is getting worse. Al-Shabaab militants are hammering away at the fragile government of Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. The militants already have power in the outlying regions, but now are focusing on the capital city of Mogadishu, where Islamic insurgents are seeking to establish strict sharia law. To prove their point, last month they recently sentenced four men each to amputation of a hand and a foot for robbery. More recently, militants reportedly beheaded seven Somalis for being Christians and “spies,” according to Reuters News Agency. ..more..http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11606997/
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