Somalia's leading export: its civil war

Nearly two decades on, Somalia's warring sides are globalizing their conflict and violence. Geoffrey York reports from a Somali suburb in Nairobi being overrun by extremists while moderates make appeals to diasporas in Canada and elsewhere

GEOFFREY YORK
EASTLEIGH, NAIROBI — From Saturday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Saturday, Sep. 19, 2009 09:17AM EDT
A young security guard named Hassan sits under a palm tree outside a Nairobi school, watching for Somali radicals who might want to lure away the children.
In another quarter of the Kenyan capital, a former Somali prime minister is conferring with his supporters in a luxury hotel. He is guarded by nine armed men alert for assassination attempts.
In a third neighbourhood, a moderate Islamic leader who fled Mogadishu last year is raising money from Somali exiles for media to counteract extremist propaganda - and to pay for his own militia.
Somalia's vicious 18-year civil war is spilling out into Kenya and beyond, spiralling into a global struggle that enmeshes the Somali diaspora from Africa to Europe to Canada. It is fought with guns and dollars, preachers and teachers, radio and TV, refugees and exiles; it's waged in schools, mosques, slums and skyscrapers.
Back in Somalia, the conflict is itself becoming a proxy war: Al-Qaeda radicals, including many from Pakistan, have imported the ideology of suicide bombings to the once-moderate nation. The United States, meanwhile, is shipping weapons to the official Somali government; this week, the Pentagon flew in special-forces helicopters to kill a Kenyan-born terrorism suspect...more..http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/somalias-leading-export-its-civil-war/article1294194/