The War Spreads

August 4, 2010: Western nations are still reluctant to send troops to Somalia, believing that foreign troops won't help deal with the chaotic situation there. But historically, force is the only thing that works in Somalia. British 19th century colonial administrators learned that the best way to deal with Somali outlaws was to "shoot on sight, shoot first, shoot to kill, keep shooting." Not unexpectedly, post-colonial Somalia proved unable to govern itself. The tribal rivalries kept the pot boiling, and even the rise of a "clean government" party (the Islamic Courts), based on installing a religious dictatorship, backfired. Too many Somalis were willing to fight the Islamic radicals, who were also handicapped by their support for al Qaeda and international Islamic terrorism. In the past (before the European colonialists showed up) a form of order was imposed by having more reasonable (and often non-Somali) powers hold the coastal cities and towns, enabling trade with the outside world. One had to accept a near constant state of war, or just the banditry, with the interior tribes. There were periods of peace, as warlords established temporary kingdoms, but was never the notion that peace was something that would last. The Somalis were constantly at war with their neighbors, usually in the form of Somalis raiding into Kenya and Ethiopia, and sometimes getting attacked in turn by "punitive raids" (to discourage raiding, for a while anyway.)

In Mogadishu, skirmishing continues, with a one or two dozen casualties a day (most of them civilians or al Shabaab fighters). The al Shabaab gunmen are untrained, but know that they can get some protection from the trained government soldiers and AU peacekeepers, by using civilians as human shields.
In the south, al Shabaab is demanding people surrender cash and jewelry, and businessmen make large contributions, to pay for more weapons, ammo and equipment to confront the larger number of AU peacekeepers on the way. Al Shabaab has used its Internet sites to call for Islamic terrorist groups worldwide to launch attacks in support of al Shabaab efforts to conquer all of Somalia.