Christoph
26-12-06, 20:18
DESPITE THE MANY foreign policy failings of this administration, in one thing President Bush has always been dead right: his diagnosis of the dangers of failed states as breeding grounds for terror, crime and despair. After 9/11, the Bush administration understood that weak states could not only endanger their inhabitants and their neighbors but also, to the extent that places like Afghanistan gave haven to terrorists or other "non-state actors," they could menace the rest of the world. The September 2002 National Security Strategy report summed up the threat: "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones."
Somalia has since 1991 been on the international watch list of places with nonexistent or nonfunctioning governments that could easily become incubators for mayhem. Garrett Jones, a retired CIA case officer, recently wrote in our pages that Somalia long ago ceased to be a failed state and is more properly a "space between countries."
Now, like a cancer we can monitor but not cure, the agony of Somalia (and its "Black Hawk Down" memories for Americans) has metastasized from violent, warlord-dominated anarchy into a bellicose, fundamentalist Islamic regime that controls much of the country. As in Afghanistan, its Islamic courts have brought some much-needed law and order, but its new rulers are emulating the Taliban in all the harshest ways. And, just as Osama bin Laden requested, they're plenty cozy with Al Qaeda. While U.S. officials say they have confirmed the presence of only half a dozen senior Al Qaeda leaders in Somalia, the number of Al Qaeda members or affiliates is in the hundreds.
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You can find the complete article HERE (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-somalia26dec26,0,1628119.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail)
Somalia has since 1991 been on the international watch list of places with nonexistent or nonfunctioning governments that could easily become incubators for mayhem. Garrett Jones, a retired CIA case officer, recently wrote in our pages that Somalia long ago ceased to be a failed state and is more properly a "space between countries."
Now, like a cancer we can monitor but not cure, the agony of Somalia (and its "Black Hawk Down" memories for Americans) has metastasized from violent, warlord-dominated anarchy into a bellicose, fundamentalist Islamic regime that controls much of the country. As in Afghanistan, its Islamic courts have brought some much-needed law and order, but its new rulers are emulating the Taliban in all the harshest ways. And, just as Osama bin Laden requested, they're plenty cozy with Al Qaeda. While U.S. officials say they have confirmed the presence of only half a dozen senior Al Qaeda leaders in Somalia, the number of Al Qaeda members or affiliates is in the hundreds.
......
You can find the complete article HERE (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-somalia26dec26,0,1628119.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail)