News and Politics | December 04, 2008 | 1 comment

the Lost War on Terror

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Ethiopia entered Somalia two years ago to remove the Union of Islamic Courts , elements of whose leadership had been making provocative and aggressive statements about Ethiopia.

But the reality is that Ethiopian intervention, backed by the US and others, seems to have bolstered precisely the elements of the UIC, al-Shabab, that are most at odds with Ethiopia's interests and may very well have fatally undermined any chance Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) had of gaining legitimacy.

Ethiopia has announced that they will leave Somalia, come what may, by the end of the year.

This announcement follows warnings to Somalia's government from its major backer to get its act together.

Ethiopian troops helped install the internationally recognised government in Mogadishu last year and without Ethiopian support ministers would still at best be holed up in Baidoa or more likely comfortably in the hotels of Nairobi.

But without popular support or local legitimacy the government has singularly failed to establish itself, as even President Abdullahi Yusuf appears to be admitting.
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