Al-Qaeda's new video: apparently they read the newspaper!

Al-Qaeda's got a new video out, and this one's in English! Produced by al-Qaeda's media arm and featuring its American spokesman Adam Gadahn, you can find it in three parts on YouTube (1, 2, and 3).

It starts out with the order that "We Do Not Permit Musical Accompaniment With Our Productions," just as a reminder to those slack terrorist-sympathizing Muslims that the revolution will not be remixed. "Barack," Adam Gadahn begins, "I know that as you slither snakelike into the second year of your reign as a purported president of change, you are finding your hands full with running the affairs of a declining and besieged empire and — in the process — proving yourself to be nothing more than another treacherous, bloodthirsty and narrow-minded American war president..."

It goes on like that for a while (that particular sentence wasn't even half over). It's clearly targeted towards an American audience, and sounds sort of like it's come from a drunk Nation writer who hasn't spoken English in a decade; I have a feeling that their Arabic-language videos place a bit more emphasis on killing Americans and Israelis. (Antiwar.com's story is titled "Al-Qaeda Spokesman Gadahn Proposes Peace Conditions With US.")

Gadahn tries to show us he's been keeping up with the news, dissing the Democrats for losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and even making an inadvertent plug for the Salahis' new reality show:

And honestly, Barack, as a president who has proven himself to be incapable of keeping intruders out of his own executive mansion, do you really expect anyone to believe that you will be successful in your attempts to keep the Mujahideen away from an entire continent?

The personal attacks against "Barack" abound, including this stinger: "Make no mistake about it Barack, you're no longer the popular man you once were."

His analysis of American politics falls flat when he tries to claim that Obama's falling popularity is due not to healthcare and his domestic policies, but rather to foreign wars. The video then cuts to clips of American veterans criticizing Obama's ongoing wars, thus ensuring that no veteran will ever say anything like that again, out of fear that they'll be coopted by al-Qaeda.

Overall, I think Adam Gadahn could benefit from an editor – that guy just doesn't know when to shut up.

Hugs kill terrorists

This is the best thing I've read in a while, via Bruce Schneier:

In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests.

Russian bloggers think Moscow bombings were false flag attacks

A couple of days ago I wrote about the bombings in Moscow and my suspicion that the Russian security services themselves were behind the attack. My theory wasn't based on any particular facts about the case itself, but rather the Kremlin's long history of committing false flag attacks in the name of terrorists from Russia's North Caucasus.

No more details about the attack have emerged to support this theory (though I suppose they will in the coming months and years, if not sooner), but apparently the Russian blogosphere shares my sentiments:

It is too early to say who organized this terrorist attack. Russian bloggers discuss mainly two versions: Chechen rebels and the state security services. However weird it may sound, the latter version is at least as popular as the former one.

Naturally, no English-language newspaper or magazine has even raised the possibility. I really wish I could read Russian, so that I could investigate the bloggers' claims and accusations, but as it is I'm stuck reading filtered versions of what actual Russians are thinking.

Edit: The NYT has an angle that I hadn't picked up on – while the small-scale, little-reported but quite frequent bombings in the Caucasus (like the one today in Dagestan) almost always targeted police and government officials, the metro bombings was obviously meant to kill civilians. This is probably the most compelling reason to think that it wasn't committed by an insurgent group – people are much more likely to sympathize with terrorists who attack the government than those who attack ordinary (and relatively poor, if they're using mass transit) people.

Possible new attack in Moscow Metro

The NYT and Guardian are reporting as breaking news, without details, that an explosion has killed 25 in Moscow's metro. Before I know anything about the incident, I'm going to make a prediction. If the explosion wasn't an accident (a big if, given Russia decrepit infrastructure), then I predict that rather than a genuine act of terror, it was a false flag attack committed by the Russian state itself, designed to give the Kremlin an excuse to crack down on someone, somewhere. I'm basing this on the fact that nearly every single major "terrorist" incident in Russia has turned out to be the work of Russia's own security forces.

Let's not forget that a similar bombing in 1977 was blamed on Armenian separatists, though Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov has argued that it was really a KGB operation to discredit dissidents within the Soviet Union. I have yet to find specific allegations against the state in the case of the 2004 Moscow Metro bombing, but given that such accusations have been levied concerning nearly every other major post-Soviet breakup act of "terrorism," I wouldn't be surprised if some day that one too can be pinned on the state's own secret services.

Stay tuned for more details...

Edit: Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that the Metro stop where the explosion occurred is called Lubyanka, and is below Lubyanka Square, which houses the infamous Lubyanka building – a metonym for the Soviet/Russia secret services, and current home of the FSB and the Border Guard. Do they really have to make it so easy?

Sardinia as a staging ground for Soviet-backed terrorists

In an interesting TED Talk on the economics of terrorism, Italian economist Loretta Napoleoni relates a story told to her by a "part-timer" in the Red Brigades, a leftist Italian terrorist organization active in the '70s:

He was sailing every summer back and forth from Lebanon, where he would pick up Soviet weapons from the PLO and then carry them all the way to Sardina, where other armed organizations in Europe would go and take their share of the arms. For that service, the Red Brigades were actually paid a fee, which went to fund the organization.

She leaves some ambiguities. Were the weapons just manufactured in the USSR, or was the Soviet leadership actually directing the weapons through the PLO? (Others have claimed that the Soviet Union was directly responsible.) And were they being sold in some sort of market to all comers, or were the Red Brigades merely transporting them to groups pre-selected by the PLO (or Czechs/Soviets)? Her wording ("take their share") and the fact that they were paid a fee (as opposed to earning profit from the sales) hints at the latter.

This all happened decades ago, but Italy still hasn't escaped from the influence of Russian spies. As late as 2006, a British MEP gave a "one-minute speech" in the European Parliament where he quoted the late Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko as saying that he was warned:

Don’t go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians. Romano Prodi is our man there.

Romano Prodi, in fact, has a history of shady ties with the Red Brigades. In 1978, he was somehow privy to the location of a prominent politician kidnapped by the Brigades (and later killed), which he explained as having been revealed to him in a séance.

PS, this is my 500th post. Happy birthday, blog!

Guantánamo terrorists escape art therapy, plot Detroit attacks

This is no good:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.

One of those released was sent to Saudi Arabia for an "art therapy rehabilitation program," which is apparently not uncommon:

"The so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke," a U.S. diplomat said in describing the Saudi efforts with released Guantanamo detainees.

Saudi officials concede its program has had its "failures" but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.

One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen.

A similar rehabilitation program in Yemen was stopped because so many of the detainees quickly joined with al Qaeda or its affiliates, the official said.

Al-Qaeda link "aspirational"

The Department of Homeland Security on the recent would-be bombing of a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit:

Although Mr. Mudallad told officials that he was directed by Al Qaeda, the counterterrorism expressed caution about that claim, saying “it may have been aspirational.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not fooled, knew he was in Poland

It seems that a third Eastern European CIA black site has been found in Lithuania, this in addition to the ones in Romania and Poland. (Non-Russian Eastern Europeans love America, for Cold War reasons. The Albanians and Georgians named streets after George W. Bush.)

But anyway, the Lithuania thing isn't that shocking or interesting. What I liked about the article was this quote from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later told a team from the International Red Cross, who questioned him in late 2006, that he thought he had probably been held prisoner in Poland. "I think the country was Poland," he said, according to the Red Cross report. "I think this because on one occasion a water bottle was brought to me without the label removed. It had (an) e-mail address ending in '.pl'. The central-heating system was an old-style one that I would expect only to see in countries of the former communist system."

Thoughts on Gaza: Iran's role, the civilian death toll, the smuggling tunnels, and proportionality

Here are a few unrelated thoughts on the recent Gaza conflict:

• About two few weeks before Israel's air raid, defense officials were saying that Iran had been pushing Hamas to not renew its cease-fire with Israel. This is in contrast to Hamas' traditional sponsor, Egypt, who evidently did not want war. Further evidence of Iran's new role as the Middle East's biggest direct sponsor of terror. But who knows if the buck stops there.
• The UN says that 62 Palestinian women and children were killed in the Israeli air raids, meaning that total civilian casualties are likely higher. 320 Palestinians in total have been killed, the (vast?) majority of whom appear to have been employed by Hamas.
• Israel has destroyed 40 smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. The tunnels could supply as much as 90% of Gaza's economic activity, and are an increasingly lucrative source of revenue for Hamas, which taxes and controls at least some of the smuggling trade. Food, fuel, cigarettes, medicine, and weapons seem to be the most popular goods going through the tunnels. The weapons smuggling business, though, had dried up in the beginning of this year, as Hamas routed Fatah in the Gaza Strip and got control of their weapons.
• Many people have remarked at the inanity of criticizing Israel for being "disproportionate" in its attacks – here is an example of the logic. I don't know how relevant I think it is, but Totten does convincingly argue that "proportionality" is an irrelevant red herring.

Somalia: the forgotten front of the War on Terror

I've written an original article for antiwar.com about the situation in Somali, reflecting on the history of American intervention in Somali and its utter failure. In it, I argue that the only way to bring about peace and stability to Somalia is for the international community to stop trying to impose a state on a people who are not accustomed to involuntary government. You can help publicize it by voting it up on either Digg or Reddit.

Human rights activist: "secret alliance" between FSB and Islamic terrorists

In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Norwegian human rights activist Ivar Amundsen has, citing unnamed "experts," accused the Kremlin of backing the "armed groups of Islamic fundamentalists" who are currently destabilizing Chechnya.

Natalya Golitsyna: Do you share Akhmed Zakaev’s opinion voiced recently at the ‘Caucasus seminar’ in London that ‘Russia has a vested interest in the instability in the Caucasus’?

Ivar Amundsen: Yes, I do. I think that this constitutes part of its policy in the Caucasus. [...] There is another striking fact. There is an odd and secret alliance (a conspiracy even) between the FSB and the armed groups of Islamic fundamentalists hiding in the Chechen forests. Their leader Doku Umarov has proclaimed the setting of a new Islamic state – an independent Caucasus Emirate. According to experts, this move which could destabilize the situation in the Caucasus is being overseen by the FSB – in order to hamper as much as possible any solution to the Caucasus dilemma.

(HT: David McDuff.)

This isn't by any means the first report of false flag attacks in Russia being supported by the FSB. I've written earlier about suspected FSB involvement in Beslan, Ingushetia and Ossetia, and among neo-Nazis in Russia. And then there are the two biggies – the 1999 apartment bombings and the Nord-Ost hostage crisis.

Somalia update

So, it's official (almost): the Ethiopians are leaving Somalia and the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab is likely to take over the parts of Somalia that haven't already seceded. Al-Shabaab is far more radical and strict in its interpretation of Islam than the Islamic Courts Union that reigned in Somalia before the 2006 US-backed Ethiopian invasion. So, by expelling what we now know were comparatively moderate Islamists (the ICU), the US and Ethiopia sewed the seeds for the current al-Shabaab takeover.

And with the conflict between first the ICU and the Ethiopian-backed TFG, and now the TFG and al-Shabaab comes death and destruction. I reported last month that the war in Somalia has been deadlier than the one in Iraq by some measures, but since then, the estimates of the death toll have only gotten worse – from about 10,000 civilians to more than 16,000 killed directly because of the conflict.

In addition to the deaths, life for the living is becoming increasingly difficult as they flee the war-torn urban areas that offer respite from the barren Somali hinterlands, where a humanitarian disaster is now brewing. As the Washington Post reports:

Out of a population of about 9 million, more than 1 million people have fled their homes, preferring drought-stricken regions of the country to the crossfire of militias battling for control of Mogadishu and other areas. Attacks on aid workers – most likely carried out by the Shabab, who equate them with foreign interference – have made humanitarian assistance almost impossible to deliver.

Also, something I didn't mention in previous posts about Somalia is that even before the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia (backed by American money and diplomatic efforts), the US was supporting the warlords that the ICU would make its call to war.

At pretty much every step of the way since the fall of the Barre dictatorship throughout the 1980s, the United States has intervened in Somali affairs and it's backfired every single time – from its support of the warlords in the early '90s that resulted in the infamous Black Hawk Down episode, to the pre-2006-ish support for the warlords that enraged the moderate Islamists, to the current support of the Ethiopian proxy government that's enraging the extremist Islamists. Luckily, this time around there's little popular support for either a UN- or American-backed mission/invasion of the country, but that might change if American Democrats change their tune about "nation-building" and missions abroad now that the right guy is in power.

Politkovskaya's killers

The trial of the suspected murders of Anna Politkovskaya, which up until now has been sort of a farce, has revealed some startling (but unsurprising) accusations by a deputy editor of Politkovskaya's former newspaper: the suspects were agents of the FSB. Though Novaya Gazeta editor Sergei Sokolov declined to give his source, he fingered defendant Dzhabrail Makhmudov as an agent, and FSB officer Pavel Ryaguzov as his minder – obviously, both denied the charge.

The Moscow Times adds this example of how the FSB might have ordered the killing and convinced the agents to not expose the FSB's role:

"[The defendents' uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev] recruited his nephews and several of his acquaintances to commit the crime," he said.

Sokolov said Gaitukayev was also in contact with Kazbek Dukuzov, who was acquitted of the murder of Paul Klebnikov in 2006, and Rustam Makhmudov, a brother of the defendants who is suspected of being the triggerman in the Politkovskaya killing and is believed to be living abroad.

Separately, Gaitukayev said in court that he had heard from investigators that the killers were paid $2 million, defense lawyer Andrei Litvin said. The court was closed to journalists while Gaitukayev gave evidence because prosecutors said he might reveal state secrets.

Litvin, the lawyer of [co-defendant] Khadzhikurbanov, also told journalists outside the courtroom that his client had been pressured by investigators to confess that the murder was ordered by self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky for a payment of 4 million euros ($5 million).

For more information on why Politkovskaya was murdered, and the information that might have gotten both her and Alexander Litvinenko killed, check out this article by Larisa Alexandrovna at The Raw Story.

Parallels between Indian and American gun control laws

A few days ago I wrote about how gun control laws hampered Mumbai hotels' ability to properly defend their guests, and not soon after India's business community – led by tech multinational Infosys' chief security office – petitioned the government for the right to bear arms, including automatic weapons. The Indian government's aversion to permitting weapons seems to run so deep that even armed police officers were reluctant to shoot at the Mumbai terrorists.

That got me to thinking about the roots of India's strict gun control laws, which led me to this op-ed by an Indian gun owner, in which he quite eloquently details the colonial roots of modern-day Indian gun control policy. The British were especially vigilant in disarming the natives, and peaceful Gandhi himself said that "history will look upon the [gun control] Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest" of the crimes of the British in India.

The history of gun control in America follows a similar path – after the Civil War, states began enacting laws disarming freed slaves, and as a Reason book review tells it, and the first gun licensing and permitting laws were "passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers... [and] never intended to be applied to the white population," as one Florida judge said at the time.

As with American gun control laws, which are mainly championed today by non-racist mayors of heavily-black urban areas, India has lost the underlying reason for the laws, and yet, the vice is as tight as ever. The malevolent and racist British were replaced with the uncompromising license raj, and the gun controls laws have stuck. Like in the US, where big city mayors advocate gun control despite the laws' obvious failure where they would seem to be needed the most, Indian politicians are trying to prevent a problem that doesn't exist: legal guns being used for illegal purposes. By the late '80s the Indian government was tightening its grip on legal arms markets, banning almost all imports – though as Singh's op-ed points out, black market guns in India are cheaper than legal ones, so there's really no incentive at all for anyone to buy weapons through legal channels. And sure enough, the Mumbai terrorists are reported to have had connections with Mumbai's underworld, and that's supposedly where they got their guns from.

Hopefully this appeal by Mumbai's business community for increased access to arms will break the traditional Indian authoritarian approach to gun control, but judging from the past experience, it doesn't seem likely.

Mumbai terrorists took LSD?? Whatever you say, Daily Telegraph!

From the UK's Daily Telegraph comes perhaps the oddest and most unbelievable story to come out of the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks: the terrorists apparently used cocaine, "other stimulants," and LSD during the almost three-day siege. Yeah, you got that last one right – LSD!

It's tough to even begin describing how ridiculous this story is, but I'll try. First of all, the effects of cocaine wear off within an hour or two, making it totally unsuitable for a 60-hour battle with elite commandoes. Second of all, cocaine is rarely injected, as the article claims the terrorists did. And finally, the most ridiculous item: the LSD. Firstly, the hallucinogenic effects would seem to be a severe drain on one's ability to engage in combat. Secondly, an acid trip doesn't last more than ten hours (unless you take a dosage that would absolutely devestate your ability to do anything coherent, forget guerilla-style warfare!). Thirdly, the comedown from LSD is very tiring, and even if the vaguely energizing effects didn't hamper your ability to fight, the post-trip fatigue definitely would. Fourthly, LSD is rarely if ever injected, contrary to the Telegraph's report that "injections" of LSD were found (what the hell does that even mean??). And lastly, hallucinogenic drugs are known to cause severe psychological introspection – the kind that would make it very difficult to kill someone on. If you gave ten hardened terrorists a couple of doses of acid in the heat of a battle, it seems near certain that at least one of them would walk out of the building with their hands on their head and surrender.

This story has got to take the prize for this year's most laughably underinformed newspaper article about illegal drugs. I don't doubt that someone passed this information along to the Telegraph, but they have shown serious disregard for journalistic integrity in not asking the most obvious questions that would cross the mind of anyone vaguely informed about the effects of cocaine and LSD.

Follow-up on Beslan and the FSB

As a follow-up to a post I made about a week ago about Russian security forces' involvement in the Beslan hostage tragedy, someone over at La Russophobe has translated the original Novaya Gazeta article by Ella Kesayeva into English, in which these accusations are made and detailed. The translation is surely not authorized and likely in violation of some sort of intellectual property law, but thank god that laws aren't always enforced, or non-Russian speakers wouldn't have access to this sort of information.

Gun control angle on Mumbai

Via Radley Balko, here's a pretty disturbing paragraph from the WSJ about the recent attacks in Mumbai and India's gun control policies:

At about 9:45 p.m., two gunmen, slender and in their mid-20s, ran up the circular driveway at the entrance to the Trident. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government, according to the hotel company’s chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi.

Now, it's quite possible that these employees wouldn't have had the time/skill to ward off the attackers with whatever guns they were given, but it's hard to argue that hotel employees carrying guns would have made the situation worse.

The FSB accused yet again of being behind Beslan

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about Alexander Litvinenko's accusations that the Beslan school hostage taking was orchestrated by the Russian secret services. Now, today, I read (via translation) that Ella Kesayeva – co-chair of the persecuted Voice of Beslan group – has alleged, too, that Russian secret services were behind the incident. She wrote yesterday Novaya Gazeta (in Russia, which I can't read, but the translation isn't too bad), in which she outlines the suspicious history of many of the terrorists: all of them had at one point been in FSB and UBOP custody, and many were suspiciously released from government custody right before the incident, with their criminal proceedings having been mysteriously terminated without explanation. Kesayeva concludes that the only explanation for what appears to be widespread negligence on the part of Russia's security services is that they themselves were behind the attacks.

While it's good to see someone continuing on with Politkovskaya and Litvinenko's crusade, Novaya Gazeta's article and Kesayeva's statement are more formalizing and publicizing the things that Litvinenko (who had inside information on the workings of the FSB) has already stated. But we still don't know what Anna Politkovskaya had discovered about Beslan that led to her being killed, and next time Putin orchestrates a false flag attack to justify a power grab, neither Politkovskaya nor Litvinenko will be there to tell us about it.

A note about sources: both of these news organizations (ingushetia.org and Novaya Gazeta) are highly credible. One measures of credibility of oppositional media in Russia is the extent to which a given organization is persecuted, and by that measure, ingushetia.org is as credible as the New York Times – its founder, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot and killed while in police custody just a few months ago, and his website was chased off the Runet. Novaya Gazeta is a very famous dissident newspaper, and was the employer of über-investigative report Anna Politkovskaya, before she was assassinated (likely for coming to the same conclusion that still-alive Kesayeva has just expressed).

A note about translation: I used a translation from a blog, but if you use any online translation site, you can see for yourself what the Russian-language sources say. Google has a surprisingly good Russian translator.

A further note about translation: Problem solved! Dave Essel at La Russophobe has made a high-quality English translation of the original Novaya Gazeta article.

A war deadlier than the war in Iraq is about to end

Just two days ago I wrote about the imminent demise of the US- and Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia at the hands of Islamist rebel forces, but the post sort of rambled and didn't explain very well the significance of the event. The Somali Mogadishu politicians are squabbling over cabinet positions while rebels are "within a few kilometers of the city," playing Nero while Rome burns, and a little-known, but very bloody chapter in the war on terror is about to come to a close.

While no American troops were involved, money and training were provided by the US to Ethiopia in order to fight the recently-established Islamists in Somalia, and the public blessing of Ethiopia's mission by the State Department probably didn't hurt. The Bush administration viewed it as another front on the global war on terror, and took advantage of Ethiopia's presence in Somalia during the war to attack al-Qaeda leaders by air and ground.

The American financial obligation of $20 million might have paled in comparison to the trillions spent in Iraq, the rate of civilian deaths has been much higher. In total, about 10,000 civilians have been killed since Ethiopia invaded a little over two years ago and 1.9 million displaced, among a population of less than 4 million (60% of Somalia's 10 million official inhabitants live in breakaway unrecognized states that weren't threatened by the Ethiopian invasion). This compares to 100,000 civilians dead in Iraq since early 2003 and 4.7 million displaced among a population of 23 million (I excluded the 7 million Iraqis who live in Kurdistan, which the war has barely touched in terms of civilian deaths). In Afghanistan, there have been about 7,000 direct civilian deaths in seven years among a population of 32 million. That means that the per capita civilian death rate of the war in Somalia is higher than that of the Iraq war by about a third, and it beats out the Afghan war by at least an order of magnitude. And if what will be the sixth battle for Mogadishu is drawn out and deadly, this ratio could rise.

Like what is bound to happen in Afghanistan and Iraq, the proxy invasion of Somalia will have been an abject failure. The same Islamists that the Ethiopians chased out two years ago will be returning to power, but this time bringing along with them another possible civil war among the different Islamic factions to be fought before one of them emerges on top.

Update: The death toll appears to have surpassed 16,000 according to another report.

US/Ethiopian coalition in Somalia fails, Islamists advance

Somalia, yet again, is in turmoil. This time, the Islamists are advancing against Somalia's weak central government, the Transition Federal Government. And far from being a complicated and inexplicable basket case, the story of Somalia actually holds some pretty simple and important lessons: foreign governments cause problems and terrible regimes, while the international community's neglect allows capitalism to bring Somalis' living standards up.

The TFG was created in the mid-2000s as a response to Ethiopia's fear of any coherent state at all in Somalia, and the West's fear of radical Islam. At the time, the Islamic Courts Union was sweeping through the southern half of the country, and damn near took over the parts that hadn't already seceded. (Somaliland and Putland are de facto independent governments, and aren't at risk of collapse from the ICU, though they aren't the most stable regimes.) Ethiopia was understandably worried about Somali revanchism, as it won the Ogaden region from Somalia in a war of that same name in the late '70s, along with the four million Somalis on it that didn't flee into Somalia proper. The West had its own well-being in mind: it was afraid of Somalia becoming a hub for al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism.

So as a result, the corrupt and ineffective TFG came into being. From what I understand, by now it doesn't have power at all outside of Mogadishu, and the Islamists are currently preparing for a battle there. The general objection to the Islamists is their strictness: the NYT cites the example of a teenager being stoned to death for adultery for reporting a rape. But this rigid interpretation of sharia is alien to most Somalis, especially the vast population of pastoralists who have very tight family and clan-based governance structures. Given the Somalis' distaste for non-autochthonous government (Michael van Notten wrote a fascinating book about the indigenous Somali law system), and the foreignness of Wahhabi Islam, it's unlikely that the Islamists could stay in power long without adapting. But anyway, we'll see now how long the Islamists last, as it looks like the Ethiopian- and American-backed TFG is about to crumble. It just would have been nicer if this were allowed to happen years ago, so that we could have avoided the intervening war.

This pattern of foreign intervention trying to create a state begetting horrific results in Somalia is not limited to the last decade. As early as the colonial period, the imperialists had a very difficult time getting Somalis to register and interact with the state, as their isolated pastoral culture kept them out of coastal towns for the most part. The brief democratic post-colonial period was a failure, because even though it was Somali in its conception, it was the conception of the Westernized Somali diaspora and elite, not of the prevailing Somali culture. The descent into dictatorship and the horrific experiment with Siad Barre's "scientific socialism" again can be seen as a result of foreign powers interfering, with Somalia being a pawn in the proxy war between America and the Soviet Union. First by the USSR, and then to some extent by the US (though not really), Siad Barre was allowed to go on with his destructive domestic policy. Luckily, détente eroded his power and the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the nightmare, as the government collapsed for good. A brutal civil war broke out, and when Barre was finally deposed, a power vacuum led to a nasty competition over who would be heir to the Somali state. The US and international community got involved in 1992 but failed miserably, and only prolonged the civil war. This conflict was rooted in Barre's discriminatory policy towards other clans – it was a war that was destined to be fought.

From then up until the early 2000s, vast expanses of Somalia were more or less stateless. And yet, in many ways its people fared better than those in neighboring African states that had governments, as well as doing better than during the Barre state. The best thing for the West to do right now would be to vow not to interfere anymore in Somalia, and promise to stand by idly if the country is broken up into even smaller factions. Dictators and would-be governments are only egged on by the prevailing nation state norm, and know that if they can establish themselves in power, the international community will help them stay there. But the West should make sure to get out of the mindset that a stable central government is necessary for peace and economic development in Somalia.