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From The Economist print edition
NAIROBI, 03 Jul 2008–

AFTER months of delicate negotiations, Somalia’s internationally recognised but feeble transitional government and its Islamist opposition agreed to work together to rebuild their ruined country. Under an agreement signed in neighbouring Djibouti in June, Ethiopia, which invaded Somalia in late 2006 to prop up the ailing secular-minded Somali government, was to withdraw its troops. Somalia’s Islamists, who have been fighting an insurgency ever since, would stand their fighters down. It would have been a breakthrough for a country that has lacked a central government since the fall of its long-time dictator, Siad Barre, in 1991. But the deal was stillborn. Since then, Somalia has rotted away, a victim of international indifference and its own internecine history.

Somalia’s more extreme Islamists have shown their contempt for the moderates by stepping up their attacks. The extremists are led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a wily former army officer who flirted with peace before rejecting it. He is aided by fighters loosely linked to the Shabab (“the Youth”), the armed wing of the Islamic Courts Union, which briefly ran most of the country in 2006, plus nationalist Somalis from disaffected bits of the powerful Hawiye clan and criminals flying a jihadist flag of convenience. And now al-Qaeda is sensing an opportunity in a country where it has previously got nowhere. Abu al-Libi, one of its top men, who escaped from the American Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan in 2005, has circulated a video on the internet calling on foreigners to fight alongside the Somali jihadists, with the aim of establishing a caliphate.

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