Over $ 7 billion

has been promised in aid by various countries at a recent conference for the reconstruction of the Lebanon.

I wonder how much of this was contributed by Israel.

Also to be wondered is, in the event of a Hizbollah governemtn coming to power, even legally, how much of this will be handed over??

“Where’s the outrage?”

as a former (and better) US president once said. I’m referring to Somalia, where a few months ago, after a decade of anarchy, a de facto but functional administration grew up, seemingly spontaneously, in the glaring absence of the so-called provisional government, which felt so popular and secure in its own country that it chose to base itself in Nairobi; its leader never having been to Mogadishu. Anyway, this de facto administration, unlike the products of innumerable hot-air conferences, actually started to get things done. The seaport and airport of Mogadishu were opened. Government offices started to function. You could walk around the city without being instantly mowed down by militias. It seemed to be a government by consent, whereas the ‘official’ government, a cobbling together of warlords, was nowhere to be seen, or at least languished in a far southern town. The administration was called the Union of Islamic Courts – the very name indicating that it was primarily a clerical and administrative organisation, rather than a political one. Religious extremists? No more so than the Christian Democrat party in Germany is an extremist religious organisation.

But the UIC, though not fundamentalist, made two fundamental mistakes. One was simply by virtue of being successful. Somalia’s neighbours, Ethiopia, which fought several border wars with Somalia in the 70’s, and the comically corrupt regime of Kenya, must have concluded that a stable and functioning Somalia represented a competitor and a threat to them. They decided to take action, using the installation of the recognised but moribund ‘provisional government’ as a pretext.

The other mistake was the inclusion of ‘Islamic’ in their name, which would guarantee that sooner or later they would get bombed by the US. No matter that the organisation was overwhelmingly a moderate one, the paranoid delusionals in Washington could very easily be convinced (by some “reliable intelligence” again) that they harboured dangerous wanted-list al Qaeda suspects. So Ethiopia, Kenya and the US ganged up on the UIC, and of course defeated them by sheer weight of firepower. The UIC retreated, saying that they did not want to cause civilian casualties, an attitude somewhat different, we may note, from that of the US.

The US navy blockaded the Somali coast to prevent UIC members from escaping (why should they wish to ‘escape’ from their own country?) : and is not the blockading of a neutral country’s coast an act of war in international law? And of course, the US duly bombed the UIC’s last remaining stronghold in the far south, with evidence of civilian casualties but very little evidence of slain al Qaeda militants.

So now the provisional government holds sway in Mogadishu, propped up by 8000 troops of the Ethiopian army. As far as the US is concerned, the Ethiops made an ideal low cost proxy force. They will leave ‘in a few days’ stated the Ethiopian prime minister. Fat chance, seeing that in their absence the half-life of the Somalia PG would be about 10 minutes.

There is an attempt to legitimise this exercise by claiming that it is only temporary, pending the arrival of an AU peacekeeping force. The only show-willing contributor to such a force so far is Uganda, which seems rather suspiciously eager to get in on the act. Few regional countries wish to get involved in Somalia; and anyway the AU is fully stretched doing an essential job in Dafur. So I would bet the Ethiopians will stay put for the time being. Why not? They have effectively a client state, if not a colony, and a new coastline, the former one lost to Eritrea.

In the last couple of days there has been another disturbing incident. One of the leaders of the UIC, conceded by even the EKUS ‘coalition’ to be a moderate, 'turned himself in' in northern Kenya, flown to Nairobi, and then ‘handed over’ to US officials. By what right or law is this done? He is presently being ‘held’, as a citizen of a sovereign country (which Somalia is now touted to be) on no other ground than that he is an official of an organisation unpopular with the US. Next stop, Guantanamo!

What are we to make of the statement/admission by the US ambassador to Kenya that ‘some’ members of the UIC were moderates and should play a part in the new Somalia order? It seems like an exercise in PR and window dressing. If you had just been driven out of your office by a foreign army, covertly backed by the US, would you be inclined to slink back and ‘play a part’? It is highly unlikely that the provisional government would trust anyone in the UIC, and rightly so.

So there we have it. A Christian army invading and forcibly occupying a Muslim state. Sound familiar? The army is bound to be popular, Not too many signs of a full insurgency yet (the attacks on Ethiopian troops are starting) but watch this space. Certainly, there are no flowers in the street. What do you expect from a new war, from the folks who brought you Iraq? (As the commentator Gwynne Dyer said).

A justifiable cause for outrage? I think so.