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Since
capturing Mogadishu last month, the Islamic Courts Union
(ICU) in Somalia has moved in an increasingly radical
direction. This is reflected both in their leadership
choices and also their
implementation
of Taliban-like Islamic law. Beyond that, the ICU is
aggressively expanding its power. It recently surrounded
the southern Somali city of Baidoa, where the largely
powerless interim Somali government is holed up.
 On
Monday, Time's website
reported
Ethiopia's concerns over the ICU's stance toward Baidoa:
The Islamic Courts Union says it will not
attack the interim government, which is mostly secular in
outlook, but the government’s closest ally, Ethiopia, is
worried enough to be massing troops to take on the Islamic
forces itself. The Islamists and Somali journalists say
that Ethiopia has already sent troops over the border, a
claim Ethiopia denies. But there is no doubting Ethiopia's
intentions. “We will use all means at our disposal to
crush the Islamist group if they attempt to attack
Baidoa,” Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu told
Reuters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.
Just as Ethiopia has
threatened to use military force against the ICU, the ICU
has
vowed to
attack
the Ethiopian soldiers that it claims have crossed the
border into Somalia. (Although Ethiopia denies this,
eyewitness accounts makes it appear that the ICU is
correct that there are Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia.)
There is no fighting at present between the
ICU and Ethiopian forces. Part of the reason for this may
be that a number of politicians within Somalia's interim
government are in the process of defecting to the ICU and
bringing their militias with them. This is similar to the
process that the Taliban used to gain power in
Afghanistan, by getting individual warlords and their
militias to align themselves with the radical Islamic
movement. The ICU may want to gain as many allies as
possible before taking on the more powerful Ethiopian
military. Then the ICU may launch an attack on the
Ethiopians, just as they promised. Both the Ethiopians
and the ICU may prefer it if the ICU strikes the
first blow.
There are a variety of views on how
fighting between the ICU and Ethiopians may go. Ethiopia
clearly has the upper hand because their ground forces
have better training and equipment, and they have the
extra advantage of some air power. Moreover, while every
major news outlet has bureaus in Jerusalem and Amman,
there aren't any Mogadishu bureaus. The lack of press
coverage may make the Ethiopian army feel less constrained
in carrying out its military operations than Israel is in
Lebanon. But one consideration on the other side is that
it's unclear to what degree there is cross-pollination
between the ICU and al-Qaeda's factions in Iraq. If the
ICU has had much of this exposure, that increases the
chance that it could employ some of the insurgent tactics
used by al-Qaeda in Iraq, such as improvised explosive
devices. That could make things more difficult for the
Ethiopian military than they anticipate.
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