African War Update

The Islamists have vanished from Mogadishu. The tactic is hardly surprising; in this century of guerrilla warfare, I don't think you'll see a lot of head-on fighting anymore. Technology tips the scales in favor of the superior force too readily.

The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.

In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.

Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.

Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said.

Many of the teenage troops who made up the backbone of the Islamist army had blended back into the civilian population, walking around without guns or their trademark green skullcaps.

The sudden reversal left it unclear whether a war that had threatened to consume the Horn of Africa had quickly ended, or the Islamists had merely gone underground, preparing to wage a guerrilla insurgency, as some leaders had threatened.

This comes after the Ethiopians repelled an Islamist counterattack on the inland capital of Baidoa, and the US admitted its support for the mission.

"Ethiopia has genuine security concerns with regard to developments within Somalia," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

Johndroe added that Ethiopian forces were there "at the request" of Somalia's interim government, which wants to break the stronghold of the Islamic Courts Council on southern Somalia and Mogadishu.

What happens now is anybody's guess. The Ethiopians have nobody to fight in Mogadishu. Will they simply leave? I don't think there's any way peace talks between the ICU and the transitional government can go on at this point. Will the Ethiopian Army hunt down suspected militants? How will they know who they are to capture? Is there any way the citizens of Mogadishu, who are at once supportive of and terrorized by the Islamic Courts, would help a foreign army?

The situation in Somalia mirrors Iraq circa April 2003. It remains to be seen if Ethiopia will fall into the same traps that have dogged the US since then. One thing is clear; you cannot use the phrase "American support" anymore and expect anything but enmity:

The rally was supposed to be against Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor and historic archenemy, which in the past few weeks had sent troops streaming across the border in an attempt to check the power of the increasingly powerful Islamists who rule Mogadishu.

But the cheers that shook the stadium (which had no roof, by the way, and was riddled with bullet holes) were about another country, far, far away.

"Down, down U.S.A.!" thousands of Somalis yelled, many of them waving cocked Kalashnikovs. "Slit the throats of the Americans!"

Not exactly soothing words, especially when the passport in your pocket has one of those golden eagles on it.

Somalia may be the place that best illustrates a trend sweeping across the African continent: After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States concluded that anarchy and misery aid terrorism, and so it tried to re-engage Africa. But anti-American sentiment on the continent has only grown, and become increasingly nasty. And the United States seems unable to do much about it.

A number of experts on Africa trace those developments to a sense not of American power, but of its decline — a perception that the United States is no longer the only power that counts, that it is too bogged down in the Middle East to be a real threat here, and so it can be ignored or defied with impunity.

This, as much as anything, is the tragedy of Iraq. It's a recipe for chaos in a world without moral leadership, a rudderless ship where there is no counterbalancing weight on the side of truth and justice. It is a terrible situation to have earned the hatred of the majority of the world. It makes anything allowable as long as it flies in the face of American interests.