What effect had the Western-backed intervention of Ethiopia in late 2006 on militant Islamist groups in Somalia?
Ethiopia does hold a responsibility for the radicalisation of militant Islamism in the country, I think. Not necessarily because of the intervention as such, because the intervention was requested by the then President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. However, the way the war was conducted, the behaviour of the TFG’s and Ethiopia’s troops and the war crimes and the atrocities that were committed by them established the precondition for radical Islamism in Somalia. The intervention and the war that followed did allow al-Shabaab to gain its rallying points and to build its support base. It did that by integrating nationalism with Islam. At the end of last week, it was reported that the US is sending weapons to the TFG. Do you think that is an appropriate initiative? The former engagement of the US in Somalia under President Bush, because it was looking at the country through the prism of the ‘War on Terror’, did in fact escalate the conflicts in Somalia. It seems prudent that US involvement at the
