Islamists on the Run!

How are the Islamists faring in Africa?

Not very well, according to this story:

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 26 — Islamist forces in Somalia beat a hasty retreat today to their stronghold in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scared capital, crumbling faster than anyone expected after a week of attacks by Ethiopian forces.

Burhakaba, a large inland city, fell first, followed by Dinsoor, not far away, and then Bulo Burto, where just a few weeks ago the Islamists in charge were threatening to behead people who did not pray.

The Islamist fighters, who had seemed invincible after taking Mogadishu in June, now seem powerless to stop the steady advance of the Ethiopian-backed forces of the transitional government.

By this afternoon, the transitional government troops were within 60 miles of Mogadishu and calling for the Islamists to surrender. The Islamist leaders refused, saying they would take their fight “everywhere,” which some people viewed as a veiled threat to expand the guerilla tactics and suicide bombs they have already used.

Somalia is another example of how to defeat Islamists by actually fighting them. The Ethiopians, with a fair amount of help from America, have been beating them decisively, as they have been beaten decisively every other place they have been forced to fight in the open. The article aso spills the open, but not often-discussed, secret about Islamism.

The fast-moving developments seem to confirm what United Nations officials and witnesses in Somalia have been saying since the fighting erupted a week ago: that the young forces of the Islamists, however religiously inspired, were no match for the better trained, better equipped Ethiopian-backed troops who have tanks and fighter jets.

All the Islamists have is intimidation and fervor. They do not have superior numbers. They do not have superior soldiers. They do not have a superior ideology. They do have the ability to intimidate a civilian population through murder and fear. They do have their fervent fanaticism.

But they cannot win if someone…anyone…stands up to fight them.

Nevertheless, the naysayers must be heard.

Still, the conflict is hardly over. Thousands of people continue to march in the streets of Mogadishu, rallying behind the Islamists, and analysts are unanimous that an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu, a city thick with weapons and xenophobia, could become a bloodbath.

Yes, it certainly could.

Or, it could just as easily not become a bloodbath. If the united Ethiopian forces move swiftly and, more importantly, ruthlessly in the Mogadishu and kill the Islamists wherever they can be found, the capital will only be awash in the blood of the evil men who have briefly enslaved a nation.

Of course, such tactics are not what the vaunted “international community” wants to hear. This editorial in theInternational Herald Tribune, the overseas version of the New York Times rom a former UN diplomat, posits that the whole thing is America’s fault. Of course, the main reason for the conflict is oil.

NAIROBI: Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.

As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world’s poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

And in three paragraphs all the hoary tropes of the anti-war appeasers get hit: illegal war, war for oil, reckless, and destabilizing.

Ho-freaking-hum.

The truth is far different. Somalia is in no better shape today than it was when the Islamists took control of the nation. I admit, as the columnist says, Somalia is far more orderly, but it is the brutal order of the Muslim Fascists who have taken to public executions and oppression as is their wont.

That, to him, is far better than the chance of anything approaching freedom and self-determination. Because…you know…bad US and all that. Oh, and stability.

Here’s the biggest unintentional laugh line in the whole column.

The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.

I can’t help but agree in part that the UNSC has been largely anti-Muslim. Then again, so has the likes of Mr. Lone, who agrees that the whole of Somalia should groan under Islamist tyranny in the name of “stability”. I do not wonder if he also decried the anti-Muslim of the UN in not acting in Kosovo or Iraq where millions of Muslims were brutally repressed. I am quite sure he did not. His only bugaboo seems to be decrying the US who, in the past years, has acted decisively to give the chance of freedom to millions of Muslims around the world. One could make a very good case that the United States has been the most objectivelypro-Muslim nation in the world. All one need to is look at where we have spend the lives of our soldiers and nearly countless millions of dollars in the past decade.

I applaud the Ethiopians. They shame most other nations of the world in acting firmly against the Islamists. I hope that their successes continue and that we heap nothing but scorn on those like Mr. Lone who would leave the people of Somalis in their Muslim-forged chains.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists