Taliban now coming to a guerilla war theatre near you

They relocated to Mogadishu following the defeat of Al Ittihad in Kismayu, apparently leaving Somalia before the events of 9-11 further raised the stakes.

Now they are back. The linkages, including the financial network sustaining the insurgents on their impoverished terrain, have always been active.

Hassan Al Turki went on to start the original Al Shabaab militia.

The New York Times recently described the combination of the Islamist movement in Somalia and the influx of foreign jihadis as “reminiscent of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.”

The implication is that the insurgents want to turn Somalia into a safe haven replacing the Pashtun homeland straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are indeed similarities, but the time and settings are different.

The tide has turned since the 2006 accord brokered by the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam that in effect secured Pakistan’s North Waziristan as a safe haven for Islamist militants.

Pervez Musharraf is gone and the Taliban are on the run. President Obama has just instituted new rules of engagement prioritising the safety of the civilian population in Afghanistan.

Migrating to Somalia in these circumstances appears to be an act of desperation; financing jihad in Somalia is at best a dubious investment.

Somali nationalism is a resilient phenomenon; if Islam is one common denominator, antipathy for outside intervention in their internal affairs is another.

It’s a rough neighbourhood. Islamist law and order relies on a heavy hand.

There is a difference between governing and beating men in public for wearing kikois and destroying saints’ tombs. During the recent Shabaab-Hizbul Islam offensive in Mogadishu, two of their factions were fighting each other in Luuq.

True, the government of Ahmed Sheikh Sharif may not be the final solution, even though many former Islamic Union Courts members have joined its ranks.

Somali culture, to the best of my knowledge, does not emphasise the Pashtunwali principle of nanawateh. The jihadi tourists and refugees speaking Asian tongues would soon find themselves surplus to requirements even if the rejectionists take their place.

The latter prospect may be the penultimate act in the nation’s long slog to domestic equilibrium. In an article posted on the Internet (Hiraan Online, Tuesday, June 9), The Best for Somalia: Islamists Take Over!, Hassan Zaylai offers the following perspective:

The sooner the Islamists take over, the faster and easier will be their undoing and complete eradication of their narrow ideology from Somalia!