The crisis beyond Ethiopia

This raging war going on between Ethiopian troops and Somalia’s Islamists is not just between them, which we already knew. But do we have the sense of just how large this war looms for populations far outside Africa?

As the only officially Christian country in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has long been wary of Somalia’s Islamic militias, which it describes as a “regional menace.” (While it is officially Christian, Ethiopia has a population that is about half Muslim.) It shares that anti-Islamist position with the U.S., particularly since August 1998 when simultaneous suicide bombings destroyed the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, killing more than 200 people. The ringleaders were tracked to Somalia, and an Islamist attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in November 2002 was also said to have been planned by the same group.

Support and weapons are pouring into this conflict on both sides, because of the critical consequences worldwide.

Somalia’s fate is attracting international attention because of its link to the war against terror. After dismissing comparisons to the Taliban when they took over the Somali capital this summer, the Islamic Courts promptly set about emulating them.

That’s an important point to note. 

Clerics threatened death to those who did not pray five times a day and enforced strict dress codes while Courts leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys declared holy war on Ethiopia, whose eastern parts he claimed belonged to a greater Somalia, along with northeastern Kenya and Djibouti, home to a U.S. base. As TIME reported earlier this year, the Courts also sent fighters to Lebanon in the summer to help Hizbollah fight Israel, and in return received weapons from Syria and Iran. The Courts even won backing from Osama bin Laden, who urged foreign jihadis to flock to Somalia to open up a third front in the war against America — a call the U.N. reported had been answered by hundreds of Pakistanis, Yemenis, Syrians, Libyans and Chechens.

This “war against America” by  jihadis is growing wider and more threatening.

Sheikh Hassan has now called on all Islamist forces to fall back to Mogadishu and prepare for a long war against the invaders. Whether that materializes remains to be seen. But what is certain is that the strife-torn Horn is more divided today than ever — and is increasingly the arena for an international war between the forces of radical Islam, and the West and its allies.

That last line is the key to understanding the whole picture, and its gravity.