So you still think it's just an African problem?

WHILE INDIA has been rooting for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, there is little evidence of its readiness to play a bigger role in international affairs. Witness, for instance, how the alarming developments in the Horn of Africa have gone almost without comment. An Islamist movement called the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts (formerly Islamic Courts Union) has wrested power in Somalia. The new regime, supported by traditional Sharia courts and businessmen keen to beget some semblance of law and order, has been in control of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia since it defeated a rival alliance of secular, US-backed warlords on June 5. In addition to establishing the rule of law, the new regime is determined to impose a Wahhabi-style interpretation of the Sharia as the law of the land. Having grown out of a grassroots movement, the regime enjoys a measure of popular support in the almost entirely-Sunni Somalia. Though an Islamist regime in itself is not a security concern — the international community is comfortable enough with Saudi Arabia — Somalia’s past record is worrisome.
It has long been a fertile recruiting and operating ground for Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and is linked to several attacks on US and Israeli targets in east Africa. Equally disturbingly, the leader of the new majlis al-shura (consultative council), Hassan Dahir Aweys, figures on the US State Department’s list released after 9/11 for alleged links with bin Laden while the latter was living in Sudan in the early Nineties. The situation has caused alarm in the West, and shown in relief how the international community’s policy towards Somalia has failed. The US has been cagey about direct involvement since its disastrous misadventures in Somalia in October 1993. It has, however, been backing the secular warlords. The UN withdrew from Somalia in 1995. The transitional government formed in 2003 under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development controls only a small part of the country. Following the latest developments, an International Contact Group on Somalia has been set up, and has called for talks between the transitional government and the Islamist regime. However, initial signs have not been promising — the transitional cabinet resigned on July 27 after talks failed over the role of Ethiopia and over whether foreign peacekeepers should be brought in. Neighbouring countries have got sucked into the mire, with Ethiopia sending in troops against the Islamists, and Eritrea providing arms to the Islamists.
Forging peace in Somalia is going to be treacherous terrain. However, the international community must take its share of the responsibility if Somalia is to be prevented from becoming a Taliban-style rogue State. And seeing how global terrorism has already caught India in its web, it cannot afford to be a mere onlooker.