Yesterday, I noted that a group calling itself Tawhid wal Jihad in Somalia had claimed responsibility for several attacks in Mogadishu. I also noted that as being significant because Tawhid wal Jihad was the name of Abu Musab al Zarqawi's organization in Iraq before he officially changed it to al Qaeda. I then warned that you should, "expect casualties and atrocities."

Residents of Mogadishu gather around the body of a Somali soldier who was killed during heavy fighting in Somalia's capital. The fighting killed as many as 14 people in an escalation of violence which saw the bodies of dead soldiers burned and dragged through the streets.(AFP/Mustafa Abdi)

Many may have forgotten about the last time a group calling itself Tawhid wal Jihad was part of an Islamist governingg coalition. That city was Fallujah and under the administration of a Salafi Islamist Shura Council it offered safe haven for Abu Musab al Zarqawi and allowed members of his group enforce Taliban like style justice.

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Residents of Fallujah celebrate after murdering two American contractors in Iraq. Their bodies were then dragged through the streets and then burned. Leftist blogger Markos "Kos" Moulitsas Zúniga upon learning of their murder: "Screw them."

If Somali mujahidin are now taking inspiration from the Abu Musab al Zarqawi brand of al Qaeda--a style that seemed even to sicken the likes of Osama bin Laden for its excessive and unmedia savvy brutality-- then I am afraid that the fate of this poor fellow has been sealed.

The reemergence of the African Taliban--officially called "The Islamic Courts Union"---after their swift defeat by U.S. allies in Ethiopia should come as no surprise. Many veteran mujahidin from Iraq and Afghanistan are now in Somalia after al Qaeda leader Zawahiri and other Salafi st spiritual leaders issued a call to jihad. Dozens and dozens of foreigners---including Americans and Brits--were captured in Somalia or in neigbhoring Kenya after the African Talilban government collapsed.

I've always known it was just a matter of time before these forces reemerged, but I was hoping for later rather than sooner. After all, when crowds of people hold up images of Osama bin Laden in protest rallies supporting an Islamist government, you might just have yourself an ideal place for hiding insurgents from foreign occupiers trying to impose some sort of moderation.

It's not clear what the proper strategy for defeating such barbarians is. Containment? That was our Clinton era strategy against the Taliban of Afghanistan which directly led to 9-11. If containment has been a failure, it seems that Bush era counterinsurgency & nation-building models employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not technically a "failure", certainly aren't ringing successes either.

The lesson to be learned here may be that of WWII. It's not enough to defeat your enemy. You must defeat them so thoroughly as to take away any and all capacity to make war (or in this case, violent jihad) for the next 50 years. Which means killing a lot more people--an entire generation, even.

Because this one thing, above all others, fuels insurgencies--even religious and ideological driven ones: hope for victory. As long as you leave your enemies with hope, they will find people to fight.

We should heed the call of the African Union to send more money and troops to Somalia before the African Taliban and their various jihadi allies--including Tawhid wal Jihad--turn that country back into the safe haven for terrorists that it was under the administration of the Islamists. Either we support our allies in the region to fight the African Taliban or we wait for the fight to come to us.

Gateway Pundit and Hot Air have more.

PS: Forget Grimey. Whatever happened to Ibrahim Hassan Addou?

Posted by: Rusty at 02:46 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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