CIA blowback comes full circle

I have followed the Somalia implosion since the middle of this year. The CIA backed warlords against the Islamic courts and once that support was made public, the Islamic courts won mass public support and the warlords were pushed aside. Critics have pointed out that the Islamic courts are a response to the instability created by the Warlords and that they are a stabilizing force, but the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, according to American foreign policy and the CIS started backing Ethiopia, gearing them up for a conflict, and now they have their Christmas wish, a war in the Horn of Africa, Merry Christmas.

Somali Islamists say at war against Ethiopia
MOGADISHU - Ethiopian-backed Somali government troops and rival Islamists shelled each other with heavy artillery for a third day on Thursday, as the religious movement said it was now at war with Addis Ababa.

Persistent rocket, mortar and machinegun battles since Tuesday local time have boosted fears that a devastating Horn of Africa war, sucking in regional players and spawning suicide bombings across east Africa, may have arrived.

It is the most sustained combat so far between the rival Somali factions, struggling for control of a nation in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, after two months of increasingly violent skirmishes.

Both sides claimed to have killed hundreds, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties.

"We are at war with Ethiopia, but not with the (Somali) government," hardline Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told Reuters by telephone.