The Islamist Maghreb
Islamic countries within Africa are facing their own crises with the increasing presence of fanatical fundamentalist Islamists. Somalia, for one, has been in such a state of civil disarray, with fragmentary civil control of the country throughout a long series of disruptive and vicious wars it is now ripe to surrender to the demands of yet another Islamist insurgency.A country whose people once again face the dread face of famine and war, can find comfort nowhere. Its government is hardly existent, marginalized by ineffectiveness and an incapacity to offer any measure of security to its people. Supported by Ethiopian troops which fought against the Islamist militias, it will soon be left to its own hopeless devices as the Ethiopians prepare to leave.
The coast of Somalia thrives with the activities of pirates, upsetting shipping through vital shipping channels, holding crews of captured vessels hostage for long months, awaiting rescue by shipping companies tiring of paying handsome ransoms. The world shipping community, and the countries who depend on the shipping trade for their export and import communities are fed up with the lawlessness.
An international flotilla of military vessels representing various countries of the world whose cargo ships have been attacked, and often taken into the custody of the Somalian pirates who see their pirating craft as just another business, extracting what they see as legitimate freight for passage in waters they control, cannot exercise control over that vast body of water.
The government of Somalia, unable to bring peace and order to the country as a whole, is helpless to act. Medecins Sans Frontiers describes the plight of Somalia as representing one of the world's worst humanitarian and security crises. Over a million of the country's nine million population are homeless as a result of fighting, with another three-and-a-half million on the brink of starvation.
The population lives in a war zone, so that aside from homelessness and starvation, injuries by mortar rounds and indiscriminate firing of weaponry result in thousands of serious casualties, and the finality of death. The country's transitional government is unable, on its own, to fend off the Islamist insurgents, now in control of huge swaths of Somalia.
The African Union, with its paucity of peacekeepers, poorly trained and equipped, is unlikely to present as a force of deterrent to the intent of the Islamists to take over the entire country. The United Nations will not send a peacekeeping force to Somalia, for, as Ban Ki-moon states, there is no peace, therefore there is no practical use of sending a peacekeeping force; their role is not defensive.
The Muslim militants represent a radical group of younger Islamists who sundered alliance from the original Union of Islamic Courts. The group, al-Shabab, include in their midst three high-ranking al-Qaeda-linked terrorists wanted by the United States for their engagement in and responsibility for bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Islamists have imposed sharia law on all the areas of Somalia which they now control. Inspired by their righteous victories over the hopelessly inept government, and defiant of the concerns and interference of the West, they enact their own version of sharia by beheading local aid workers whom they accuse of collaborating with the United Nations.
And true to the values of fanatical Islam they impose penalties of death by stoning in their primitive cleansing rituals, claiming that young girls and women who have been raped are unclean "having committed adultery". There seems to be no rescue in sight for the people of Somalia from their dire fate, helplessly surrendering to the anti-humane proponents of fascist-Islam.
Certainly no version of Islam that faithful Muslims the world over recognize as one of compassion and brotherly love. The steadily emerging double face of Islam - belying the beliefs of moderate Muslims - offers its nightmare presence of a bleak underworld of terror and mass murder wherever it raises its bloodied banner.
Labels: Political Realities, Religion, Terrorism, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 25, 2008
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