Lee Cassanelli: Somalia's Islamists differ from Taliban
Lee Cassanelli is professor of history and chair of the African Studies Committee at the University of Pennsylvania
The reported takeover of Mogadishu by Islamic militias last week raised fears that war-torn Somalia might be on the verge of turning into another Afghan.
Somalia has experienced more than a decade of misrule by predatory warlords and their locally recruited militias. Armed gangs terrorize Somali civilians and extort money from travelers at roadside checkpoints, and a weak central government has been unable to establish its authority beyond the provincial town which serves as its temporary headquarters.
It was just such conditions that enabled the Taliban to seize power and establish a rigid Islamist regime in Kabul. But Somalia is not Afghanistan, and the Islamic Courts Union forces now in control of Mogadishu have little in common with the Taliban militias.
To begin with, the Taliban drew support from believers who had been mobilized to fight the Soviet occupation a decade earlier. Provided with training and weapons by foreign governments, these zealous fighters were subsequently joined by like-minded militants from the Arab world and elsewhere. The Taliban also enjoyed strategic support from Islamist elements in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Somalia's Islamists, in contrast, represent a homegrown movement. The Islamic court system from which they spring initially operated as an extension of Somalia's complex clan system. Set up after the withdrawal of U.S. and United Nations peacekeepers from Somalia in 1994, the courts applied Sharia law to help to mediate intra- and inter-clan disputes. The courts' judges were themselves clansmen, representing the various factions that controlled Mogadishu, as were the militiamen who helped to enforce their rulings.
Although the courts were sometimes criticized for targeting petty criminals while ignoring warlord abuses, they won considerable popular support for reducing looting and extortion, and for protecting schools and hospitals.
In March, Mogadishu's warlords formed an alliance, allegedly to combat what they claimed was the growing influence of radical Islamists in the court system.
Somali skeptics saw this simply as a ploy on the part of the warlords to shore up their position against sub-clan rivals who had gained influence through the courts, and to increase their weapons arsenals by obtaining aid directly from Western antiterrorist agencies.
The bottom line is that the recent confrontation between the Islamic court militias and the warlords appears to be a product of local political infighting rather than of instigation by foreign Islamists with radical ideologies....
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The reported takeover of Mogadishu by Islamic militias last week raised fears that war-torn Somalia might be on the verge of turning into another Afghan.
Somalia has experienced more than a decade of misrule by predatory warlords and their locally recruited militias. Armed gangs terrorize Somali civilians and extort money from travelers at roadside checkpoints, and a weak central government has been unable to establish its authority beyond the provincial town which serves as its temporary headquarters.
It was just such conditions that enabled the Taliban to seize power and establish a rigid Islamist regime in Kabul. But Somalia is not Afghanistan, and the Islamic Courts Union forces now in control of Mogadishu have little in common with the Taliban militias.
To begin with, the Taliban drew support from believers who had been mobilized to fight the Soviet occupation a decade earlier. Provided with training and weapons by foreign governments, these zealous fighters were subsequently joined by like-minded militants from the Arab world and elsewhere. The Taliban also enjoyed strategic support from Islamist elements in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Somalia's Islamists, in contrast, represent a homegrown movement. The Islamic court system from which they spring initially operated as an extension of Somalia's complex clan system. Set up after the withdrawal of U.S. and United Nations peacekeepers from Somalia in 1994, the courts applied Sharia law to help to mediate intra- and inter-clan disputes. The courts' judges were themselves clansmen, representing the various factions that controlled Mogadishu, as were the militiamen who helped to enforce their rulings.
Although the courts were sometimes criticized for targeting petty criminals while ignoring warlord abuses, they won considerable popular support for reducing looting and extortion, and for protecting schools and hospitals.
In March, Mogadishu's warlords formed an alliance, allegedly to combat what they claimed was the growing influence of radical Islamists in the court system.
Somali skeptics saw this simply as a ploy on the part of the warlords to shore up their position against sub-clan rivals who had gained influence through the courts, and to increase their weapons arsenals by obtaining aid directly from Western antiterrorist agencies.
The bottom line is that the recent confrontation between the Islamic court militias and the warlords appears to be a product of local political infighting rather than of instigation by foreign Islamists with radical ideologies....