Just weeks after ousting southern Somalia’s jihadist Islamic government and returning secular leaders to power, Ethiopian mechanized forces have begun withdrawing from the country. Meanwhile, U.S. forces based in Djibouti and on ships off the coast continue to hunt terrorist leaders forced onto the road by the Ethiopian assault.
So now’s when we hold our collective breath. In the absence of an occupying power, Somalia might just slip back into the same old dysfunction it’s suffered these last 15 years. A U.N. peacekeeping force (warning: video) might help, but there’s no indication that the organization is interested in pulling one together. After all, the last U.N. mission in Somalia was a wash, and these days the U.N. is stretched pretty thin.
There’s more reason to worry about the state of world peace. Yesterday saw Iranian-backed Hezbollah kick-start riots in Beirut to protest the Western-back secular government, which is deep in negotiations for foreign reconstruction aid (warning: video). Unlike demonstrations in December, these riots were violent. Several people died. Is this a harbinger of another civil war in Lebanon? If so, what will the resident U.N. force do about it?
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[...] Even the mass demonstrations – and occasional rioting — by hundreds of thousands of super-religious Shi’ites and their Christian allies don’t get Hasham, a secular Sunni, too worked up – nor does the prospect of a second round with Israel. The pro-Hez demonstrations peaked in December with nearly a million people in downtown Beirut, all demanding that Iran-backed Hezbollah have more power in government. The crowds are smaller and usually quieter now. Even so, American pundits are calling the protests a harbinger of a violent coup. Hasham just shrugs. “Since 1973 we had shit,” he says. But even at the height of the civil war, he got up every day and went to work with the police’s counter-drug department. He got shot three times but kept on going. [...]