The next horror in Somalia

Radical Islamists are preparing to take control of the impoverished country and start a regional war in East Africa.

By Garrett Jones,
Garrett Jones is a retired CIA case officer who has served in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

TO MOST Americans, Somalia is the place where "Black Hawk Down" happened, or the place with the pictures of the starving African children, or, for some, the biblical land of Punt. (Scholars quibble about locating Punt.) Americans tend to confuse African countries with one another except when our soldiers are dying there, and the violence in Sudan, Uganda, Congo or Zimbabwe can seem indistinguishable. But the anarchy in Somalia, which straddles the strategic Horn of Africa, is in a class by itself. For more than 16 years, Somalia has existed without the pretense of a central government, surviving largely on foreign aid and remittances from its overseas diaspora, the best and brightest young Somalis. With the fading of the seasonal rains in December, the Somalis are preparing once again to inflict their intra-clan squabbling on their neighbors. Meanwhile, the neighbors are preparing a proxy war, and they plan to fight one another to the last Somali.