There is growing worry that the war in Somalia is becoming internationalized. At present the transitional government that controls a sliver of country around Mogadishu is supported by troops from the OAU. Meanwhile the Islamist Al-Shabaab group is now being supported by over a thousand foreign fighters, primarily Eriterians and Yemenis. Eritrea is likekly supplying the group with weapons. Furthermore it is problem that Wahibi-influenced Al-Shabaab is receiving financial support from Saudi Arabia.
More from the New York Times:
Somalia is once again a raging battle zone, with jihadists pouring in from overseas, preparing for a final push to topple the transitional government.
The government is begging for help, saying that more peacekeepers, more money and more guns could turn the tide against the Islamist radicals.
But the reality may be uglier than either side is willing to admit: Somalia has become the war that nobody can win, at least not right now.
None of the factions — the moderate Islamist government, the radical Shabab militants, the Sufi clerics who control some parts of central Somalia, the clan militias who control others, the autonomous government of Somaliland in the northwest and the semiautonomous government of Puntland in the northeast — seem powerful enough, organized enough or popular enough to overpower the other contenders and end the violence that has killed thousands over the past two years.
Somalia analysts say the main event, the government versus the Shabab, will drag on for months, fueled by outside support on both sides. The United Nations and Western countries see the transitional government, however feeble, as their best bulwark against piracy and Islamist extremism in Somalia, and are pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars for the government’s security. At the same time, the Shabab are kept afloat by an influx of weapons and fighters, much of it reported to be flowing through neighboring Eritrea.
The Shabab, more than anyone else, have succeeded in internationalizing Somalia’s conflict and using their jihadist dreams to draw in foreign fighters from around the globe, including the United States. The Shabab, whose name means youth in Arabic, are a mostly under-40 militia who espouse the strict Wahhabi version of Islam and are guided, according to American diplomats, by another, better-known Wahhabi group: Al Qaeda.