No Winners in Somalia

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 […]

Al-Shabab Attack ICU, AU forces in Mogadishu

Mareeg Online is report­ing that heavy fight­ing has bro­ken out between al-Shabab forces and the com­bined forces of the Islamic Courts Union and African Union peace­keep­ers in Mogadishu, in retal­i­a­tion for an assas­si­na­tion attempt on an al-Shabab leader. Strat­for con­firms the fight­ing and says al-Shabab forces are mov­ing sev­eral vehi­cles (prob­a­bly the heav­ily armed pickup […]

Mullen: Afghanistan is New Strategic Focus

Afghanistan has been an ‘economy-of-force’ oper­a­tion for far too long,” Adm. Mike Mullen said. “The Tal­iban, aided by al-Qaida and other extrem­ists and safe havens across the bor­der, are recruit­ing through intim­i­da­tion, con­trol­ling through fear and advanc­ing an unwel­come ide­ol­ogy through thuggery.”

'Are We Winning?' Um, Not Really.

Sheesh. The State Depart­ment released a report today (big PDF) today that shows that ter­ror attacks in Pak­istan alone quadru­pled between 2006 and 2008. Inter­est­ingly, the growth in Islamist ter­ror attacks — 10 times more than there were in the 1990s — is in part a prod­uct of the suc­cess in Iraq. Would-be jihadists are stay­ing at home […]