Somali sources tell VOA an increasing number of foreigners from Pakistan, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya, among others, have been arriving in Somalia in recent months on chartered planes, landing at an airstrip near Mogadishu. The unconfirmed reports say some of the foreigners came by road from neighboring Kenya, crossing the poorly-guarded border into al-Shabab held territories in southern Somalia.
The sources say many come to Somalia not to fight, but to work as instructors at more than half a dozen training camps set up by al-Shabab in Lower and Middle Jubba and the Lower Shabelle regions. There, young Somali boys, often recruited at gunpoint, are usually given three months of combat and terrorism training. [1]
Cosmopolitan readers understand some things: lack of coherence and context in the reception of information among Somalis--one day, they're suffering invasion from America via Ethiopia and a worldly "Transitional Federal Government; on some other day, it's terrorist with 7th Century Arabia in their hearts and not much feeling for any they drive out, pillage, rape, or kill (or whose hands or feet they may amputate).
Somalis seem alternately graced by businessmen and warlords who appreciate peace and by clerics and young men who promote war.
In this most Islamic of Islamic countries or regions, the bereaved, grief stricken, disposessed, and injured may enjoy now the spectacle of a UN-backed Islamist government fighting an Islamist insurgency backed by parties less known and producing an Islamic society to which few, if any, of 1.25 million displaced Muslims would seem to care to return.
What may one do with this neat turn of phrase: "The sources say many come to Somalia not to fight, but to work as instructors at more than half a dozen training camps . . ."?
Are training camps not part of the fighting?
When the little boys have become bigger boys, will they continue doing as today's big boys do by killing with as little wherewithal those in closest proximity to themselves?
One would think Somalis tiring of the war so many others--small in numbers, varied in motives--would seem to be waging on their backs.
Reference
1. Ryu, Alisha. "Suicide Bombing in Somalia Raises Concerns About Foreign Support." Medeshi, May 26, 2009: http://www.medeshi.com/2009/05/suicide-bombing-in-somalia-raises.html
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