Somalia in Crisis

The New York Times reports that Somalia is heading towards its worst crisis yet. That's a curious position to take considering that the country has seen no functional central government in decades and the lawlessness has been a way of life for a generation.

Hundreds of thousands have sought sanctuary in squalid refugee camps.

Fatality figures vary widely, but the most conservative estimates put the toll from the past month near 1,000, with 200 people killed in the past week.

Most of the victims are civilians caught in a cross-fire of shelling between insurgents and government troops. Entire city blocks and countless homes have been leveled.

The shelling in some of Mogadishu’s neighborhoods was so intense on Sunday that many residents were unable to get to hospitals — or cemeteries. Some people buried their relatives in makeshift graves, along streets under mounds of gravel.

“They are pounding us,” said Fadumo Ali Hussein, a mother of eight children.

Ms. Hussein said her sister bled to death on Sunday after she was hit by a piece of shrapnel.

“We couldn’t get her to a doctor,” she said.

Diplomatically, things look grim, too. On Saturday, Eritrea, a neighbor widely suspected by Ethiopian intelligence agents of supporting Islamists in Somalia, pulled out of a regional organization that had been acting as a counterweight to rising tensions in the region.

The organization, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which included Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, was trying to broker peace in Somalia and address the combustible rivalry between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The two countries recently fought a costly border war, and many diplomats fear that Somalia could turn into a proxy battle, with Ethiopia supporting Somalia’s weak transitional government and Eritrea backing the insurgents.

The Foreign Ministry of Eritrea issued a short statement saying that it had “suspended membership” in the regional organization because of “a number of repeated and irresponsible resolutions.”

The African Union has also tried to intervene in Somalia and earlier this year promised to quickly dispatch 8,000 peacekeepers. But so far, only about 1,500 Ugandan soldiers have arrived, and they are mostly hunkered down at the airport in Mogadishu.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations said in a report released Friday that more drastic steps might need to be taken, including forming a “coalition of the willing” to step into Somalia to restore order.

But Somalia’s government seems to be in no mood to stop the fighting. Ali Mohamed Gedi, the transitional prime minister, warned Mogadishu’s residents, thought to number around two million before the recent clashes, to clear out of the city because there was no cease-fire in sight.

“Until the terrorists are wiped out from Somalia, the fighting will go on,” Mr. Gedi said in a radio interview broadcast this weekend. “The battle is clearly between terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and the government supported by Ethiopian and A.U. troops.”

Ah, another coalition of the willing. Who will step up? Count on the US being asked to do the heavy lifting once again? Somalia's government recognizes the ongoing threat posed by the Islamists who seek to reimpose their dominion. They're engaged in an insurgency designed to maximize casualties and have no interest in peaceful coexistence.