Somalia Bleeds, Hammered by Al-Shabab Islamists

Somalia is dying; it pines for Siad Bare no matter how evil people say he was; compared to what is happening in Somalia at this moment, Siad Barre, the former dictator of Somalia, deserves praise and recognition for his 21-year old dictatorial rule; Somalia is in a dire state now worst than ever before; out-of-control piracy, religious wars and a lack of strong central government, just to name a few discouraging factors that mercilessly suck the blood out of Somalia to the extent that the existence of the whole country is vanishing so rapidly like a rocket ship in space.

When Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, the Somali people were expecting a better government that values democracy and the rights of the individual.

However, when factions, headed by warlords, ousted Siad Barre and turned against each other, the country sunk into a black hole of uncertainty, and after one peace conference after another, peace was nowhere to be found.

After almost two decades of civil war of many stages, the game of the conflict changed from that of the warlords to that of the Islamists; Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, the two main Islamist groups, have been jointly fighting Somalia´s UN-recognized interim government in Mogadishu since May 2009. But internal fighting erupted between the Islamist rebel groups last week following a violent dispute over the control of the Southern port city of Kismayo. Consequently, a recent ceasefire between the top leaders of Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam seems to be fading away. The two Islamist factions share almost the same ideology but Al-Shabab, which is listed by the US as a terrorist Organization linked to Al Qaeda, demands Somalia to be governed under a strict Islamic law.

As soon as Al-Shabab took over Kismayo last week from Hizbul Islam, they started implementing their strict version of the Islamic law by carrying out amputations on three men accused of robbery in southern Somalia. In Kismayo Al-Shabab masked men used machetes to cut off the limps of those three men whom were not allowed to appeal or have access to lawyers. Al-Shabab controls much of Central and Southern Somalia and operates openly in the capital, Mogadishu, confining the government and approxsemately 5000 African peacekeepers to a few blocks of the city.

Somalia has been without a strong central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Barre died four years later while in exile in Lagos, Nigeria.