Nowhere to run?

In Somalia, one phase of a battle ends:

Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers battled about 600 Islamic militiamen Thursday on the southern tip of this Horn of Africa nation, and U.S. Navy forces prevented the militants from fleeing by sea, authorities said.

U.S. Navy patrols Somalia coast for fleeing al-Qaeda U.S. Navy vessels have been deployed off the coast of Somalia to make sure al-Qaeda or allied jihadists don’t escape the country by sea now that the once-dominant Islamist forces there are in retreat, the State Department said Wednesday.

Of particular concern is the fate of three al-Qaeda militants who were believed by U.S. officials to be under the protection of the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu until Ethiopian forces drove the Courts Union from power in recent days. The three are believed to have had a role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and in the 2002 bombing of a hotel in Kenya.

With the most hard-core militiamen headed their way, Kenyan authorities on Monday tightened security along their 250-mile long border with Somalia.

Kenya has shut its border with Somalia and will not allow more refugees into the country, says its foreign minister.

Earlier the Kenyan authorities deported more than 420 Somali refugees who had crossed the border in recent days.

The UN refugee agency has condemned Kenya's actions, with aid workers expressing frustration at being unable to help Somalis fleeing conflict.

There have been clashes near the Kenyan border with Islamist militias being pursued by Ethiopian and Somali troops.

Kenya has deployed tanks and helicopters to enforce the border closure.

At least, that's what this London Times "analyst" would have you believe:

Ethiopian troops, with Washington’s tacit approval, have routed the Islamists who seized power in Somalia last June. The official Government forged by the international community in 2004 can take power. Good news, surely?

As one of the few journalists to have visited Mogadishu recently, I fear it is not. Far from restoring stability to Somalia, this week's developments could well plunge that country back into the protracted anarchy from which it emerged only recently.

For the first time in a generation people could walk the streets in safety. Gone were the ubiquitous checkpoints where the warlords’ militias extorted and killed. Guns had been banned. Somalis who had fled the violence were returning from abroad.

The Union did reintroduce public executions, ban the narcotic qat and discourage Western music, films and dancing, but that seemed a small price to pay.

Resounding boo for Ethiopia's invasion

It is true that the Islamists reintroduced public executions and discouraged Western music, dancing and films, but they also brought stability after 15 years of anarchy and civil war. The official government, however, is now back in Mogadishu, and not without considerable help from neighbouring Ethiopia.

The invader, in this instance, being the UN-recognized government of Somalia. For their part, the peace-bringing Islamists have declared that "their retreat is tactical and have threatened to launch an insurgency." Violence that will be portrayed in the media as a return of the chaos they had prevented while in power - and blamed on George Bush.

I confess Lex scared me for a moment - I thought he'd gone to the dark side:

It’s hard to be a fan of fundamentalist groups aligned with al Qaeda. And yet, they managed to put the clan militias down and bring peace to the capital, where none had existed since Siad Barre was deposed in 1991 and where periodic famines have often been used as weapons of war. Couldn’t we hope that the ICU would rule benevolently, or if not, could not we at least hope that they might restrain their tendencies towards theologically-inspired, absolutist brutality against their own people?

Well, no: And even Mussolini made the trains run on time.