PJ Media

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that threatens the fragile peace in many parts of the Horn of Africa region. As a Somali-American,we want to protect the tenuous peace in the region of my homeland by opposing HR 2003,

For more than a decade, my country has been in a state of lawlessness with no central government. With Ethiopia ‘s support, the Transitional Federal Government, which is backed by the United States and the United Nations, has a chance, to take its place as the legitimate leaders of Somalia and restore Somalia ‘s standing in Africa and in the world. Such leadership would quell the rising militant Islamic insurgency that threatens the entire region. It is not an exaggeration to say that should H.R. 2003 become law, the stability of the Horn of Africa is in great jeopardy.

H.R. 2003 sends the misleading message to Eritrea , a country that the U.S. is currently considering designating as a state sponsor of terrorism, and the Islamic Courts Union, a group whose leaders have ties to al-Qaeda, that the U.S. finds the acts of an emerging democracy as the most deplorable in the region.

Please show your support for democracy in Ethiopia and peace in the Horn of Africa by not allowing H.R. 2003 become law.

somalia is key battleground in the global war on terror Somalia there is, for the first time since 1991, the prospect of the establishment of a national government with some semblance of authority. This will not be an easy task and could be jeopardized by the general reluctance to send peacekeepers.

Washington remains traumatised by the Black Hawk down disaster of 1993 when 18 American soldiers deployed to the country on a humanitarian mission were killed in urban warfare, their bodies dragged through the streets.

Other countries have been deterred by the fact that bin Laden, who welcomed the rise to power of the Islamic Courts, has repeatedly called on Muslims to resist any peacekeeping force dispatched to Somalia.

The hundreds (possibly thousands) of foreign fighters who joined with the Islamic Courts have announced their intention to continue the struggle through guerrilla warfare, meaning that Somalia needs an international peacekeeping force as a matter of urgency.

But, so far, only Uganda and Ethiopia are the only one helping the war on terrorism in somalia , a sad commentary on the short-sightedness of the world’s strategic vision.

For the war on terrorism is not a Middle Eastern issue but a global one. If Somalia lapses back into chaos it will once more become a haven for terrorists and prove that we have still not learnt one of the key lessons of 9/11: a terrorist sanctuary