Well, after two years of trying to get an African Union force and failing to get anywhere near the promised amount, the Ethiopians are going:
The United States worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, particularly since Osama bin Laden declared his support for the Islamists. It accuses a faction known as al-Shabab — "The Youth" — of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who allegedly blew up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Ethiopian forces have remained almost entirely in the capital, along with a small African Union force that has just 2,600 of the intended 8,000 troops and has largely been confined to urban bases.
The militants, meanwhile, have taken control of towns within miles of the capital and move freely inside Mogadishu. ...
Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Wahide Bellay said Ethiopia would wait no longer [for the UN to send peacekeepers].
"Regardless of what happens, we have decided to withdraw our troops from Somalia at the end of year," Bellay said in a telephone interview from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Somebody will have to return to Somalia. If the pressure in Pakistan's frontier area pushes al Qaeda out of that region, these jihadis might see Somalia as a haven. It does have the advantage of being near Yemen and Saudi Arabia where many potential recruits live.
Perhaps this increases the chance we will lead our own punitive expedition to scatter the jihadis enough to convince countries to send peacekeepers to hold the place.
Or maybe the Ethiopians are just prodding the world to take action while Ethiopia is willing to keep troops there. The Ethiopians surely know they'll have to return if the jihadis take control of large tracts of land. Maybe the Ethiopians don't want out--they just want real help.
