News of grisly fighting by insurgents in Somalia in recent days has just been followed by news that the Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Gedi, has resigned. He had been feuding with President Yusef and now will be replaced.
Sources close to the situation say that private Wahhabi money from Saudi Arabia has been funding revived insurgent Al Qaeda sympathizers within a faction of the Hawiye ("Ha-we-ya") tribe. Prime Minister Gedi is a Hawiye, but could not adequately combat the terrorists. (Shades of Iraq!)
A bigger political problem, say Yusef supporters, is that Gedi was corrupt. U.S. and European Union aid to the interim government is carefully administered and relatively accountable, but official Saudi Arabian money to support the government heretofore was delivered in cash, perhaps literally in suitcases. According to these sources, some $36 million of that money is missing.
The good news is that the Saudis (the official Saudis, that is) and the governments of other Gulf states, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have decided now to put at least a billion U.S. dollars into Somalia to help the Yusef regime. Above all, they do not want another Al Qaeda safe haven formed in their region. And this time the outside funds (we hope) will be properly administered.
If this report is true, it is a good break for Somalia. America is too preoccupied in Iraq and Afghanistan to handle the extra troops and funds needed for Somalia. The Gulf states can and should fill the void.
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