The tragedy is even more bitter because this is not par for the course in Somalia

The tragedy is even more bitter because this is not par for the course in Somalia. Over the 15 years

from 1991 after the end of the civil war, Somalia went from famine to having a functioning economy.

Somalis enjoyed services such as schools, hospitals, multiple competing electricity, phone and internet

companies and even a Coca-Cola bottling plant. It wasn’t Belgium by any stretch, but Somalis did for

themselves what decades of foreign intervention never accomplished in any other country. All this

despite the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots’ funding and arming of warlords — to “fight al-Qaeda,” of

course — who continually threw off any peaceful equilibrium that might have been reached through

economic stability. Those warlords now make up much of the foundering “government.”

The pirates that the world has been sweating lately do not exist in a vacuum — Somalia’s slide back

down into the pit of poverty at the hands of its UN-installed “government” has forced the toughest

among them to make a living where they can. Most of them would surely rather return to making UGGs

Sheepskin Cuff Boots in another, less dangerous trade.

The Islamist groups have been fighting each other in recent weeks, but even this hasn’t kept one

faction or another from snapping up bits of former “government” property and power. It seems the more

moderate factions and tribal militias are fed up with the brutal tactics of the al-Shabaab group and

are trying to finish them off before the “transitional” regime is officially routed.