The U.S. decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. Last week, some of the chickens spawned by that decision came home to roost.
On Aug. 23, the al-Shabaab militia launched a "massive war" against the 6,000 African Union peacekeepers, most of them Ugandan, who are protecting the so-called government of Somalia. In reality, however, all it actually governs is a few dozen blocks in Mogadishu, and its members are just a group of Somali warlords and clan leaders who proclaimed themselves to be the "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG) in 2004.
Six "members of parliament" were among the 40 people killed when an al-Shabaab (The Youth) suicide squad stormed the al-Muna hotel in Mogadishu on Aug. 24, but there will be no by-elections to replace them. They were never elected in the first place. The TFG made no progress in reuniting the country, and now its surviving members sit surrounded by al-Shabaab fighters who control most of the sprawling capital.