They must be getting stronger again, no longer in need to feign an interest in “peace talks” with their “apostate” countrymen — which, according to sunna, is to be resorted to only when jihadists are weak, needing time to regroup. “Somali opposition says could fight UN,” by Elizabeth A. Kennedy, for the AP, July 26:
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) “” Somalia’s new opposition leader said Friday his supporters could take up arms against U.N. peacekeepers if they deploy the lawless country and side with the country’s weak government.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who took over leadership of Somalia’s exiled opposition movement this week, is suspected by the U.S. of collaborating with al-Qaida. He denies any terror links.
[…]Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when clan warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other, creating chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.
A radical Islamic group known as the Council of Islamic Courts “” led by Aweys “” brought a semblance of stability in 2006, but terrified residents with threats of public executions and floggings of criminals. His group ruled the capital and much of southern Somalia for six months before powerful troops from neighboring Ethiopia arrived to push them out.
The group then launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and shattered a country that already was one of the most violent and impoverished in the world. The opposition leaders went into exile in Eritrea, under the leadership of a moderate cleric, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.
On Tuesday night, Aweys forced Ahmed out, denouncing his recent peace talks with the government.
Naturally, as Muhammad said “He who takes an oath but eventually finds a better way should do that which is better and break his oath” (Sahih Muslim 15: 4057). This outlook governed his actions as attested in the biographies and hadiths, not to mention the entire sequence of “revelation” of the Koran — which preached “peace” when Islam was weak (Meccan verses), only to renounce it, as Aweys did, for war, when Islam became strong (Medinan verses).
[…]
Violence in the Horn of Africa “” and in Somalia in particular “” has long been a deep concern of the United States, which fears the region could become a haven for al-Qaida.
Corrupt governments, porous borders, widespread poverty and discontented Muslim populations have created a region ripe for Islamic fundamentalism. Roughly half the area of the United States, the Horn of Africa is home to about 165 million people in in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Djibouti.
Kenya, and Tanzania just to its south, have already been victims of al-Qaida terrorism, with the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and attacks on a hotel and an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002.
The attacks emanated from neighboring Somalia.