ABSTRACT
In June 2006, a coalition of Islamist groups known as the 'Islamic Courts Union' gained substantial de facto control of the southern two-thirds of Somalia. The coalition displaced secular clan militias aligned with the Transitional Federal Government formed in exile in October 2004, which remained Somalia's internationally recognised government. Any such notion was quickly dispelled when Ethiopia announced that it could not afford to keep its troops in Somalia, and started, in late January, gradually to pull them out. Even bin Laden, when contemplating his next stop after Sudan in 1996, had strong indications from several al-Qaeda operatives dispatched to Somalia to help clan militias battle foreign troops that the clans were too untrustworthy and hostile to outsiders to provide reliable security in an otherwise ungovemed country.
