Somalis from southern Somalia carrying their belongings make their way to a new camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu Somalia, Thursday July, 28, 2011. Heavy fighting erupted Thursday in Somalia's capital as African Union peacekeepers launched an offensive aimed at protecting famine relief efforts from attacks by al-Qaida-linked militants, officials said. The al-Shabab militants already have killed men who tried to escape the famine with their families, saying it is better to starve than accept help from the West. The World Food Program says it cannot reach 2.2 million people in need of aid in the militant-controlled areas in southern Somalia because of insecurity.Farah Abdi Warsameh/The Associated Press
Al-Shabab, the Islamist militia that has been the closest thing to a government in southern Somalia for some years, has destroyed whatever legitimacy it had, by obstructing humanitarian organizations from entering the country to provide relief from the severe famine.
Inconsistency has not helped. Four weeks ago, an al-Shabab spokesman declared that the group would no longer forbid the entry into Somalia of foreign NGOs. A fortnight later, the same spokesman said that, though organizations that had previously operated in Somalia could stay, no others could come in. This wavering seem to reflect factional infighting between members of al-Shabab who have been trained by al-Qaeda and those less keen on global jihad.
The drought in Somalia and the famine it has caused have turned into an international refugee crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled into Kenya and Ethiopia.
The anarchy in most of Somalia - apart from the fairly well ordered sections that have reconstituted themselves as Somaliland and Puntland, in the northern part of the country - has continued since the overthrow of president Siad Barre in 1991.
After more than two decades of an oppressive state-socialist regime, many Somalis appeared content not to have any central government, reverting instead to clan and tribal structures. The international community's attempts to re-establish a government have had little success, beyond a few neighbourhoods in the former capital, Mogadishu - it is a Potemkin village of a government.
All that may start to change because of the terrible famine. The disadvantages of archaic tribalism have become manifest. The last such famine in Somalia, which killed 300,000 people, took place in 1991 and 1992, the very period in which the Barre regime dissolved. A cycle may be ending. Al-Shabab is not defeated yet, but Somalia can no longer maintain its retreat from the modern world.