Not at all sure what to make of this UN Expert Panel report on Somalia. Some things are clear enough, for example that Ethiopia is supporting the old not-government and Eritrea the Islamic Courts in order to piss off the Ethiopians. But what is all this James Bond stuff about Iranians trading arms for uranium?
All Iranian-uranium stories must be subject to a large bullshit adjustment for the very simple reason that Iran has uranium mines on its own territory. I’ve never heard of uranium in Somalia, but I am willing to be informed by any experts who may be around. Equally, what is this tale of 700-odd Somali volunteers going to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah? It seems very unlikely – after all, before the Courts’ success, the airport wasn’t operational. The only ones that were working are in Puntland or other warlord territories, which means we are expected to believe that they happily permitted several 747-loads of their enemies to transit their territories. On arrival, they would have had to transit the roads under the Israeli air force’s nose, to say nothing of the Maronites’ and Druzes’ intelligence services.
And, of course, wouldn’t they have been a wee bit conspicuous in Lebanon? According to other newspaper reports, they are meant to have arrived there in the heart of the war, and then gone again – not infiltrating over the border in dribs and drabs, but showing up as a battalion-sized chunk. This sounds very much like the Dr. Evil theory of state sponsorship at work.
Update: 1225GMT, 16/11/06: Israeli UN mission sez they never saw any Somalis up north. Plot thickens.