IN THE PAST week a dangerous round of warfare has erupted in Somalia, a failed state in the Horn of Africa that the United States tried in vain to rebuild in the early 1990s. Troops from neighboring Ethiopia who were defending a U.N.-backed transitional government were attacked by forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which for the past six months has controlled much of the southern part of the country. Ethiopia responded by launching a full-scale offensive against the Islamists; by yesterday its forces had captured several towns and were said to be advancing toward Mogadishu, the capital....
