3/28/2006: Refugee camp in Somalia

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Originally Posted by chrisinhouston

Going out to get food and water is usually where the women get raped by the janjaweed militias. ...

''The janjaweed will rape and kill my family,'' Mr. Idris added. ''And there's nothing I can do.''

Janjaweed militias are in Darfur - part of Sudan. Somolia is another nation that George Sr invaded and then Clinton wisely pulled US troops out of that 'no win' situation.

Meanwhile learn this story published in The Economist of 3 Mar 2006:

The danger of war spilling over
Two months ago, rebels hoping to depose Chad's strongman, Idriss Déby, drove through neighbouring Sudan in a convoy of brand-new Toyota jeeps and burst across Chad's eastern border near the town of Adré. Plainly egged on by the Sudanese government, they had no trouble passing through Sudan's many checkpoints, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a journey of some 1,600km (1,000 miles), to Chad's border. But Chadian troops loyal to Mr Déby, some of them recently trained in counter-terrorism by the Americans, beat off the rebels and chased them back into Sudan.

So far, this scrap among Chadians has not blown up into a war between Chadian and Sudanese government forces, though Mr Déby has declared a “state of belligerence” with his eastern neighbour. The battle of Adré, he suggested, was nothing less than a Sudanese plot to replace his African regime with an Arab one. His Chadian army has concentrated its forces around Adré, exposing the southern bit of Chad's border with Sudan to banditry. Despite a peace agreement signed recently under international pressure in Libya, a nasty proxy war is in the offing, with Chad upping its support for rebels in Darfur, while Sudan backs the Chadian rebels camped in Darfur who still want to overthrow Mr Déby's regime.

It's not just Somolia and Sudan (Darfur). Add to that list Chad and the recently opened petroleum pipeline what we have built from Chad, across Cameroon to the Atlantic. We make allies because we don't innovate and therefore demand more oil? And you thought the middle east was wild. Learn about the Central African Republic and Niger - or George Jr will do it for you.

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The Economist also provides this map since one cannot understand such politics without grasping the graphics. Somolia is off to the right and not on the Red Sea.