Eritrea has deployed some two thousand troops to fight alongside SomaliaÂ’s al-Qaeda linked Islamic Courts Union, Pajamas Media has learned.
Thus, Ethiopia and the United States are not the only foreign countries with troops on the ground in Somalia.
To prevent SomaliaÂ’s transitional government from being crushed in its final stronghold in the south-central Somali city of Baidoa, Ethiopia dispatched thousands of troops as well as aircraft in a major campaign that began on Christmas day.
The Ethiopian campaign has been successful to date, with Ethiopian troops capturing Mogadishu and scattering the ICUÂ’s fighters.
Ethiopia’s longtime rival, Eritrea, had troops in the country for about four months prior to that. A confidential UN report drafted by the Monitoring Group on Somalia in late 2006 says that “2000 fully equipped combat troops from Eritrea” arrived to the north of Mogadishu in late August, and redeployed to different areas held by the ICU. According to high-level sources in Somalia’s transitional government and U.S. intelligence, these Eritrean troops never left the country—a development unknown to American policymakers until today.
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