The Iraq Study Group Report and Reality

GWYNNE DYER
WHEN an official American report talks about collapse in Iraq and catastrophe sweeping through the region, its sheer novelty after years of denial gives it a certain credibility.

Don't be fooled.

The Iraq Study Group's report is just as unrealistic as all the other plans for getting the United States out of Iraq without loss of face.

But don't assume that some cataclysm is going to shake the entire Middle East, either.

It's just an American defeat, not the end of the world, and the wild talk about chaos spreading across the whole region is an almost exact parallel to the "domino theory" that held sway in the United States the last time it was losing a war, in Vietnam.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once claimed that "We are the indispensable country," but there are no indispensable countries.

"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," says the ISG report, but it never acknowledges that this is the direct result of the US presence there.

Before the US invaded, the country was impoverished as a result of Saddam Hussein's wars and United Nations sanctions, but it was no longer any threat to its neighbours (the Iraqi army was never rebuilt after its defeat in the Gulf War of 1990-91), and there had been no mass killing of regime opponents since the failed Shia revolt that the United States had encouraged at the end of that war.

It was the American invasion that unleashed the violence that is now devastating the country.

The departure of American troops will not automatically end it, for the invasion "opened Pandora's box," as Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, admitted last March.

The rival groups cannot even begin the end-game until the US forces pull out - and yet the ISG report STILL does not commit the United States to a full and final withdrawal from Iraq.

There are some useful minor advances over previous Washington doctrine in the report, like the admission, finally, that almost all the resistance fighters in Iraq are local people - there are only 1 300 "foreign fighters" in Iraq, according to the ISG - but there are no new ideas in it.

Fair enough; as the newly appointed Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, put it, "Frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq."

But re-arranging the old ideas won't work either.

Build up the Iraqi army and police? They are already divided into sectarian units that will not act against their own sect.

Get Iran and Syria to help? Why on earth would they, after being painted as "rogue states" by Washington for the past six years? Broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal? Sure, with a Bush administration that has never dared to put any pressure on Israel, Hamas rejectionists at the heart of the elected Palestinian administration, Lebanon trembling on the brink of a new civil war, and a largely paralysed cabinet of discredited hawks clinging to power in Israel.

In any case President George W Bush, one of the world's more stubborn individuals, will probably reject any recommendations that require abandoning his delusional optimism on the subject.

It is very unlikely that the bulk of the US troops will be out of Iraq before the next US election in November, 2008.

However, it is very likely that they will be out of Iraq six months later, no matter whether the new president is a Democrat or a Republican.

And what will happen then? Iraq faces more slaughter, although nobody knows how much more.

It might just break up into three parts, Kurdish, Shia Arab and Sunni Arab, with only a few tens of thousands of extra deaths as the price of finally dissolving the state that was created almost ninety years ago.

The Shia Arabs might successfully subjugate the Sunni Arab minority, at a considerably larger cost in lives, and retain loose links with an entirely self-governing Kurdistan.

Or, most likely of all, the entire country might be dragged into a Lebanese-style civil war lasting for many years and killing hundreds of thousands more.

But the broader predictions of chaos spreading through the region borne by refugees and "Islamist terrorists," of regimes toppling and Shia-Sunni conflicts erupting from Bahrain to Lebanon, are probably wrong.

These dire predictions are about as credible as the old "domino theory."

Just as the US administration exaggerated its power to effect change on the way in, so it overestimates the harm that it is likely to do by leaving.

And what if radical regimes do seize power in one or more of the major Arab states? Hard luck on the local people, of course, but even then the United States doesn't pay a high price.

Oil is the only thing the Middle East produces that is of real importance to the rest of the world, and it ultimately does not matter who runs these countries (except to their own people) because even the most radical regimes have to sell their oil.

Post-revolutionary Iran is one example; Gadaffi's Libya is another.

They must have the oil income in order to feed their people.

Whatever Bush does now, it will all be over in another few years (except for the Iraqis, of course).

And the interest level is already dropping in most capitals as people figure out that it will only be a small, local disaster (except for the Iraqis, of course.) * Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Return to the Article

August 18, 2006
Are We Fighting 'Islamic Fascists'?
By David Ignatius
WASHINGTON -- "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom,'' President Bush said last week after Britain announced it had foiled a plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic. I have been pondering since then his description of the enemy. What are "Islamic fascists,'' and does this phrase make sense in describing America's adversaries?
The judicious columnist's answer is, of course, "yes'' and "no.'' A look at the history of fascism produces some startling parallels to the revolutionary movements that have swept Iran and other Muslim countries over the past several decades. But the phrase is misleading, both in its sweeping reference to Islam and in its evocation of another century and another war.
One of the old college textbooks gathering dust in my basement is Ernst Nolte's "Three Faces of Fascism,'' a classic study of the social forces that created fascist movements in France, Italy and Germany during the 1920s and '30s. It's a dense book, but it concludes with one unforgettable insight. Fascism, Nolte said, is "resistance to transcendence.'' By that, he meant that fascism was a rebellion against the liberating but destabilizing transformations of modern society.

In the countries where it took root, fascism began as a middle-class assault on the liberal elites who were creating that era's version of globalization. Jews were a special target, but they were also symbols of a larger internationalist movement. In one passage, Nolte described the focus of fascist protest in language that might apply to today's globalized world: "The leading class performs its task of establishing the technical and economic unity of the world, and emancipating all men for participation in this undertaking, in ever new political and intellectual compromises with the hitherto ruling powers: It is the society of synthesis.''
The fascist revolt against "transcendence'' was driven in part by rage against the perceived corruption of the European elites, who were thought to have grown rich during the booming, inflationary years of the 1920s at the expense of the hard-working middle class. The final malign motivation in Germany was shame and indignation over the nation's defeat in World War I. Fascism gave ordinary people an explanation of what had gone wrong in their lives -- and someone to blame.
I do see many of these same factors in the growing popularity of radical Islam in the Middle East. The baseline for this movement remains the Iranian revolution of 1979, which exploded in the region's most modern and, if you will, "transcendent'' state. The Shah's Iran was rushing to embrace the global economy. Its elite was liberal, secular, international -- and also wretchedly corrupt. Ordinary Muslims felt, with some justice, that they were being left out of the spoils of this new Iran -- that their hard work was being used to buy mansions on the Cote d'Azur. That radical populism lives on in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dressed in his ostentatiously humble golf jacket.
I remember how that revolutionary indignation swept the Middle East in the early 1980s, when I first began covering the region. The most popular preacher in Cairo in 1981 was Sheik Kishk, who would ridicule the corruption and Western ways of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and his family. A few months later, Sadat was murdered by Muslim terrorists.
Today's Muslim radicals, like the Nazis in Germany, gain support by promising dignity for a people who feel shamed by defeat in war. That's the appeal of Hezbollah's leader Hasan Nasrallah: The Arabs feel they have suffered 40 years of military humiliation from Israel. Nasrallah offers the tonic of defiance and, for the moment at least, a sort of victory. That makes him a hero, even though he brought on the ruination of Lebanon.
Back to President Bush and his "Islamic fascists.'' In many ways, this phrase does capture the rage that fuels America's enemies. What is most pernicious about the movement is that, as with European fascism, it has made Jews the symbol for larger forces that confound angry Muslims. This is perverse: The corrupt elites who obstruct Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians and Saudis today aren't Israeli Jews but their own rulers and their legions of fixers and bagmen.
Yet I balk at the term. The notion that we are fighting "Islamic fascists" blurs the conflict, widening the enemy to many if not all Muslims. It's as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini "Christian fascists," implying that it is their religion, not resistance to transcendence, that is the root cause of the problem. The revolution that began in Iran in 1979 must be contained so that it doesn't destabilize the region more than it already has. But it will only be broken from within, by people who are at last ready to transcend.

September 2, 2005
Muslim Leaders Confront Terror Threat Within Islam

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, American Muslim leaders insisted that the terrorism had nothing to do with Islam. They cited Central Intelligence Agency reports showing that Latin Americans were responsible for more terrorist incidents than Muslims. They blamed Israel or American foreign policy, and their organizations focused on campaigns to convince non-Muslim Americans that Islam was a religion of peace.

Nearly four years after the attacks, American Muslim leaders are changing their message. They are rolling out campaigns to persuade American Muslims -- especially the young -- to beware of preachers peddling extremism and terrorism. They say that terrorism is a poison infecting Islam and that moderate Muslims should take responsibility to root it out.

''Before, people thought, 'We have nothing to do with the terrorism, our religion is clear and it should be obvious to everyone else,''' said Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, based in Los Angeles.

The turning point was the terrorist bombings in London, said more than a dozen Muslim leaders interviewed for this article. Unlike the Sept. 11 attacks and most other terrorist incidents around the world, the London bombings were done by Muslims raised, educated and living in Britain, and willing to kill fellow Britons in the name of Islam.

''Now, we can't afford to be bystanders anymore, we have to be involved in constructive intervention,'' Mr. al-Marayati said. ''So we're doing it collectively, speaking out with one voice and now telling our children that they have to get it right, they can't be confused and can't give any credence to anybody who comes to them and says there is room for violence.''

Last year, when Mr. al-Marayati tried to enlist other Muslim leaders in a campaign against extremism and violence in Islam, he said he was rebuffed by many of them. He said they argued that not all terrorists were Muslims, or that they had other priorities or that such an approach would only bolster the critics who link Islam with terrorism.

But the London bombings were ''a shocking realization that within the Western world there could be Muslim youth who could be indoctrinated, and in spite of their upbringing, their birth and years of living in the West, that they could be vulnerable to this kind of thing,'' said Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group based in Plainfield, Ind.

Dr. Syeed said that although American Muslims were more integrated and prosperous than Muslims in Britain or France, it was possible terrorists could find recruits here.

So this year at the Islamic Society's annual convention, which starts Friday in Chicago and is expected to draw 40,000 people, organizers will mount a new campaign against terrorism and extremism, with posters and pamphlets designed for use in mosques and Islamic schools.

The materials, Dr. Syeed said, will provide a theological rebuttal to Muslim extremists who cite the Koran and Islamic texts to justify violence. ''It has become very critical that these things need to be spelled out thoroughly and become part of our day-to-day discussion,'' he said.

A fatwa, or religious edict, against extremism and terrorism released by a group of North American Muslim scholars in July has been signed by representatives of more than 250 mosques and Islamic centers. The Council on American-Islamic Affairs is running public affairs spots on television and radio with the slogan ''Not in the Name of Islam.'' One chapter says it put up a billboard next to the Florida Turnpike saying, ''Islam Condemns Terrorism.''

The slogans themselves are not new. Within a few hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, 10 American Muslim groups released statements decrying the attacks, and many groups have routinely denounced subsequent attacks around the world.

What has changed is the intended audience. Before, Muslim leaders said they had wanted to reach non-Muslims with the message that terrorism was un-Islamic. They still do, but now they say the more urgent need is to reach other Muslims.

In a Friday sermon a few weeks after the bombings in London, Dr. Maher Hathout told the crowd at the Islamic Center of Southern California, which he helped found, ''It is our responsibility -- young and old, parents, sons and daughters, teachers and students, leaders and activists, to rally together to plug the holes through which the distorting predators pass through and push the substances that kill brain cells and fill hearts with despair and hate.''

But some Muslim leaders said more than a shift in rhetoric was needed. Sermons, pamphlets and posters are not sufficient, said Akbar S. Ahmed, a former Pakistani ambassador to England and a professor of international relations at American University in Washington, D.C.

''They have to rethink the syllabi in religious schools, in teacher training programs, in what they're teaching the kids,'' Mr. Ahmed said.

Muslim leaders said in interviews that it had taken them too long to conclude that they had to confront their own. For a long time American Muslims were ''in denial,'' and some still are, said Hesham A. Hassaballa, a doctor in the Chicago area and a columnist.

''A lot of people refused to believe that there are Muslims who would do that type of thing, because they can't picture it,'' Dr. Hassaballa said. ''In their minds it's just impossible that someone would do that in the name of their faith.''

Some Muslim leaders have become defensive in the years since Sept. 11 because of mosque surveillance and aggressive investigative techniques, and they have been quick to condemn the investigations as a violation of free speech, said Shadi Hamid, a graduate student at Georgetown University who is active in several Muslim organizations.

''The emphasis has so much been on civil liberties that sometimes the right balance wasn't achieved, and civil liberties became our defining issue,'' Mr. Hamid said. ''I think there is now a realization that freedom of speech should not be absolute.''

Extremist Muslims from abroad used to give speeches at American mosques, said Khaled Abou el-Fadl, an Islamic jurist and professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles. Now some mosques' boards are requiring visiting lecturers to get board permission before giving speeches.

''Mosque leaders are realizing that they could be liable,'' said Mr. Abou el-Fadl, author of ''The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists.'' ''With some radical imams arrested and placed in deportation proceedings, that has definitely had a rather chilling effect on a lot of other people.''

''There's a transformation going on'' among American Muslims, he said. ''The essential transformation that is taking place is a significantly lower degree of tolerance for irresponsible political diatribes.''

Some of it may be rhetoric, Mr. Abou el-Fadl said, ''but you would never have heard this rhetoric just a couple of years ago.''

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Home

December 15, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whichever Way the Wind Blows

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Midland, Tex.

Time for another news quiz: Which American state produces more wind-generated electricity than any other? Answer: Texas. Next question — this one you’ll never get: Which politician launched the Texas wind industry? Answer: Former Gov., now President, George W. Bush.

Yes, there are many things that baffle me about President Bush, but none more than how the same man who initiated one of the most effective renewable energy programs in America, has presided over an administration that for six years has dragged its feet on alternative energy, used its regulatory powers to weaken efficiency standards for major appliances and stuck its head in the sand on global warming.

I’ll wait for historians to sort that out. But here is some immediate advice I can give the president: If you want to salvage any positive legacy, it will not come from Iraq. There are only tears left there. No, the only way for you, Mr. President, to salvage any legacy is to get back in touch with your green Texas roots and devote the rest of your term to REALLY ending America’s oil addiction, liberating us from dependence on petro-authoritarian regimes and making America the leader in renewable energies that combat climate change.

If this isn’t the core of Mr. Bush’s next State of the Union, he might as well go back to Crawford now. At least there he might be able to contemplate what went wrong with his presidency under lights powered by clean, wind-generated electricity that he promoted.

I came down to West Texas, the Saudi Arabia of wind, to find out how it all happened. Pat Wood, a friend of the president, was chairman of Texas’s Public Utility Commission when the push for wind energy started.

“At the end of a meeting on transmission policy in mid-1996,” he recalled, “I was on my way out the door of the governor’s office, when Governor Bush said to me, ‘Pat, we like wind.’ He was at his desk. I said, ‘We what?’ He said: ‘You heard me. Go get smart on wind.’ ”

Mr. Wood, his fellow commissioners and the Texas utilities did just that. They conducted polls and were stunned by the results: Texas electricity customers were ready to pay a little extra to get more clean renewable energy. So Mr. Bush instructed Mr. Wood to work on wind with the utilities and the environmentalists. Together, they created the Texas Renewable Portfolio Mandate, which Mr. Bush got passed by the Texas Legislature in 1999, as part of a power competition bill. The mandate stipulated that Texas power companies had to produce 2,000 new megawatts of electricity from renewables, mostly wind, by 2009.

What happened? A dozen new companies jumped into the Texas market and built wind turbines to meet the mandate — so many that the 2,000-megawatt goal was reached in 2005. So now the Texas Legislature has upped the mandate to 5,000 megawatts by 2015. Everyone knows they’ll beat that, too, because all this investment has driven down the costs and made wind power in Texas competitive with clean coal, nuclear and natural gas, even without the temporary tax break. Mr. Wood says he thinks Texas could be producing 15 percent of all its energy from renewables by 2015.

An energy wiz, Mr. Wood now advises Airtricity, an Irish wind-power company that also entered the Texas market. He and I toured its new wind farm near Midland, which will provide enough wind electricity — 125 megawatts — to power 40,000 homes in Dallas, replacing gas, nuclear and coal. The farm consists of giant turbines that sprout like Star Wars machine-monsters from the hardscrabble plains around Midland — amid the mesquite, rattlesnakes and oil-pumping jacks.

When Mr. Bush ran for governor, his motto was: “What Texans can dream, Texans can do.” Just substitute “Americans” for “Texans,” and he’s already got the last line of his next State of the Union. What would the substance be? First, let’s set a Texas-like renewable energy mandate for every state. Second, let’s forge a national electricity transmission grid from the Dakotas to Texas to take wind electricity from where it is best produced to the big cities where it is most needed. Finally, let’s create a long-term tax subsidy for building and buying plug-in hybrid cars. Wind energy is produced abundantly at night, when demand is lowest. Electric hybrids would be charged at night. That would mean hybrid electric cars, which emit virtually no carbon, could be powered by wind, which produces no carbon. If that scaled, it could be better than Kyoto.

You got something better to do, Mr. President?

December 14, 2006
Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and MARK MAZZETTI
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 9 — The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire.

Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the air and yelled, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”

“I am ready to die,” said Osama Abdi Rahim, dressed head to toe in camouflage and marching around with a loaded rifle. He is 7 years old.

The inevitability of war hangs over Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked seaside capital. But unlike the internal anarchy that has consumed the country for 15 years, the looming battle is now with Ethiopia, threatening to further destabilize the troubled Horn of Africa.

In the past week the increasingly militant Islamists in control of Mogadishu and much of the rest of the country have begun a food drive, a money drive and an AK-47 assault rifle drive, and have sent doctors and nurses, along with countless young soldiers, to the front lines.

For its part, Ethiopia, with tacit approval from the United States, has been steadily slipping soldiers across the border, trying to hold off the Islamists and shore up Somalia’s weak, unpopular and divided transitional government.

Though that government has been recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate authority in Somalia, its power barely extends to the municipal limits of Baidoa, the inland town where it is based.

The Islamist forces, on the other hand, seem to be very popular here, having defeated Mogadishu’s warlords earlier this year to pacify one of the world’s most murderous cities.

Their troops, which United Nations officials say are secretly getting weapons from several Arab countries and Eritrea, have encircled Baidoa and are vowing to wage war against the Ethiopian forces unless they leave. Ethiopian convoys have been attacked, and the Islamists recently skirmished with soldiers from Baidoa, with dozens reported killed. That taste of war seems to have whetted the appetite for more.

“We wait for the Ethiopians like dry land waits for rain,” said Mustafa Ali Mohammed, an Islamic leader in Burhakaba, a town near the dividing line between the Islamists and Baidoa.

Analysts are unanimous that a full-scale conflict between the Islamists and Ethiopia, a country with a strong Christian identity, would be disastrous for Somalia, which is already suffering from severe flooding and years of neglect, and for the region as a whole, because neighboring countries may jump in.

Gen. John P. Abizaid of United States Central Command — or Centcom — which has responsibility for American military interests in the region, recently flew to Ethiopia to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who had told American officials that he could cripple the Islamist forces “in one to two weeks.”

Walking a careful line, General Abizaid made it clear that a broad military invasion of Somalia could create a humanitarian crisis across the Horn of Africa, Centcom officials said, but did not tell Ethiopian officials to pull their troops out.

Indeed, some American officials say the United States supports Ethiopia’s military buildup because they feel it is the only way to protect the weak Baidoa government from being overrun, force the Islamists to the negotiating table and contain what they call a growing regional threat.

American officials have accused the Islamists of sheltering terrorists connected to Al Qaeda, but the Ethiopian troops’ presence seems to have only increased the potential for terrorist activity. Suicide bombers, unknown in Somalia until a few months ago, have attacked Baidoa twice recently, and last month the first Iraqstyle roadside bombs were detonated against Ethiopian convoys.

Residents of Mogadishu say hundreds of fighters from other Muslim countries have arrived at the city’s main airport in recent days, drawn by the Islamists’ blaring call for a holy war against Ethiopia and against America, which is especially despised here.

Memories are still fresh of the botched American-led relief operation in the early 1990s, and more recently of the covert American effort to bolster Mogadishu’s warlords in an 11th-hour bid to prevent an Islamist takeover. That strategy backfired, driving more people into the arms of the Islamists.

“I’ll be honest,” said Sheik Muktar Robow Abu Monsur, the deputy security chief for the Islamists. “America is the best friend of Islam. It wakes up the sleeping Muslim.”

In fact, Jendayi Frazer, the State Department’s top official for Africa policy, said diplomatic and intelligence officials believed that the Islamists could be trying to provoke an Ethiopian attack as a "rallying cry for support" to their side. The countries fought a war from 1977 to 1978 over the Ogaden, a contested area of eastern Ethiopia — and Somalia lost.

"If this thing goes to a military fight,” Ms. Frazer said, “it’s a bloodbath."

American officials helped push through a recent United Nations resolution authorizing peacekeepers from African countries to back up the Baidoa officials. The resolution lets the Baidoa government, but not the Islamists, bring in weapons despite a longstanding arms embargo.

The problem with that strategy, many analysts say, is that it misreads the Islamists’ power, rooted not so much in their military strength — a few hundred armed pickup trucks and a few thousand fighters — but in their popular support. The Islamists emerged several years ago as a network of clan-based courts that unified warring factions.

Ethiopia may have the strongest military in the region, trained by American advisers and complete with jet fighters, but attacking Islamist forces may only drive them underground, into a guerrilla insurgency.

American officials have said they are hoping that the moderates within the Islamic administration will prevail over hard-line, war-mongering elements. But if there ever was such a struggle, it is over.

Three months ago, Ibrahim Hassan Addou, the foreign minister for the Islamists and an American citizen of Somali descent, talked of sharing power and holding elections.

Now, like the others, he is talking war, in terms nearly indistinguishable from the most militant Islamic leaders. Moderates, he said, were backed into a corner by an American-led campaign to discredit and isolate the Islamic administration.

“Everybody was against us from the beginning, and now we have no choice but to fight,” he said. “What I don’t understand is why the whole world is trying to throw its weight behind a government that has been totally rejected by its own people.”

United Nations officials say they support the government in Baidoa because it is the most representative of the various clans in Somalia. But one side effect of the multi-clan approach has been ceaseless disputes between clan elders. Meanwhile, the Islamists have aggressively expanded their territory.

Many officials in Baidoa vehemently opposed calling on Ethiopian muscle, fearing a backlash. In the past some Somali clans have teamed up with Ethiopian forces to dominate other clans, ending in greater bloodshed. So when the idea of bringing Ethiopian soldiers to Baidoa was first proposed last year, it proved so divisive that it set off a brawl among officials — and it failed to pass.

“The problem with having Ethiopians defend us is that they make us look like the puppets that the Islamists accuse us of being,” said Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, the speaker of the parliament in Baidoa. Ethiopian officials insist that they have sent only a few hundred military advisers to Baidoa, but United Nation monitors and witnesses on the ground say several thousand Ethiopian infantry troops are digging in near the city.

Sporadic peace talks between Baidoa officials and the Islamists have produced little but broken promises. The only thing that seems to be delaying all-out war is the mutual recognition that a decisive victory is unlikely.

The Islamists are reluctant to march on Baidoa and trigger a crushing Ethiopian response, while the Ethiopians seem fearful of trying to storm the Islamists’ stronghold of Mogadishu, the city that claimed the lives of 18 American soldiers in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993.

A growing number of Democrats in Congress are urging the Bush administration to change course and deal with the Islamists for what they are: the power on the ground.

“The Islamists aren’t going away, so the sooner we talk to them, the better,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, the New Jersey Democrat who is expected to become the chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa when his party takes control of Congress in January.

In Mogadishu the Islamists are continuing their hearts-and-minds campaign, organizing neighborhood cleanups, delivering food to the needy and resuscitating old national institutions like the Supreme Court, which was given a fresh coat of paint and reopened in October.

Streets that were clogged with years of debris are now clear and bureaucracy is budding, with more rules and more paperwork, including forms at the airport that ask name, age, nationality and religion — Muslim or non-Muslim being the only choices.

All the talk of slaughtering Ethiopian invaders and their American sponsors, though, seems to have brought out a harsher side of the Islamic administration. Nearly every day, rings of people gather on Mogadishu’s streets to watch lashings, and the crowds cheer as leather whips cut canals into flesh. One Islamic leader in a town north of Mogadishu recently issued an edict threatening that anyone who did not pray five times a day would be beheaded.

“It’s black and white,” said the leader, Hussein Barre Rage. “The Koran says people must pray.”

Not long ago Somalia was a place where women wore skirts and men drank beer, and even today a large chunk of the population is quietly concerned about the absolutist direction the Islamists are heading in.

But the prospects of war with Ethiopia seem to have pushed many of these people solidly into the Islamic camp.

“I’m not into thought control,” said Dahir Abdullahi Hirsi, a pharmacist in Mogadishu. “But I hate Ethiopians even more.”

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Mogadishu, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.