Giles Elgood

Have the Islamists started to go too far in Somalia?

The reaction among ordinary Somalis to an al-Shabaab car bomb attack on African Union peacemakers last week may be instructive.

The attack was billed as an act of revenge against America for a commando raid carried out a few days earlier by U.S. troops, who killed one of the most wanted al Qaeda men in Africa.

Seventeen of the peacemakers, all Africans, were killed. So too were a number of Somalis who had gone to the peacekeepers' base for medical attention. At least 19 Somalis died in shelling that followed the car bomb attack.

"Bombing Somali Muslims because of a dead foreign terrorist is totally ungodly and
inhumane," businesswoman Asha Farah told Reuters after the al Shabaab attack. "I can only say that al Shabaab are mad."

Her view reflected that of many Somalis that Reuters correspondents spoke to in the capital, Mogadishu.

Will any of this make a difference to a group that has already conducted executions and punishment amputations and which shows no sign of letting up in its fight to oust the transitional government?

That remains to be seen, but it is perhaps worth remembering that both in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al Qaeda lost a lot of  ground when they began killing innocent Muslims during their attacks on Westerners.

There is certainly frustration among Somalis, who feel that al Shabaab is misinterpreting Islam and using religion to justify criminal acts in what is after all a traditionally moderate Muslim society.

Most Somalis are not in a position to take the initiative against al Shabaab -- but if a real international force took the fight to them in Mogadishu and elsewhere, it could find it had more support on the ground than expected.

There has been some excellent writing and drama from South Africa over the years, and much of it is serious stuff.

One thinks perhaps of Athol Fugard and J.M. Coetzee. Even the titles -- Sizwe Bansi is Dead and Disgrace -- convey a certain gravitas, at the very least.

So, a science fiction movie set in Johannesburg comes, to many outside South Africa at least, as something of a surprise.

For those who haven't seen it, South African-born director Neill Blomkamp's District 9 is the story of how a mysterious space craft appears over Johannesburg.

It turns out to contain starving aliens, referred to scathingly as "prawns", who are brought down to the city and housed in an enormous and chaotic shanty ghetto.

The film is done in the form of a documentary -- although it can't resist some good
old-fashioned shoot-outs involving the aliens' space weapons.

It's also pretty funny as it satirises just about everybody -- the bureaucrats given the task of evicting the prawns from District 9, the soldiers who have to be restrained from shooting them, the Nigerian bandits who exploit them ruthlessly and the unfortunate prawns themselves, who are addicted to cat food.

But of course it's not all sci-fi fun. This being South Africa, audiences are also asked to consider more ponderous questions that relate to the country's racial history and also how to deal with "aliens" who suddenly appear on the doorstep after being afflicted by some crisis at home -- something the South African government has had to contend with in recent years as Zimbabwe has imploded, forcing millions across the border.

The Boko Haram sect surprised many in Nigeria and elsewhere with the violence of their uprising last week.

Before Boko Haram was suppressed by the security forces at the cost of nearly 800 lives, we learned that the group's name means "Western education is sinful" in the Hausa language used in northern Nigeria.

We also learned that the sect's charismatic leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was, before he was killed while in police detention, opposed to all things Western.

Which prompts two thoughts. The first is that the anti-education message may not have much traction in Nigeria, a country whose inhabitants are determined to get ahead and secure the best education for their children. In many cases that will be either in the West or in Nigerian schools offering a Western-style curriculum.

During the years I spent in the country, staff working for me were always concerned about being able to raise enough money for their children's school uniforms and books.

And the second thought: Yusuf's opposition to the modern world seems to have had its limits. When the violence erupted in Maiduguri, he was seen riding in a Toyota car, dressed in military-style fatigues and accompanied by men carrying Russian-designed assault rifles.

So far the exact toll from the latest bout of religious rioting in northern Nigeria is not clear. At least 150 have died and the toll may well go higher.

The killings are bad enough, but the north has experienced much worse within living memory. One of the bloodiest outbreaks of religious rioting occurred in Kano in 1980, and northern cities saw a series of upheavals during the decade that followed.

The Kano riots, led by Muhammadu Marwa, a Muslim preacher otherwise known as "Maitatsine", were  put down by the army.

Reporting nearly 30 years ago on the Kano disturbances, Lagos Radio quoted the then defence minister, Iya Abubakar, as saying: "The armed forces have successfully dislodged religious fanatics from areas occupied by them in Kano.

"Hostages captured by the fanatics have been set free and are being kept by the infantry brigade in Kano."

At the time, the death toll from 10 days of rioting was put at 1,000. Nearly a year later the government-controlled Daily Times said it was in fact 4,177.

We often hear of the human cost of war. We don't often see the cash cost laid out so baldly as in the price list that went with my colleague Abdi Sheikh's feature from Mogadishu on the arms market that thrives in the city amid Somalia's tragedy.

Among popular weapons, a 120 mm mortar costs $700, plus $55 for each mortar bomb. A 23 mm anti-aircraft gun (truck mounted), fetches a hefty $20,000.

Pistols range from $400 to $1,000 according to condition and country of origin. An Indian-made AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle costs $140. Better quality versions from North Korea cost $600 and the Russian original costs $400. Hand-grenades go for $25 each, landmines $100.

Huge weapons systems, such as nuclear missiles, are the stuff of international geopolitics. But in Africa at least, the weapons that are killing people on a daily basis in places like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur are more modest in scale and can be bought at a relatively low cost.

Edwin Dyer was among a group of Western tourists kidnapped on the Niger-Mali border after attending a festival of Tuareg culture in late January.

Four months later the Briton was killed by al Qaeda's North African wing, which had been demanding the release of Abu Qatada, a Jordanian Islamist being held in Britain.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said Dyer's death was "a tiny portion of what innocent Muslims taste every day at the hands of the Crusader and Jewish coalition".

Although Dyer was killed on May 31, news of his death was not released until June 3, a day before President Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo intended to mend fences with the Muslim world.

Analysts suggested that AQIM may have intended Dyer's death as a message to the American president.

Or was the reason more prosaic?

Last month, Algerian media said AQIM was demanding 10 million euros ($14 million) for Dyer and a Swiss national the group was also holding.

Britain said it would not deal with AQIM.

Salima Tlemcani, an expert in security issues who writes for Algeria's El Watan newspaper, said Dyer had in fact been killed because no ransom had been paid. Other hostages, not from Britain, had been released because AQIM got the money it asked for, she said.

The scandal engulfing British members of parliament over their often startling expenses claims has started to bring down some prominent victims: the speaker of the House of Commons, two Labour Party MPs and four from the Conservatives at time of writing.

The Daily Telegraph, which obtained a disk containing unexpurgated details of claims for moat dredging, floating duck houses, plasma screen televisions and reimbursement for mortgages long paid off, is now on Day 19 of its unremittingly lurid revelations.

It's hard to imagine that there can be much more of this, at least as far as the House of Commons is concerned, yet there probably will be.

Some political commentators are now beginning to wonder where else this story will lead.

One group of lawmakers has long been the target of stories about their expenses -- members of the European Parliament.  As this clip from RTL television shows, some of them are not too happy to be held up to scrutiny.

For days now Britons have been regaled with newspaper stories detailing the dubious expense claims of their Members of Parliament.

The Honourable Members, it seems, have been charging for everything from a few thousand pounds for clearing a moat to a few pence for a new bath plug. An outraged nation has risen almost as one to denounce its greedy lawmakers.

But while the various schemes devised by the members of the Mother of Parliaments are ingenious in the way they exploit the generous rules laid down by the "Fees Office" of the House of Commons, they do lack a certain scale.

When it comes to separating the state from its money, politicians in Africa, for example, show none of the inhibitions of their British colleagues.

In Nigeria this month two senior lawmakers investigating corruption in the power sector were detained in connection with a scam involving electricity contracts. How much money involved? $41 million.

In March, Nigerian police arrested a former state governor who is under investigation for misappropriation of funds totalling $170 million.

Enormous sums of money compared with the thousands of pounds involved in Britain, but still small change compared to the billions stolen by Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.

It's still not clear what the consequences of the British case will be.

But perhaps there are signs that African politicians cannot always rely on a blind eye being turned on their financial affairs.

The prosecutor's office in Paris is trying to block an investigation into corruption allegations against three African presidents who have amassed luxury homes and fleets of cars in France.

Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (who all deny wrongdoing) may never appear in a French court.

But anti-graft campaigners argue that the case does at least mean that the leaders' usually secret financial affairs are now being discussed in public.

A new spate of attacks on shipping has made it quite clear that Somali pirates are not going to stop their activities just now, even though military operations by the United States and France have killed five of the buccaneers.

The international naval flotilla is stretched to protect the thousands of ships that use the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Another reason for the pirates' boldness is believed to have been the onset of good weather, which favours the small speed boats they use to stalk the lumbering merchantmen.

But if the navies' capabilities are limited by the vast sea area they have to cover, the pirates may soon face a more compelling reason to rein in their activities, as my colleague Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu reports.

"The sea is calm now, but by May it will be terrible to sail on the Indian Ocean," said Somali pirate Farah Hussein.

"Our attacks on ships will probably decrease in the coming month. But we might move to the Gulf of Aden to continue our mission," he told Reuters by telephone.

If the pirates have to confine themselves to the Gulf of Aden, it should be easier for the naval flotilla to catch them, shouldn't it?

It's a cynical adage of British journalism that one dead Briton is, in headline terms at least, worth several dozen foreign fatalities.

A similar law seems to be in play with the latest hostage drama on the high seas off Somalia, where four pirates have been holding an American sea captain in a life boat under the watchful eye of the USS Bainbridge.

At the moment, other pirates back at their bases in Somalia are holding 18 vessels and 267 sailors, the fruits of several months of attacks on ships off the coast.

The media in the United States has focussed fully on this latest story - a drama with just one American at its centre - while showing rather less interest in the hundreds of other hostages, none of whom is thought to be American.

So is this just the cruel law in action? Or should we be grateful that piracy is now receiving the full attention of the White House and the State Department and hope that at last more decisive action will be taken to clear the shipping lanes of bandits?