And so,

Making the best of my new format, comes the pleasurable task of replenishing it with links. There were a great many blogs which I have grown to know and like which were not included in my previous format. It's now easier to load them onto my blog, so expect quite a flurry of them.

One of those going in shortly will be Hugh Hewitt's blog. Always interesting, occasionally inspirational.

Today Hugh has a big spread up about Somalia and Ethiopia. This region of Africa has been of special interest to me for a long time; I lived in Kenya for half a year and met a number of Somalians and Ethiopians while there. My interest, or, perhaps more accurately, deep affection, has never left. Now, it looks as though a conflict is brewing. Rather, it looks like the Islamists are going to pick their fight.

I have just a few thoughts about this myself. One is that if Somalia and Ethiopia fight, Eritrea will treat it as a proxy war, a continuation of their long enmity with their western neighbours. Another is that Sudan will use the cover of another regional conflict to make yet more inroads into their western neighbour, Chad. A third is that Somalia will receive support from the Arabian peninsular. Is there a pattern emerging here? An expansionism from East to West? Yes, there is, or there will be.

The war that Sheik Aweys- the long-time Al-Qaeda associate and veteran of Somali tribal warfare who is now at the heart of the Islamic Courts movement- is trumpeting for is a war that has been going on through the ages, where the Christian "lion of Africa", Ethiopia, stood stubbornly in the way of the spread of Islam.

Nowadays, though, Ethiopia is getting on for 50 percent Muslim. It doesn't take a genius to see what the Islamists have in mind. Toppling Christian-oriented Ethiopia would represent one of those great historic goals of the neo-Caliphist agenda.