Is it chaos over Al-Qaida or chaos over stability?

My new Slate piece also deals with Somalia, but from a little different perspective than the one I wrote about three days ago. You can read the full article here or some of the highlights here:

The war in Somalia has entered a second stage. Now that the "hot war" is over, Islamist militiamen are trying to escape Ethiopian forces by sneaking into neighboring Kenya or taking off their uniforms and blending with the civilian population while promising to keep the battle alive by other methods, namely insurgency. But the government question is far from settled, and neither are the questions about the role of the United States in the conflict engulfing the Horn of Africa. Answers are hard to find for many reasons, but chief among them is the information gap.

The story of the war in Somalia can be told in two very different ways, and the facts are so elusive that one should approach the process of forming any opinion about it with proper humility. The biggest gap is the one concerning the most crucial piece of information: To what extent is the Islamic Courts Union - the Islamist rebel movement that was the de facto ruler of Somalia until a week ago - a front for al-Qaida's global terrorist network? The answer to this question is the key against which every action of every player has to be measured.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer presented the al-Qaida case most clearly. She accused the ICU of being controlled by "East Africa Al Qaeda cell individuals." That's a serious accusation. Where did it come from? She didn't say. They never do when "intelligence" is involved.

If Frazer's information is reliable, and the Islamists are indeed "controlled" by al-Qaida, the justification for war is clear and quite convincing: You can't expect policy-makers to let Somalia fall into terrorist hands unchallenged - that could result in a second incarnation of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

But what if Frazer is wrong - or was exaggerating, or was manipulated - as many in Somalia and even more in the broader Muslim world believe? What if the Islamic Courts Union is more about stability than hostility? In that case, things are quite different: Here's a country with no law and no government; mired in poverty, violence, and hunger; to which a coalition of Muslim gangs - some of them religious extremists - brought a sense of stability and order.

If there was a chance for a new Somalia to emerge under the ICU - extremely religious but with the functioning government the country has lacked for the last decade and a half - it has gone now.

What America chose in Somalia was not to help build something, but rather to destroy a potential promise that was also a potential threat. It chose chaos over stability, anarchy over order. Short of a miracle in the desired talks between the rival factions, Somalia is returning to the state it was in six months ago: chaotic, miserable, and mostly forgotten.

And truth be told, this might have been the right choice for America. But the proof of such a claim has not yet been presented to the general public.

More American policy on Rosner's Domain:

For Bush and Rice, every Qassam pushes back the clock

Ford: The leader who saved Israel from Nixon