While I was out of town, Ethiopia decided to launch a bombing campaign and a ground assault against Somalia. The putative purpose of the invasion is to run out the network of sharia courts that recently took over some of the major cities in Somalia, and then to install the transitional government into power. For those keeping track, that’s the gang of pretenders who have been holed up in the town of Baidoia for the past year, and exercising effective power over basically nowhere outside of their headquarters. (The Baidoia government was in fact governing from a secure location in Kenya for about two years before they even got up the gumption to relocate to somewhere actually in Somalia.)

So why do you suppose it is that virtually every American news report on Ethiopia’s war of conquest has insisted on referring to the Baidoia gang by the phrase Somalia’s internationally-backed government (2, 3, 4), or Somalia’s internationally-recognized government (6, 7), whenever they mention the purpose of the assault?

Do you suppose it’s because the only people who have really demonstrated any particular interest in the Baidoia gang’s pretensions to authority are foreign governments, rather than, well, Somalis?

Further reading:

• Benjamin Powell, The Independent Institute (2006-12-22): Somali Anarchy Is More Orderly than Somali Government
• the show with zefrank (2006-12-28): Somalia Briefly
• WolfesBlog (2006-11-17): The allegiance of governments is to government