I put this one under "race matters" because our fine, fine SCLM treats anything that happens in Africa as too boring for notice. You know, they're a darker shade of brown, and thus beneath the attention of your average Amurkin news consumer. Still, Africa is just chock full of "Islamicists," and not all of them are very happy with Bush's war on their coreligionists.

Reuters - Somali Islamists test fired rockets on Friday and prepared for war with the government as the United States warned of possible suicide attacks against neighbouring countries.
Tension has mounted rapidly in recent weeks and rose another notch after this week's failure to bring together the Islamists, who control the capital and most of southern Somalia, and the weak, Western-backed interim government for peace talks.
"The onus is on us to start the fight. We will be the first to strike," one senior Islamist commander, Maalim Hashi Ahmed, told Reuters by telephone. "If someone takes your shirt, it's upon you to repossess it. That is what we plan to do," he said. "Ethiopia has invaded us so it is our responsibility to remove them from our land. We intend to carry out this obligation as soon as possible."

--snip--

MOGADISHU, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Somali Islamists on Friday dismissed a U.S. warning that "extremist elements" were plotting suicide attacks in neighbouring countries, as Islamist fighters test-fired missiles and prepared for war with the government.

"We have no plans to attack Kenya and Ethiopia, neither are we known to blow ourselves up. Suicide bombing is not a Somali culture," Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, the Islamists' defence chief, told Reuters.

"We are telling the American population we are not a threat to them. They should remove the administration of Bush, which resembles the Nazi government of Hitler in so many ways."
snip....

Residents of Buur Hakaba, a strategic hill town near the frontlines, said hundreds more Islamist fighters were deployed overnight, and fired heavy weapons early on Friday.
"The Islamic troops tested missiles this morning," one local, Yusuf Hassan, told Reuters. "It was really terrifying."

SUICIDE ATTACKS

Washington accuses the Islamists of harbouring al Qaeda militants and has asked for them to be handed over. On Thursday the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Ethiopia issued warnings for American citizens to be on guard for possible suicide attacks.

"These threats specifically mention the execution of suicide explosions in prominent landmarks within Kenya and Ethiopia," the embassies said in a statement on Thursday.

It said the message was issued in response to reports of "terrorist threats emanating from extremist elements within Somalia" and urged American citizens to be vigilant and use extreme caution when going to well-known public places.
The U.S. warning came amid growing fears of a regional war.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called on all sides involved in Somalia not to escalate tensions. Ethiopia's enemy Eritrea has been accused of arming the Islamists.
"There are concerns that the situation, the current situation in Somalia, might lend itself to wider violence in the region. And we're doing everything we can to see that that does not happen," McCormack said.

But confrontation appeared increasingly likely in Somalia, where one Baidoa resident said hundreds more Ethiopian troops were seen heading for the frontlines by truck.
"The Ethiopians are waiting for the Islamists to make a move," he said. "If fighting starts, we will definitely suffer."

This is a classic case of Chimpy fiddling while Rome burns. We're too stretched out, and our policy is too domestically motivated, for our foreign services to be effective tamping down hotspots like this one. Not that they'd listen to us, and who can blame them? We've made it more than clear that our "leaders" don't know the difference between Sunni and Shia, Farsi and Arabic, and a host of other basic facts about the Islamic world, it's no surprise they don't take us seriously.

The bottom line: while Bush is directing our forces to chase #2s and work with one Iraqi militia over another, the next 911 gang is free to flourish in Islamic hot spots around the globe. I haven't even mentioned the long, long list of Asian Islamic hot spots that are growing unchecked while all our best intelligence is busy in Iraq. Many fundamentalist Muslims see Iraq as proof that the West is out to destroy them. The atrocities there only add fuel to that fire. While Bush is busy kicking our the few effective translators we have because they're gay, little known fundamentalists are busy swelling their ranks, and dreaming of a glorious repeat of 911 that will make their terror cells immortal.

This kind of negligence will plague us for decades, mark my words.