That's not a deal breaker for me. As Ulhas never tired of reminding us, worse things were said by human rights organizations about Maoists in Nepal, who were accused of "kidnapping" children.
Besides, few children are in school in Somalia: Net primary school enrolment/attendance (%) , 2000-2005*: 12% SOURCE: <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/somalia_statistics.html>.
The first thing to do in Somalia is to establish a state, which Washington is bent upon preventing the Union of Islamic Courts from doing. Once a state gets established there, then we can talk about education and suchlike.
> And when there are two parties to a conflict, you don't always have
> to take sides.
The way things are, it doesn't matter what American leftists say, in support of or opposition to the Somali Islamists or anyone else for that matter. American leftists are stuck in a permanent opposition ghetto, and since most of them don't like each other, they don't even get to organize themselves. The first thing to do here is to get to the point where our collective support, or lack thereof, becomes something people elsewhere would really care about. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>