Somalis welcome the quiet brought by Islamist takeover

snip>
To many Somalis, the Islamist takeover was the natural culmination of a religious movement that took root with the withdrawal of international forces in 1995 and blossomed as residents turned to faith in the absence of any government.

It's also a backlash against the United States, which everyone in Mogadishu believes bankrolled the warlords to carry out an American proxy war against terrorists that resulted in kidnappings of religious figures and false accusations that innocents were affiliated with al-Qaida.
...
On Thursday, a U.S.-organized "Contact Group" of American, European and African diplomats met in New York to coordinate policy toward Somalia. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration still needed more information. "We want to have a better assessment of this group and the situation on the ground," he said.

For now, Mogadishu residents said, the Islamic Courts is a vast improvement over the chaos of the last 15 years.

"Deep down, we're not sure 100 percent what's behind the Islamic Courts. But this is a new revolution for the people of Mogadishu, and for now they have full support," said Abdelkadir Mohamed Nur, a Somali-American businessman and the chairman of the city's main port, which employs 10,000 people.

He and other community leaders said the rise of conservative Islam in Mogadishu began when international groups fled the city but didn't truly flourish until about three years ago. By that time, this coastal city - which once boasted fine Italian architecture and bustling country clubs - had degenerated into a crumbling, barren battleground for gunmen from competing clans.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14828026.htm

These people are like American Republicans, they don't care about freedom (civil liberties), they just care about a lack of chaos.

with varying degrees of participation in the rites. Some become analogous to Christian monks or Jewish Essenes, others are like Buddists who spend some time in a monastary, but never take full vows.
Apparently, the three orders are in theory more important then their tribal leadership, but with no functioning educational or banking system or anything other than cell phones, the country turned to the only place where there was an interest: fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunnis.
Evidently having any sort of an infrastructure is preferable to none to them.
Bananas are the main export crop now, as beef and goat on the hoof is currently under Saudi quarantine for Nile Valley Fever.
Last year the CIA estimated that the per capita annual income is $600.
Somalia has been in a sad shape since 1971.
We know how readily the Saudi charity money flows into a state in chaos, witness the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.