It isn't nearly over

A FULL month after the routing of Islamist forces in Somalia, it is hard to say whether the country is slipping back into anarchy or limping forward towards reformed statehood: like a tennis stroke, it all depends on the follow-through. The signs are not promising.

Having shredded Islamist fighters with air strikes, and then admitted it missed its intended targets, America is offering only token sums to put Somalia back on its feet. A generous American package would be received with suspicion by Somalis, but the European Union (EU) is being just as stingy. True, the Somali transitional government has almost no capacity to absorb money, and foreign aid-workers remain a target of rogue gunmen. But the lack of a follow-through extends most patently to the promised African Union (AU) peacekeeping force. So far, no peacekeepers of any kind have arrived, unless you include the Ethiopian force that toppled the Islamists and is meant to be going home soon.

African governments have so far promised only 4,000 of the 8,000 soldiers needed to hold the line in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. Ugandans, Nigerians and Ghanaians will arrive within a month, letting Ethiopia withdraw. It is uncertain who will pay for the operation or what will happen if things again turn nasty in Mogadishu. Life there is already getting jittery, with daylight attacks on Ethiopian troops and night-time mortar and rocket assaults on the presidential palace, hotels and port, probably by remnant Islamist fighters.

The big question is whether the Somali government has the stomach for genuine national reconciliation. At a top-level meeting this week in Mogadishu there were appeals for unity. The rhetoric sounded promising, but some ministers will have to renounce their posts and clan influence in favour of some of those who backed the Islamic courts. Three ministers were sacked and the cabinet shuffled.

Reconciliation runs two ways: the government is asking Somalis to look generously on neighbouring Ethiopia, whose forces have acted mostly with restraint but who are widely despised. And even if AU troops do keep the peace, Somalis must fast find a way to revive their shattered economy. Their country needs help to overhaul its informal banking system, to market and export its fruit and livestock, and to protect its vast fishing grounds from illegal tuna-catching boats, some of them from the EU. In particular, thousands of young gunmen, most of them uneducated and without prospects, need jobs.