Fighting in Mogadishu, the former capital of the former Somalia, has over the past few weeks killed more than 300 and put many more Somali internally displaced persons on the road, fleeing the fighting, abandoning their homes.

Somalia has not had a government in place in Mogadishu since January 1991, 15 years ago. The United States closed its embassy there in 1994, and the United Nations threw in its hand in 1995 except for relief. The current battle for the capital has on one side the Union of Islamic Courts, an alliance of the forces of various Islamic councils and courts that control some of the pieces of the patchwork quilt of governments that constitute authority in Somalia. They are opposed by a group made up of various warlords and their forces.

The warlord group calls itself the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, although it is in fact a collection of groups of armed men, who follow various leaders and ride around in pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.

Pretty much out of the picture is a group of Somali politicians, stuck together in a transitional government over a period of two years in Kenya, who have the nominal characteristics of a government -- a president, a prime minister, ministers and a parliament. They are unfortunately installed in Baidoa, many miles from Mogadishu, because it is considered too dangerous for them to try to set up in the old capital. In fact, it was very hard to get them even to come to Somalia, for that reason and because they were so comfortably installed in Kenya.

The United States is believed to be backing the Peace and Counterterrorism group with money, easily convertible into weapons. It is easy to see how the Bush administration would be attracted by its anti-terrorist, anti-Islamicist label, even though they are basically just one more group of Somali thugs. Other countries putting resources into the fight include Ethiopia, Eritrea, Italy and Yemen.

The position of the Bush administration is to refuse to comment on the charges that it is backing the Alliance, once again operating from the position that the American public does not need to know what the administration is doing with its money in its name. The Bush administration is also reluctant to admit that it has been drawn back into the Somalia conflict, one that the Clinton administration walked away from, having had its fingers burned seriously in the 1993 "Blackhawk Down" incident in Mogadishu and years of unsuccessful attempts at Somali nation-building.

In the meantime, the Bush administration has also committed U.S. Navy ships to maintaining security off the long, unruly Somali coast, presumably to give the Navy something to do in the war against terrorism.

The Clinton administration was right to get the United States out of Somalia. The Bush administration is entirely wrong to put more money and guns in the hands of any armed Somali element, if it is doing so; to act in that fashion is only to prolong the fighting and contribute to the continuing brutal abuse of civilians there.