To Stabilize Mali, Look to Somalia’s Lessons  The United Nations
Security Council has made a wise decision to create an ambitious
African stabilization mission for Mali.  To succeed, however,
this mission will need to draw lessons from the other side of
the continent, where African peacekeepers have had notable
results pacifying Somalia. Their experience suggests how an
effective partnership between African nations and external
powers, such as the U.S. and European Union, can create the
space for promising political solutions.  Mali is like Somalia
in that, in both places, Muslim extremists took advantage of
political turmoil to seize large areas of the country. In each
case, African countries agreed to send soldiers to neutralize
the threat -- a way around Western reluctance to commit troops
to far-off places, and a local solution more likely to be
acceptable to African populations. Yet the forces largely
floundered when left to their own resources.  Deployed in 2007,
the African Union Mission in Somalia beg