The portion of the country is relatively small, but includes the key central town of Beledweyne, which the Ethiopian military occupied over the weekend. The town is near Ethiopia’s borders and has often fell during the intermittent Ethiopian invasion.

With the absorption of the Kenyan troops the AU force could become as large as 17,731 fighters, though this is still pending UN approval as much of the force is funded by the international community.

Despite the ever-growing size of the force, the AU still has no territory outside of Mogadishu, and it is unclear if they will be able to retain control over the region handed over by Ethiopia. Since Beledweyne has been occupied at least three times by Ethiopia and always fell within months to one insurgent faction or another, history is not on the AU’s side.

It is the third time the Ethiopian military has conquered Beledweyne in a major battle, with previous attacks in 2006 and 2008. The town has also regularly changed hands amongst internal factions.

Al-Shabaab has confirmed withdrawing from the town, but says that their forces are massing around the outside and planning to retake it. Reports also have civilians fleeing in anticipation of another battle to contest the town’s fate.

Beledweyne is one of several central towns often considered the “key” to offensives against the rest of the country, and as such is commonly targeted during offensives. Ethiopia is the most recent nation to have invaded Somalia, returning in force last month after ending their last occupation in 2009.

The Eritrean government so far has not commented on the latest raid, but the two factions have launched attacks against the nation in the past. The rebels are based in Ethiopia and are being backed by the Ethiopian government, which says it wants regime change in the nation.

Eritrea was only able to secure its independence in 1993 after decades of bloody clashes with Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government invaded again in 1998 and continues to occupy considerable disputed territory.

Since then the two nations have been on extremely poor terms, and Ethiopia has blamed the Eritrean government for virtually every foreign policy struggle it has had, including accusing them of being the reason Somali rebels contested the Ethiopian invasion so aggressively.

“This is the right time for Ethiopia to consider the request,” said spokesman Dina Mufti, adding that a decision would be announced soon. In addition to the AU force in Mogadishu and the Ethiopian invasion force, Kenya is also invaded in southern Somalia.

Ethiopia had previously been in the role of propping up the self-proclaimed government when it invaded in 2006, as the African Union is now. The previous Ethiopian invasion ended in 2008, with a declaration of “victory” but with the al-Shabaab militant faction, almost non-existent before the invasion, controlling most of the nation.

Kenya’s invasion has mostly stagnated in the far south, and now reports have the Kenyan government arresting ethnic Somalis inside of Kenya as potential “sympathizers,” a reaction to multiple attack in the area. Though they are arrested, they haven’t been charged with anything.

The Ethiopian move is being touted as an attempt to open a “third front” in the battle against al-Shabaab, which is fighting against AU troops in Mogadishu as well as Kenyan invasion forces in the far south.

But ‘fronts’ don’t really work that way in a war against a mostly diffuse local population, and al-Shabaab did not appear overly concerned with what they called the “black colonialists of Ethiopia,” adding that “they do not scare us.”

“We will break the necks of the invaders,” one of al-Shabaab’s commanders insisted. Indeed, the group owes most of its domestic support and its very existence to Ethiopia, as they moved from a tiny irrelevant group of extremists into a major fighting force largely through resisting the last Ethiopian invasion.

Kenya has confirmed some of its warplanes have bombed targets within Kismayo and the US, which never saw a foreign invasion of Somalia they didn’t like, seems to be joining in the action as well, with Kenya hoping to conquer the entire region south of Mogadishu in an effort to prove it can control the areas around its border.

Though the air strikes are undoubtedly damaging they appear to be giving the al-Shabaab militant faction a great opportunity to recruit yet more followers, as they attempt to rally people around the south to help in fighting off Kenya.

This would be the second time al-Shabaab received a shot in the arm from a foreign invasion, as resisting the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of 2006 was in large part how the organization got started. Ethiopia declared “victory” in their war to prop up the self-proclaimed government in late 2008, after two years of bloody fighting.

It remains to be seen if Kenya’s invasion will be anywhere near the scope of the Ethiopian one, but with President Obama taking an extremely aggressive stance in Africa it seems a safe bet that the US will insinuate itself into the conflict more and more as time goes on.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said that the Ethiopian government plans to use “all possible means” to destroy the Eritrean government. The announcement came in an interview with an Ethiopia-based radio station run on behalf of the Eritrean opposition.

The officials say Ethiopia has officially abandoned its “defensive” policy and now intends to be “proactive” about toppling Eritrea.

Eritrea was only able to secure its independence in 1993 after decades of bloody clashes with Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government invaded again in 1998 and continues to occupy considerable disputed territory.

Since the loss of Eritrea, Ethiopia has become a landlocked nation, and the reconquest of the territory, whether through a puppet regime or outright annexation, is likely a high priority. Ethiopia has pressed for broad international sanctions against Eritrea, nominally for “meddling” in Somalia. Eritrea has denied this accusation but had ties with the now defunct Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia, which opposed the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

The news comes after a week of heavy fihting in which al-Shabaab looked to finally unseat the government and its African Union backers from its few city blocks around the presidential palace in the capital of Mogadishu. The battles are said to have left at least 115 dead and 200 wounded.

The biggest such incident was an attack against a Mogadishu hotel which left at least 31 people killed, including as many as 15 members of the Somali “parliament.” The official toll of MPs has varied however so the figure cannot be conclusively confirmed.

Al-Shabaab has only existed since 2007, when it formed to contest the Ethiopian occupation of the country. The reported return of Ethiopian troops, along with the planned AU escalations may well give al-Shabaab additional support as it presents itself as opposed to international meddling in Somali affairs.

Locals say the Ethiopian forces were accompanied by soldiers affiliated with the self-proclaimed Somali government and the forces cut off the communication lines in the villages.

Ethiopia previously launched an invasion of Somalia in 2006 with the blessing of the US government. The invasion was an attempt to prop up the Somali government, which at the time was struggling in the face of growing support for the Islamic Courts Union.

Ethiopia declared victory and left in December of 2008, though by then the Islamic Courts Union (which has since become part of the Ethiopia-backed “government”) had been supplanted by a more violent group, al-Shahaab, which rose to chase foreign forces out of the nation.

At this point, the government controls little more than a handful of city blocks in Mogadishu, though its forces often will briefly occupy central Somali villages before being driven off by militants.

It is unclear what Ethiopia hopes to accomplish with the latest incursions, as, rhetoric aside, their much larger 2006 invasion force failed to impose rule on any significant portion of the nation and the situation has only gotten worse since then.

Situated along the Red Sea, the State of Eritrea is a nation of under 5 million people with a long history of foreign occupation. Bought by an Italian shipping company in 1869, the region remained under Italian rule until 1941, when Britain took control of them. British control was formalized under UN auspices in 1947, and the United Nations ceded the region to Ethiopia.

What followed was a particularly bloodly 30-year long battle of secession between Ethiopia and an Eritrean rebel faction (the Eritrean Liberation Front), which ended in 1993 when Ethiopia finally gave in to demands for an independence referrendum, which passed with 99.79% of the votes in favor. Eritrea has remained on poor terms with Ethiopia since, fighting a border war which ended with the installation of a UN commission to establish the still tenuous border between the two.

In 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia with American support, vowing to crush the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement and prop up the self-proclaimed Transitional National Government (TNG) of Somalia, which had recently been chased from a Kenya hotel for failing to pay their bills and was attempting to assert control over the stateless region. Eritrea backed the ICU, and later the al-Shabaab movement ostensibly to repay Somali support for their own independence bid. Though the TNG remained on the verge of collapse, Ethiopia declared “mission accomplished” in December of 2008, withdrawing its troops and claiming it had foiled a “plan orchestrated by Eritrea.”

The Bush Administration attempted to have Eritrea declared a “state-sponsor of terrorism” numerous times for backing forces in opposition to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Eritrea publicly denounced “foreign intervention” in Somalia and said the Ethiopian pullout had vindicated their position that military occupation would not stabilize the nation.

Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki remains defiant, saying he will continue to oppose the Western-backed TNG’s attempt to assert control over the nation. “There is no government, there is not even a naiton of Somalia existing,” the president insisted, calling for a peace conference in which all parties, including those branded by the US and Ethiopia as “extremists” would have a voice. “Peace is not guaranteed without a government agreed by all Somalis.”