The United Nations report on Somalia, prepared by weapons and financial experts, does not mince words. It accuses Iran, Syria, Egypt and Libya of smuggling huge quantities of arms to the Islamic militants who control most of the country. It says that the clandestine arming and training of militants who threaten the weak transitional Government could reignite war between Somalia’s feuding neighbours, Ethiopia and Eritrea. And it gives warning that Somalia may become the site of “suicide bombers, assassinations and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities”.

The 86-page report is a reaffirmation of warnings that the Islamists who have seized power in the lawless country are not a force for stability, as many assert, but are likely to use their position to destabilise their neighbours, fan anti-Western sentiment and offer al-Qaeda and other extremists a safe haven. In short, the report suggests, Somalia is becoming another Afghanistan, a failed state that is falling under the control of extremists.

The report is also a stinging indictment of countries such as Iran, Libya and Syria, which maintain that they do not support terrorism, but are secretly arming the Islamic Courts Union through proxies such as Hezbollah. It details arms shipments to the groups vying for power. One included land mines, 1,000 machineguns and M79 rocket launchers, and 45 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The report also says that 720 combat-hardened fighters were picked in mid-July to travel to Lebanon to fight alongside Hezbollah, It even lists the sums paid for their services — $2,000 — and the $30,000 given to the families of those killed.

Iran, another weapons supplier, has tried in return to obtain uranium from Dusa Mareb, the hometown of the Islamic Courts Union leader. “At the time of the writing of this report (October), there were two Iranians in Dusa Mareb engaged on matters linked to the exploration of uranium in exchange for arms,” the report found.

The UN imprimatur is what makes this document striking. The UN has rarely shared a strategic vision with Washington, and is seen in much of the Middle East as beyond US influence or control. Yet it finds, as do US analysts, that the Islamists are a likely catalyst for renewed conflict between Eritrea, which supports them, and Ethiopia, which backs the struggling transitional Government. The intervention of several Arab countries and Iran also raises tensions between the Islamists and other African countries.

Somalia is the classic failed state, without a government for 15 years. It is violent, its economy has collapsed and its people have been terrorised by rival warlords. As in Afghanistan, there was a hope that the Islamists could offer stability. Drastic punishments and religious intimidation have brought peace of a kind. But, like the Taleban, it is the stillness of dictatorship, which is seeking to assert brutal control over the deviant and the merely different. As the UN makes clear, they wish to impose the stability of the noose. And those backing them are only hastening this brutal end.