The impoverished East African country of Somalia now rivals Iraq in the number of violent deaths occurring on a weekly basis. In March more than 1,000 people were killed. This month, fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, has caused about 350,000 people to flee.

The advocacy organization Minority Rights Group International announced a month ago that Somalia is the least safe country in the world for minorities, edging out Iraq and Sudan for this dubious distinction. Nor can it be said that Somalia is safe for majorities.

Troops from neighboring Ethiopia are bombarding Mogadishu, trying to seize control of the capital from the Islamists who were driven from power in December by Ethiopian forces and replaced by an unpopular interim government. The Bush administration encouraged the Ethiopians then and now, fearing establishment of a new front in Somalia for jihad-blinded extremists.

For the last six months of 2006, Somalia had started to look to Washington like Taliban West, the Afghanistan of Africa. A loose coalition called the Union of Islamic Courts had accomplished the welcome task of freeing much of the country from the terror of entrenched warlords who had kept it in chaos for 16 years. At long last a measure of order calmed the streets, but only by enforcement of strict Islamic Shariah law (echoes of the Taliban) that was especially harsh on minorities.

Fueling the fears of Taliban II, in early January Ayman al-Zawahiri, the elusive No. 2 man on the most-wanted al-Qaida list, warned through the al-Jazeera news service: "As happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the world's strongest power was defeated by the campaigns of the mujahedeen troops going to heaven, so its slaves shall be defeated on the Muslim lands of Somalia."

Whatever al-Qaida masterminds may threaten, however, Somali Muslims are not the Taliban, and Somalia is not like Iraq. We do not need to worry about Somalia becoming a new front in the war on terror.

This former colony of Italy and Britain, with more than half its population nomadic or semi-nomadic, is not likely to be torn apart by religious rivalry. Nor is the Union of Islamic Courts capable of mounting an effective long-term insurgency, since Somalia does not have large stockpiles of weapons, as in Iraq under Saddam Hussein or in Afghanistan under the jihad against the Soviets.

The population of Somalia is remarkably homogeneous, with no major ethnic or linguistic barriers. Historically Somalis trace their identity to one of six tribal clans, all linked to one legendary founding ancestor. In Iraq the civil war has coalesced around generic categories of Sunni versus Shia, dredging up rivalries that date to the origins of Islam. The Muslims in Somalia are virtually all Sunni. You can get killed in Somalia because of who your great-grandfather was, but not for the way you pray.

In the absence of a stable central government, clan membership has been the only viable way to function in the society. Mutual economic support within clans is coupled with strategic alliances across kinship ties to adapt to changing conditions on the ground. Recent years have seen the rise of Mafia-like urban clan fiefdoms. The so-called Islamist takeover of the country last June was about justice rather than religious dogma.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban arose as a foreign-supported jihad against the Soviet presence and also as a way out of the continuing nightmare of armed ethnic factionalism. But foreign occupiers left Somalia almost half a century ago.

Finally, Somalia is dirt-poor with no oil wealth. Only about 10 percent of the land can be cultivated. This is not the kind of place really worth fighting over, as the British finally realized, pulling out of their former colony in 1960.

Ethiopia has reason to be concerned about its neighbor, since the civil strife of the 1990s forced thousands of Somali refugees across its border, where more than 4 million ethnic Somalis already lived. But more than anything else, the problems with Somalia are more like a family feud, increasingly Tony Soprano-style.

Daniel Martin Varisco is chairman and a professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.