Another waxan is falling by the wayside in chaotic Somalia. Translated literally as “the thing,” waxan is the word fiercely independent Somalis use to describe centralized authority of any kind. In this case, however, the country’s nominal government represents the only genuine Somali solution to the Somali crisis. The international community cannot allow it to be jettisoned by the radical Islamists who control the capital of Mogadishu, lest the entire region be dragged into war.

For now, the transitional government is doing a fine job of imploding on its own. The toothless administration of Ali Mohamed Gedi was cobbled together in Nairobi in 2004 after 13 failed attempts at peace and reconciliation. A slew of ministers have resigned since July 27—40 at last count—amid a rift over how to respond to the Islamic militants. That figure doesn’t include a lawmaker who was killed July 28, or another who was wounded in a shooting two days earlier.

Pressure has built since the Islamists captured Mogadishu in early June. Businessmen and women, weary of war and repeated acts of rape during the 15 years of anarchy and warlordism that followed the ouster of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991, hailed the radicals as “liberators.” Emboldened by their victory and this public adulation, the Islamists quickly sought to extend their control and radical brand of Islam.

The transitional government stood in the way at first but soon began to wilt. Ethiopian troops entered the country to support the government, though Addis Ababa’s motives are somewhat suspect. Ethiopia has invested enormously in the search for Somali peace. Yet it is not neutral. A large Somali population inhabits the Ogaden in southern Ethiopia. A war erupted in 1977 over Barre’s attempt to create a “Greater Somalia” by uniting all Somalis, including those in Ogaden.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi may be trying to deflect attention from his own domestic foibles, but equally likely he’s reacting to allegations that Eritrea—Ethiopia’s bitter enemy in the 1998-2000 war—was arming and training Islamist fighters threatening jihad against Ethiopian occupation. A proxy war looms.

The Somali are nomadic and born free. They have no leaders; they are their own leaders and take orders from no one. If a leader of any group of Somalis tries to lord over them, they abandon him. This independent streak led Somaliland to break away from overlordship by Mogadishu in 1994. The first European to note this cultural trait was the British traveler Richard Burton, who back in 1856 called the Somali a “fierce and turbulent race of Republicans.” They detest any centralized authority. But this is exactly what the Somali political elites and Islamists want to create for them.

Though Muslims of the Sunni kind, they follow the Shafi’ite school and their interpretation of Islam is not rigid. Ancestral beliefs and relics of a previous religion, which centered on the worship of waaq (“the sky”), still hold sway. Further, Somali customary laws separate law from politics and religion. Two Somali maxims affirm this: “One can change one’s religion; one cannot change the law,” and “Between religion and tradition, choose tradition.” Their society is akin to a kritarchy, a word derived from the Greek kriteis (“judge”) or krito (“to judge”) and archè (“principle” or “cause”). It is a political system in which justice or the establishment of justice is the ruling principle or first cause. European immigrants who settled in the Midwest and Far West of North America in the early 19th century developed a similar brand of kritarchy.

Such societies often baffle outsiders. They see no one making or enforcing laws and conclude that there are no laws. But the Somali are law-abiding. They uphold their own customary law and reject others. They fought the colonial administrators for more than 30 years and gained their independence in 1961 only to have another waxan imposed on them by Barre in 1969. They finally got rid of that, only to fall prey again to barbarous warlords. To defeat them, they allied themselves with the Islamists. But the Islamists would be gravely mistaken to attempt to impose an Islamic waxan on the Somali people.

Ominous signs have already appeared. Barely a week after seizing Mogadishu, Islamic militiamen shot and killed two people who were watching a World Cup soccer broadcast in central Somalia. On July 13, Islamists fatally shot a man after he protested new taxes on businessmen and small-scale traders. Over 100 people in Jowhar rioted over the new taxes, dismissing the Islamist militants’ leader, Sheikh Aweys, as madaxweyne (“big head”). In their traditional system, politicians cannot even make tax laws since taxation is considered a violation of property rights.

To pull the region back from the brink, African Union peacekeepers should replace Ethiopian troops. Having made a mockery of its “Peer Review Mechanism,” whereby dictators stand in judgment of other dictators, the AU now has a golden opportunity to redeem itself by defending its own. The transitional government was the outcome of indefatigable efforts by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which was mandated by the AU’s predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, to restore peace to Somalia. The AU cannot abandon the government now.

For the Somali people, a meaningful nation-building exercise would start with a confederacy, not the unitary, centralized system the political elites tried to build at Mogadishu. The confederacy arrangement would grant the local authorities the greatest autonomy and freedom to conduct their affairs as they have always done. This confederacy principle inhered in virtually all of Africa’s ancient empires. The modern variant is the Swiss model—a confederation of 13 cantons.

All the Somali people want is peace and their freedom, with no one lording over them. The AU itself needs to catch this free Somali spirit and rid the continent of the unrepentant despots and religious zealots that lord over its people. Only 16 of the 54 African countries are democratic. The broader international community should reject any waxan created in Somalia by force of arms—a position reiterated by the AU at its summit last month in Banjul, Gambia. In traditional Somali society, issues are resolved with discussions, not bazookas.