"I feel this slipping away," Mohamed Abdirizak, an official who abandoned a middle-class life in Virginia to return to Somalia, told the Los Angeles Times.

Abdirizak made the comment as he ducked to avoid bullets fired at the palace in Mogadishu, the capital.

Leaders in the Transitional Federal Government say they are desperately in need of more support from the African Union, which has sent only a fraction of the promised peacekeeping contingent, and the United Nations, which has refused a peacekeeping force.

Ethiopian troops drove out the Union of Islamic Courts, which had established its own fragile government in Mogadishu. Now, the transitional prime minister is trying to work out a deal with the Islamists.

Critics say the Bush administration erred by identifying Islamists in Somalia as terrorists.

"The policy has failed," said Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., who heads the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. "We're Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia. We're making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions."