The Islamic Courts Union () was a legal and political organization formed to address the lawlessness that had been gripping Somalia since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991 during the Somali Civil War. The Islamic Courts Union was embraced by a plurality of Somalis, as Islam was viewed as one of the last credible institutions left in the wake of the collapse of the state. The courts were able to quickly gain the trust of war weary Somalis, as they had emerged at a grassroots level and claimed to rule under the neutrality of Islam, which was viewed as an attractive alternative to the country rife with heightened clan tensions. The union was a diffuse organization, with rivaling leaders sending conflicting messages about the group's goals. Some members had national political ambitions, while others wanted to focus on resolving local disputes and bringing people closer to Islam. In the summer of 2006, the ICU would expel an alliance of Somali warlords funded by the American Central Intelligence Agency and became the first organization to consolidate control over all of Mogadishu since the collapse of the state in 1991. The period that followed is commonly heralded as the most stable and productive era Somalia had seen since the outbreak of the civil war up to that point. Residents of Mogadishu were finally able to move around the city without fear of attack, the international airport and seaport would be opened for the first time in over a decade, a massive rubbish clean up campaign was started and there was a significant reduction of arms on the streets. Six months into its reign, the Islamic Courts Union would be ended during the final days of 2006 by an Ethiopian-led intervention, supported by the United States, which brought the internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government to power. The organization would completely dissolve early in 2007 due to the invasion and internal disagreements. Following the foreign intervention most of the moderates of the organization would flee Somalia. Consequently an obscure radical wing of the Islamic Courts, the now infamous Al-Shabaab, stayed behind and invoked jihad against the American backed Ethiopian invasion, greatly empowering themselves. Many of the high ranking members of the Islamic Courts would later become members of the internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government, with former chairman of the ICU, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed becoming president of Somalia in 2009. In 2012