According to the letter, all six main actors are heavily armed, organized and aggressively keen to protect and ensure the survival of their respective vested interests, be they fundamentally economic, as in the case of the local administrations run by warlords and the huge and powerful cartels of the business elite, or ideological as in the case of the militants. In the Monitoring Group’s view, economic vested interests, and now the ideological interests of the militants, are driving the opposition to the establishment of a central government. In addition, the pirate groups and the feuding sub-clans operate on the margins of the main contest between the Transitional Federal Government and the other principal antagonists, adding immeasurably to the lawless trauma and widespread instability in Somalia.