America
Goes Into Somalia, Again
By Najum Mushtaq
17 January, 2007
Foreign Policy In
Focus
A
day before U.S. planes struck suspected al-Qaida hideouts in Somalia,
Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer spelled out in Nairobi the
preferred order of leadership. “Some people would like the United
States to lead on this issue,” she said. “I would prefer
that we lead from behind, and what I mean by that is pushing the Somali
people first, pushing the sub-region next, and then mobilizing the resources
of the international community.”
But words from the Bush administration
do not always mean what they say. More often, as with Ms. Frazer's statement,
they mean exactly the opposite.
Instead of the Somali people
taking the lead in shaping the country's future—a possibility
Frazer alluded to in the wake of Ethiopia's recent victory over the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and the return of the U.S.-backed interim
government to Mogadishu on New Year's Eve—the United States has
again rushed in to take military action. Humanitarian concern for the
ever-suffering people of Somalia did not motivate U.S. involvement.
Rather, Washington's ideological zeal and ill-conceived war on terrorism
has led to this latest foray into yet another jihadi battleground.
U.S. Attacks
The first U.S. attack took
place on January 8 on Ras Kamboni, on Badmadow Island. This area of
livestock herders and religious schools close to the Kenyan border is
a suspected training base for the Islamic militia as well as the reported
destination of the core group of ICU leadership and militiamen fleeing
Mogadishu and then Kismayo. Journalists based in Mogadishu report that
instead of killing their targets—al-Qaida suspects implicated
in the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam—the
air strikes killed many civilian Somalis believed to have given shelter
to the suspects.
The U.S. attack was executed
in conjunction with land reconnaissance by Ethiopian, and possibly Kenyan,
forces. Since the Ethiopian invasion, Kenya has deployed a large number
of troops on the border to prevent the ICU militiamen, their families,
and sympathizers from crossing over as refugees.
More attacks have since followed
in what seems to be a series of strikes in hot pursuit of al-Qaida targets.
Four civilians, including a small boy, died in a second attack west
of Afmadow in a village called Hayi. With the aircraft carrier Dwight
D. Eisenhower joining three other warships already in the region, this
new campaign is likely to be protracted. The longer it goes on, the
more difficult it will become for the United States to disengage and
the more fuel it will provide to jihad international to inflame Muslim
emotions.
The Order of Intervention
During its six months of
control over Mogadishu and most of the rest of south-central Somalia,
the ICU stopped short of Baidoa, the base of the U.S.-backed transitional
government. Amid simmering tension with the interim government, especially
over the presence of Ethiopian forces, a UN Security Council resolution
in December partially lifted the arms embargo to protect the interim
government and authorized a protection force for Somalia. The new force
is to be set up by the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority
on Development, comprising troops from neighboring countries.
The resolution cornered the
Islamic courts. Anticipating an onslaught from Ethiopia, the ICU became
more aggressive in its rhetoric. The frequency of clashes between the
two sides suddenly increased, leading to Ethiopian air strikes on Mogadishu
on Christmas Eve. The Islamic militia abandoned the city without putting
up a fight. Not only are the militias of the courts too weak militarily
to take on the might of the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army in conventional
land and air battles, they also suffered from internal dissension and
defection. Now dispersed and underground, the leaders of the Islamic
courts are gearing up for unconventional warfare against the 8,000-strong
Ethiopian invasion force and other protection forces that might arrive
to enforce the Security Council resolution.
Behind the diplomatic jargon
of “peacekeeping” and “stabilizing force” lies
the reality that the United States and its allies in the region have
once again made a unilateral military intervention on the pretext of
decimating al-Qaida. Like many other allies of the United States in
its war on terrorism, notably the military-run Pakistan, the Tigrayan
minority regime in Ethiopia is also exploiting the terror threat to
gain international acceptance for its repressive rule and to divert
attention from troubles at home.
Efforts are now on to replace
the Ethiopians with a regional force. Whatever the composition of such
a force—Uganda has promised 1,500 and others may follow—the
past experience of peacekeeping in Somalia does not augur well for its
prospects of success. As the south-central region once again reverts
to the unruly reign of local warlords, clan militias, and general lawlessness,
the artificially resuscitated interim government is as likely to bring
the Somalis together and earn their support as the Maliki regime in
Iraq or Karzai's Kabul-bound government in Afghanistan.
The trajectory of the conflict,
too, seems to be similar. A hurriedly assembled foreign force presides
over violent local chaos. If the Islamic courts are further isolated
and targeted, an insurgency as difficult to control as the Afghan Taliban
may well arise. At least, al-Qaida and the more extremist leaders of
the Islamic courts would want it to be that way.
Jihad Impossible?
The docile manner of the
defeat of the ICU militia has prompted analysts and diplomats to underline
the organizational and military weakness of the Islamic movement in
Somalia. “I don't see they're in a position to regroup militarily,
nor do I subscribe to the idea of Iraq- or Afghanistan-type suicide
bombings—it's simply not the Somali way of doing things,”
said David Shinn, a former U.S. envoy to Ethiopia.
Like Shinn, other Somalia
analysts also fall back on the argument that the Somali Muslims are
not the suicide-bomber, al-Qaida terrorist types. Such a disturbing
statement implies that extremists among the Afghans, the Pakistanis,
the Palestinians, and the Iraqis are innately inclined to such terror
tactics, whereas “it's simply not the Somali way.” This
line of analysis suggests that places like Palestine and Iraq, among
others, have always been hatcheries of suicide bombers and terrorists,
that there is something wrong with the kind of Islam practiced in those
violence-ridden Muslim areas. Shinn and others have lost sight of the
fact that no ethnic group or society is inherently prone to violence.
Rather, it is the context in which they live that makes them so.
Also lost in this eulogy
of the moderate ways of Somali clergy is the ever-increasing anti-Ethiopia
and anti-U.S. public sentiment. Even today the Ethiopian troops are
facing stiff public resistance, targeted by Somali gunmen in Mogadishu
and elsewhere. Even if defeated militarily, dislodged from their strongholds,
and hunted down on land, in the air, and at sea, the leaders of Islamic
militia remain legitimate political actors. Their views on the invasion
of foreign forces correspond with the antipathy of average Somalis toward
Ethiopia and the United States.
Stoking the Fires
The direct U.S. military
intervention in Somalia is ill-timed and ill-conceived. The aggressive
U.S. posture, at sea and in the air, has antagonized the Somali people
without any significant gain against suspected al-Qaida operatives or
their Somali allies. In pursuit of a few individuals, the United States
has earned the fury of the masses—in an eerie replay of Black
Hawk Down. More importantly, the involvement of American forces seriously
undermines Washington's pious intentions of pushing the Somalis to the
forefront of the process to stabilize the war-ravaged country. Once
again, the Bush administration has proved that the tenets of international
law and the norms of interstate relations can be flouted with dismissive
arrogance whenever it wants to go into pre-emptive mode.
Moreover, by tarring all
of the Islamic courts with the al-Qaida brush, the Bush administration
has ostracized a major political faction within Somalia. The sympathizers
and supporters of the ICU—and they are not an insignificant minority
by any means—find themselves facing persecution and the same warlords
they had gotten rid of not too long ago.
If the ultimate objective
of peacekeeping forces is to create conditions for the initiation of
an intra-Somali dialogue leading to some sort of a democratic process,
then the Islamic movements cannot be cast side. Their participation
in any future plan for Somalia, however, seems improbable given the
mood in Washington and Addis Ababa. Their refusal to engage the Islamic
movements will mean more violence and further instability in the region.
Or perhaps once again the Bush administration's words are misleading,
and such instability is indeed the ultimate objective of America's policy
of containing and decimating Islamic extremism.
Najum Mushtaq is a Nairobi-based journalist.
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