The US and war in Somalia

Somalia (CIA World Factbook map)

This past week, the US made another air strike on Somalia. From the fact that the terrorist leader, Aden Hashi Ayro - who most people in the United States had surely never heard of - was reported killed by his own group, al-Shabab - which most people in the US had also never heard of - I would assume for now that the target of this targeted assassination was killed.

The following reports provide details of the story: U.S. kills Al Qaeda-linked militant, but elsewhere terrorism grows by Scott Peterson and Rob Crilly Christian Science Monitor 05/02/08; US airstrike kills head of al-Qa'ida in East Africa by Steve Bloomfield Independent 05/02/08; U.S. missiles kill al Qaeda chief in Somalia, 10 others by Mohamed Olad Hassan AP/San Francisco Chronicle 05/02/08; Attack on Terror Target Sheds Light on Somalia's Instability PBS Newshour 05/01/08. This story from 2007 provides additional background U.S. Involvement in Somalia PBS Newshour 01/26/07.

The US is involved in a proxy war in Somalia, and is even intervening directly, as in this targeted assassination. Not surprisingly, the Cheney-Bush administration claims they were attacking "Al Qa'ida", which the Republicans like Maverick McCain are increasingly using as a catch-all term for an endless sea of enemies, not just the terrorist band headed by Osama bin Laden. The tactic of targeted assassination itself, though a standard practice of Israeli counterterrorism operations and therefore assumed by many Americans to be effective, is problematic in itself. Getting rid of the old leader doesn't necessarily ensure that what comes afterward will be better, for instance.

Congress, the media and the public should also be paying more attention to this. A tangential involvement in a situation like Somalia may sometimes make sense. But "mission creep" is always a big risk. One consequence of the civil war in Somalia, which is also now mixed with an anti-occupation resistance against Ethiopian troops in Somalia, has been to create an enormous humanitarian crisis. This is one of many things that can draw the US deeper and deeper and spread our military commitments more and more thinly in locations and situations that may really be marginal to American interests.

The 05/01/08 Newshour report puts the action in a context rarely seen in American news reports. An Islamic regime took power in Somalia in 2006. The US then encouraged Ethiopia, a primarily Christian nation, to intervene in Somalia and oust the "Islamic Courts" regime, as it was called. Ethiopia did so, and briefly became a heroic image for our Republican war-lovers, who pointed to the Ethiopian army as an example of how the US should kick butt.

If any of them are still paying attention, there may have been more to learn from Ethiopia's action than just the fact that they quickly succeeded in ousting the undesired regime and installed an Ethiopia-friendly one. As ITV reporter Jonathan Miller reports on the Newshour:

Ethiopia invaded Somalia with America's blessing at the end of 2006 to oust a short-lived Islamist government. Since then, the country's descended further into madness.

The Islamists are now the insurgents. ...

The Somali Mujahideen, proud to have been designated a terrorist organization by the United States of America, they're now an official franchise of al-Qaida central. Al-Shabab, as they're known, are battling what they call the "infidel Christian occupier, Ethiopia," and what they brand its puppet regime.

Somalia has become a magnet for global jihadis. In 15 months, 750,000 of Mogadishu's residents have fled. If this had happened anywhere else, one U.N. head of mission says, it would have triggered international outrage. Instead, all it's triggered is the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. (my emphasis)

So, did the Ethiopian intervention prevent a new "state sponsor of terrorism" from securing its rule? Or did it create a situation where new jihadis are being trained, where Al Qa'ida is expanding its prestige and maybe its actual organaization, generate a humanitarian disaster, and further inflame Arab and Muslim public opinion against the US for backing a black Christian nation (Ethiopia) in invading and occupying an Arab Muslim nation (Somalia)?

Andre Le Sage of the National Defense University told the Newshour:

.. we do have to recognize that al-Shabab has really become the hard-line faction, targeting international aid workers, preventing humanitarian assistance from arriving in Somalia, targeting international journalists that have been there, and also targeting peacemakers, Somali peacemakers that are trying to broaden the base of the transitional federal government. ...

Al-Shabab is a very diverse movement, and I don't think we can talk about it as a single, hierarchical organization.

Since the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, al-Shabab and the insurgency itself has splintered. And it really covers much of southern Somalia at this point. It operates in various pockets where it's able to find support and it's able to find refuge. And it is providing protection for the al-Qaida East Africa cell.

I think we need to recognize the importance of this. Al-Shabab on its own is a major threat in the Somali context. It becomes an international threat, a threat to international peace and neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia, by providing succor to al-Qaida's East Africa cell.

Even La Sage's comment here, which refers to an undefined "East Africa cell" of Al Qa'ida, gives an idea of the complexity of this particular guerrilla movement, which certainly doesn't sound like some unified body under the command-and-control of Bin Laden from his cave in Bumrush, Pakistan or wherever he is.

Ahmed Samatar of Macalester College adds:

I think the issue in Somalia, really, in the fundamental sense, is not about al-Shabab or a particular militant group. That's really the top soil.

Deep underneath, the real question is the reclamation of Somali national identity, and history, and institutions. There's a national resistance movement going on in Somalia. And the focus of that national resistance movement is that Somali transitional federal government, which was created by the Ethiopian government, that really has no legitimacy, nor does it have any competence, and then, of course, the Ethiopian invasion.

Invasion by itself is a very violent business, and the Somali people are responding to that in a variety of ways, and al-Shabab are one of those responses.

Miller's portion of the Newshour report gave an illustration of how invasion and the subsequent occupation can be quite violent:

In the latest round of fighting, more than 200 civilians reportedly wounded, the last count, at least 120 killed, many women and children among them.

Even those who've survived 17 years of civil war here say it's never been this bad.

Outside, the damaged homes of Hassan and his little brother and all those who'd made it to Madina Hospital last week, Mogadishu looking ever more like a ghost town.

Local people say Ethiopian and Somali troops [of the Ethiopian-allied government] rampaged through this residential neighborhood looking for Islamist insurgents following an attack on their base. They left death and destruction in their wake.

The Newshour report of 01/26/07 is interesting to see here 15 months later:

As part of the global war on terror, the United States has followed a policy in Somalia - through both military operations and diplomatic efforts with the international community - to prevent the lawless country from becoming a haven for terrorists.

Working in conjunction with Ethiopia in early 2007, the United States used military force in Somalia for the first time since 1994 in an attempt to kill terrorist suspects hiding in the south. Officials confirmed a second airstrike two weeks later.

The first U.S. airstrike on Jan. 8 followed a swift Ethiopian intervention in late December 2006 that drove the Islamic Courts Union, suspected of harboring al-Qaida members, into the mangrove swamps of southern Somalia.

Kenyan troops - also working in military cooperation and sharing intelligence with the Americans - sealed off their border with Somalia while U.S. Navy ships patrolled the coast to cut off escape routes by water.

The effort revealed a high level of cooperation between the United States and its regional allies - especially Ethiopia - and, for the first time, a U.S. base in Djibouti was used to conduct military operations. (my emphasis)

At that time, we had just had a victory for Our Side in pursuit of the US policy "to prevent the lawless country from becoming a haven for terrorists". What could be wrong with that?

Now Jonathan Miller reports, "Somalia has become a magnet for global jihadis." Which of course, means they are now an important front in the Global War on Terror, right? This is how mission creep is occurring for the US in Somalia. In practice, it's considerably harder to get out of these situations than to get into them.

As Peterson and Crilly report for the Christian Science Monitor, the State Department's most recent report on terrorism focuses on our ally Pakistan as the place where Al Qa'ida is having its most important success in reconstituting itself. It's unclear to me how getting ourselves more and more deeply involved in the civil war and anti-occupation resistance in Somalia is a sensible use of American power at this point.

The most recent State Dept. Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 was released on April 30. Somalia is discussed in Chapter 2, on Africa:

Somalia's fragile central government, protracted state of violent instability, long unguarded coastline, porous borders, and proximity to the Arabian Peninsula made the country an attractive location for international terrorists seeking a transit or launching point for conducting operations in Somalia or elsewhere. Despite the late 2006 defeat of the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) in Mogadishu by Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces, the ensuing low-level conflict [bureacratese for "guerrilla warfare"] that engulfed Mogadishu and parts of south central Somalia for the remainder of the year continued to make Somalia a permissive operating environment and safe haven for both Somali and foreign terrorists. The extremist al-Shabaab (The Youth), the militant "shock troops" of the CIC whose radicalism and violent means led to the CIC's undoing, initially dispersed and fled south along the Kenyan border. Al-Shabaab, some of whom are affiliated with AQ, consists of radicalized young men, between 20 and 30 years of age. A few of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with AQ in Afghanistan. Al-Shabaab extremists participated in attacks against Ethiopian and TFG security forces. Al-Shabaab and other extremists were also behind suicide bombings, the use of landmines, remote controlled roadside bombs, and targeted assassinations against Ethiopian and TFG security forces, other government officials, journalists, and civil society leaders. The African Union Peace Support Mission (AMISOM), which deployed in March to secure the air and sea ports and presidential compound, lost six soldiers to extremist attacks during the year.

Among the foreign AQ operatives believed to have enjoyed protection by the former CIC and al-Shabaab leadership were individuals wanted for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 hotel bombing in Kenya, including Fazul Abdallah Mohammed (aka Harun Fazul), and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. At the end of the year, Ethiopian and TFG forces remained nominally in control of Mogadishu and southern and central Somalia, though institutions of government remained weak and ineffective. Regional efforts to bring about national reconciliation and establish peace and stability in Somalia are ongoing. The capability of the TFG and other Somali local and regional authorities to carry out counterterrorism activities was limited. (my emphasis)

So, our Ethiopian-backed intervention has generated a guerrilla war aimed at Ethiopia and the pro-Ethiopian Somali government, the government itself is weak and ineffecitive, and the internal strife "continued to make Somalia a permissive operating environment and safe haven for both Somali and foreign terrorists".

By Cheney-Bush standards, that would constitute "Mission Accomplished". But how those results actually help American interests is very unclear to me.

The administration made a big point of the supposed connection between Aden Hashi Ayro and those people supposedly involved in the bombing of the American embassy in Kenya a decade ago to established a direct American interest in targeting him for assassination. I haven't noticed in any of the news reports any evidence that the individuals supposedly involvled in the Kenya bombings were affected in any way by this targeted assassination last week.

Peterson and Crilly also note:

US special forces have been operating around Somalia's borders; Mr. Ayro survived an airstrike last year. Indeed, Thursday's airstrike was the fifth by the US since the 2006 collapse of the short-lived Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)government. David Shinn, former US ambassador to Ethiopia, says it appeared to be the first to take out a key target, though he question edits impact.

"This development is going to undermine the ability of the Shabab to carry out attacks in Somalia until they can reorganize themselves," he says. "But I just don't see it having animpact on overall peace in Somalia."

So: We're carrying out air strikes against a country with which we are not formally at war and whose nominal government is supposedly friendly to us. We're 1-4 in the number of these brilliantly targeted high-tech assassination operations that actually took out their intended targets, possibly all of which blew up civilian noncombatants. The guy we apparently did kill on Thursday was a bad guy who seems not to have been targeting American interests in any direct way. Since he's dead, he can't give us any information about those Kenya embassy bombers he was supposedly connected with in some way.

This just does not look very impressive to me.

Tags: ethiopia, global war on terror, gwot, somalia, war on terror

Missile strike in Somalia

Oh, by the way, the Cheney-Bush administration continues to win friends and influence people in the Muslim world. All in the name of the Global War on Terror, of course: U.S. Strike in Somalia Targets Terror Suspects by Stephanie McCrummen Washington Post 03/04/08.

U.S. forces staged a missile strike early Monday on a house in southern Somalia where several Islamic leaders accused of terrorist activities were thought to be staying, U.S. officials and local residents said.

The attack wounded at least six people and sent hundreds of others fleeing the town of Dobley, about four miles from the Kenyan border, according to residents.

It was unclear whether the strike - the fourth known U.S. attack inside Somalia since Ethiopian troops ousted an Islamic movement from the capital in December 2006 -- had killed any of its intended targets.

The previous strikes, including two carried out by AC-130 gunships that deliver a brutal rain of cannon shells, failed to hit any high-level terrorism suspects but inspired anti-American sentiment among Somalia's traditionally moderate Muslim population.

Gee, imagine that! A hostile foreign power blasts a village, kills some people, maybe including some kind of terrorist if they are lucky, sends hundreds of people fleeing in terror, and they get pissed off at the foreign power. What wrong with these people? Why do they hate us?

This, by the way, is why Karen Hughes and her "public diplomacy" was never more than a joke. When the US feels free to just go shoot up a village in Somalia because somebody thought that there could be some kind of terrorist there, all the nice photo-ops and pretty pamphlets and clever Web pages they can come up with aren't like to do much for the US image in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Tags: somalia

Somalia

Katrina Vanden Heuvel observes at her Nation blog this week (The Somalia Strike 06/04/07):

Here's something that didn't come up at Sunday's Democratic debate: Under what authorization did President Bush order a military strike on Somalia this past Friday [June 1] - essentially widening the "war on terror"?

While the Dems argued about the best way to get out of this failed and disastrous war in Iraq, what Friday's military strike reveals is how our political system continues to evade the challenge of finding an exit from a misconceived "war on terror" - and the damage that "war" continues to inflict on our security and engagement with the world.

This isn't the first time the US has made direct strikes in Somalia recently. In fact, the Cheney-Bush administration is running a counterinsurgency effort with dubious prospects there, too, relying heavily on Ethiopian troops to support the current Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

The CIA's World Factbook gives this summary of recent political history in Somalia:

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has been deeply divided since just after its creation [in late 2004] and until late December 2006 controlled only the town of Baidoa. In June 2006, a loose coalition of clerics, business leaders, and Islamic court militias known as the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) defeated powerful Mogadishu warlords and took control of the capital. The Courts continued to expand, spreading their influence throughout much of southern Somalia and threatening to overthrow the TFG in Baidoa. Ethiopian and TFG forces, concerned over suspected links between some SCIC factions and al-Qaida, in late December 2006 drove the SCIC from power, but the joint forces continue to fight remnants of SCIC militia in the southwestern corner of Somalia near the Kenyan border. The TFG, backed by Ethiopian forces, in late December 2006 moved into Mogadishu, but it continues to struggle to exert control over the capital and to prevent the reemergence of warlord rule that typified Mogadishu before the rise of the SCIC.

The "Courts" group is also known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

Ethiopian enjoyed the cheers of American conservatives for a few days when they helped the TFG retake Mogadishu from the ICU. In their view of the world, this was a display of admirable "toughness". But see below for how things have progressed.

Jennifer Cooke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) writes on the Fading Hopes for Somalia Crisis 06/04/07:

A brutal crackdown by Ethiopian and Somali government troops in early May has done little to end an incipient insurgency, and disaffected clan militias and remnants of the vanquished Islamic Courts Union (ICU) have resorted to increasingly guerrilla-like tactics, including suicide bombings and a series of remote-controlled car bombs detonated in the last several weeks.

She writes that the African Union peacekeeping forces there, currently actually 1,400 troops from Uganda, "has been largely ineffective." The TFG government is on shaky ground:

The TFG, which is internally divided and deeply unpopular in Mogadishu, has failed to take the necessary measures to broaden its support base and expand the governing coalition. A national reconciliation conference has been postponed twice and is now slated for June 15. Rather than seizing the opportunity early on in its tenure to reach out in a genuine way to disaffected groups and moderate remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, the TFG has instead chosen to rely on Ethiopian military force and the support of the international community to consolidate its position in Mogadishu. This is not a sustainable tack: Ethiopia will not remain in Mogadishu indefinitely: it is taking hits in Somalia, it has been accused by human rights groups of perpetrating war crimes, and it cannot long sustain a costly occupation given other domestic and regional security preoccupations. Further, having achieved its immediate objective of dispersing an increasing radicalized ICU leadership, it has much less compelling interest in the long hard slog of building Somali governing institutions or pushing the TFG to expand its base. (my emphasis)

You may remember earlier reports about US planes attacking Somalian villages, targeting "Al Qaida" targets that somehow they had pinpointed. Cooke writes:

Further, U.S. air strikes against fleeing ICU leaders and al Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia, with cooperation from Ethiopia, have led to the widespread perception (both in Somalia and Ethiopia) that the United States fully endorsed and supported the Ethiopian invasion and subsequent occupation. In January, the United States knowingly allowed Ethiopia to secretly purchase arms from North Korea in violation of UN sanctions that the U.S. had been instrumental in passing. Human rights groups have accused the United States of cooperating with Ethiopia, Kenya, and the TFG in a secret detention program for individuals fleeing Somalia, with U.S. intelligence agents interrogating detainees in Kenya, who were denied access to legal counsel and consular representatives. All these factors will make it difficult for the United States to disentangle itself, in perception and fact, from Ethiopian policy, which is a source of deep resentment among many Somalis. (my emphasis)

Somalia is one of those countries whose political situation does not easily fit into current US counterinsurgency doctrine. (This is a broader issue that military scholar Steven Metz takes up in a just-released monograph which I will be discussing here in an upcoming post.) The official government does not enjoy widespread legitimacy. The groups opposing the government include a variety of militias, some of whom may have little real interest in seizing control of the Somalian state. And the situation is further complicated by the government's reliance on unpopular foreign troops, in this case from the long-time rival nation of Ethiopia.

It doubtful whether United States involvement which identifies us with the TFG regime and its Ethiopian allies is a sensible approach. But then, we're talking about the Cheney-Bush administration here.

Tags: somalia

Getting out of disaster and avoiding new ones

William Polk, co-author with George McGovern of Out of Iraq (2006), made a presentation on 01/12/07 to the House Progressive Caucus and the Out of Iraq Caucus. The whole short paper is worth reading. It's mainly about getting out of the Iraq War.

But he also raises a good question that, with all the other bad decisions and misdeeds of the Cheney-Bush administration, hasn't been asked often enough or prominently enough. He talks about the neocon nightmare goal of the Long War, essentially a recreation in even more retrograde form of the National Security State of the Cold War:

Is this just a fantasy? As an old Chinese proverb puts it, “every journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step.” Iraq was the first and Mr. Bush warns us that he would like to take more steps. In fact, he took another step in Somalia.

Somalia presents a curious story. It is even harder to make the case that it poses a threat to America than did Iraq. What most of us know about Somalia is from the movie "Black Hawk Down." In that literally explosive film, you will remember that our brave young men went in to beat the bad guys, the vicious warlords who were looting, raping and killing their own people. The film opens with a gruesome scene of the warlords doing these horrible things. The UN had a peacekeeping force there, but we didn’t want it to do the job. So we mounted our own action [starting in 1992]. Our troops opened up with all our massive firepower. But then a curious thing happened: the whole population rose against our soldiers. We cut and ran, taunted by the very people we thought we were there to save. And then after we left what happened? The Somalis created their own movement to run the bad guys out of town. It was not the sort of movement of which we approve, a bunch of religious fundamentalists. They succeeded where we failed because they were, after all, Somalis, but now we have brought back the warlords, the very people we went into Somalia to suppress. (my emphasis)

The Republicans have spent so much energy blaming Bill Clinton (with some real-world justification in this case) for the Somalia debacle of 1993 that it's easy to forget that it was Old Man Bush that made the initial commitment.

Just as our current President Bush imitated Poppy in going to war with Iraq but making an enormous mess of it, he's also introduced a new American intervention in Somalia. Why? Can we afford to believe the official story that bombing a couple of villages is really a targeted strike on high-levels "Al Qaida" bad guys? Did following a policy of backing Ethiopia in an intervention to restore warlord rule really make sense?

These are the sort of question the Congress, the press and most of all the public need to learn to ask again, and in a much more urgent way than we have become accustomed to doing. A Sunni jihadist group carries out a spectacular attack in the US on 9/11/01. And a little over six years later, we're intervening in Somalia to restore warlord rule? Is this kind of "regime change" really the best way to protect American territory from attacks from committed Salafist terrorists?

Two articles by Bipasha Ray in Defense Analysis Bulletin #3 (Project for Defense Alternatives) 03/07/07, "US Aid to Somali Warlords" and "Destabilizing the Horn of Africa?", provide a number of links and brief summaries of several articles on the US role in Somalia, including a long article on the more general issue of warlordism with particular reference to Afghanistan and Somalia, Warlordism in Comparative Perspective by Kimberly Marten International Security Winter 2006/07.

As I said, William Polk's paper is mainly about the Iraq War and it's well worth reading. But Polk, a direct descendant of President James Polk, also adds some historical touches I liked. For example, since he's addressing two groups that call themselves "caucuses", he starts out talking about the origin of the word and relates that:

... the curious word "caucus" is deeply rooted in the American experience. One of the first practices that Captain John Smith observed when he met the Algonquians in 1607 was the way they got together to decide matters of high policy. As close as he could come to their pronunciation, their meetings was a caw-cawassough. The leaders of the Indians made no decisions without first holding a caw-cawassough or caucus. The practice was carried forward in later American history. It was in the "Caucus Club" of the Boston town meeting that Samuel Adams shaped American opinion in the years leading up to our Revolution.

He also makes a comparison of one aspect of the current situation to conditions in the Vietnam War, a comparison that actually makes good sense (unlike so many of the historical references and analogies we hear):

In government affairs, the siren song is compromise. Compromise always sounds practical. Sometimes it even sounds statesmanlike. And usually it also protects reputations whereas taking clear action may seem precipitous. Waiting to see what happens can rarely be faulted. So asking for more time seems sensible. A few thousand more troops, another 50 or so billion dollars.

That is what we did in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive. We "stayed the course" and refused to "cut and run." During those four years of waiting to see what would happen, an additional 21,000 young Americans lost their lives, that is almost as many as during the previous six years, scores of thousands of Vietnamese were killed and tens of billions of dollars were wasted. Then at the end we really did cut and run.

Today, we predict that if we do as President Bush asks, we will be saying to one another in a few months time – when another thousand or so American servicemen and women have been killed, five or ten thousand more are grievously wounded and end up in Veterans hospitals and we have wasted another 50 billion dollars – why didn’t we just face reality in January.

Tags: iraq, iraq war, somalia, william polk