Category: Somalia

Possible US military attack against Somalia? Not again!!

Steve Clemons and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama have both been writing about the possibility that the new Obama administration might launch some form of attack against ground targets in desperately war-torn Somalia.
Please God, no! Does no-one in this White House have a memory that stretches back to 1993, when a newly inaugurated Bill Clinton thought that– especially as a Democrat with a previous pro-peace record– he needed to “show some spine” and turn the US’s existing aid-protection mission in Somalia into a war-fighting “compellence” mission instead?
With disastrous effect.
Wikipedia reminds us (footnotes removed) that,

    On July 12, 1993, a United States-led operation was launched on what was believed to be a safe house in Mogadishu where members of [anti-US Somali political leader Mohamed Farah] Aidid’s Habar Gidir clan were supposedly meeting. In reality, elders of the clan, not gunmen, were meeting in the house. According to U.N. officials, the agenda, advertised in the local newspaper, was to discuss ways to peacefully resolve the conflict between Aidid and the multinational task force in Somalia, and perhaps even to remove Aidid as leader of the clan
    During the 17-minute combat operation, U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound, killing 73 of the clan elders…
    Some believe that this was a turning point in unifying Somalis against the U.S. and U.N. efforts in Somalia, as it unified many Somalis, including moderates and those opposed to the Habar Gidir.

Pres. Clinton’s childish and destructive “spine-demonstration” exercise in Somalia turned out very badly indeed for Somalia. As did the “compellence by proxy” mission that Pres. George W. Bush launched against the country in December 2006, using the Ethiopian invasion army as his proxy.
Clinton’s completely needless chest-baring exercise in Somalia also turned out very badly for the US. With Somali politics thrown into uproar after the July assault, by October the US military (and White House) had decided on another raid, this time to try to capture two key aides to Aidid from a house they were in, in Mogadishu. That raid, codenamed ‘Operation Gothic Serpent‘ was a complete and embarrassing fiasco. Two US helicopters were downed and there was a very serious lack of communication and coordination between US ground and heli-borne units– and also, between US units and the Pakistani and Malaysian troops who were supposed to be their allies in that nominally UN force. A total of 18 US servicemen– and many, many more Somalis– were killed. Clinton’s attempt to demonstrate US military capabilities and resolve was quickly abandoned as he turned back to using much more diplomatic means to try to de-escalate the Somali situation.
That mad, destructive, and completely avoidable firefight then became the subject of the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
Another consequence of Clinton’s childish attempt to “show US muscle” in Somalia in 1993 was that the US military (and Clinton) then became extremely casualty averse. To the extent that the following April, when Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN’s small peacekeeping force in Rwanda, was crying out for reinforcements in the lead-up to and the early days of the genocide there, Clinton and Madeleine Albright worked actively at the UN to have Dallaire’s force completely disbanded, instead. Their “fear” was that even if there were no US units in the UN force in Rwanda, the US would somehow get sucked into it, and US troops might end up dying as they tried to save Rwandan lives.
(Actually, people who join an all-volunteer military like that in the US do so knowing full well that they might die on the job. That’s part of the deal. Also, Dallaire was able to hang onto a much-reduced skeleton force in Rwanda, which saved thousands of lives– though not nearly as many as it could have, if he’d been sent the reinforcements he’d begged for.)
The damaging legacy of “Gothic Serpent” lived on for many years, and in many different ways… both in Somalia and far beyond.
So please, please, President Obama, don’t even contemplate launching any kind of new military attack against Somalia– whether under the pretext of “fighting piracy” or any other pretext.
There are plenty of nonviolent ways to address any problems the international community faces in (and from the shores of) Somalia. Another war is not the answer. Plus, you have absolutely no need to “prove” anything, in a chest-thumping militaristic way. We elected you to solve problems, not create new ones; and most of us who elected you did so based on your promise to find nonviolent ways to resolve tricky conflicts, to de-escalate international tensions, and to build better relations of mutual respect and respect with the other nations of the world.
We certainly did not elect you to launch another US military attack against Somalia.

Somalia and an international community in disarray (again)

So here we are, sixteen years on, and we once again have a major crisis of governance, civil chaos, and human suffering in Somalia; an international “community” that’s completely incapable of responding effectively; and a presidential transition here in Washington DC that complicates matters even further.
Maybe Somalia and its woes should stand– alongside Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and various other deeply troubled US projects– as a tragic monument to the mistakes Washington made during the years it wielded unrivaled power in the international system.
Somalia can also stand alongside those other projects as testimony to the failure of the US’s reliance on military means to address what are all, at heart, deeply political problems.
So here we are, sixteen years on.
Time for some lesson-learning, perhaps?
… This time around, we have the rapid unraveling of the US-backed political system in Somalia that was put in place by the bayonets of the Ethiopian army units that invaded the country almost exactly two years ago, at the behest of (and with much support from) Washington.
I’d love to know more about the decisionmaking of the Ethiopian regime, which recently announced it would be ending its (US-backed) occupation of Somalia. That occupation did win some backing from the African Union, which also deployed some token forces alongside the Ethiopians. It’s not certain if, as the Ethiopians withdraw, the AU forces will remain there. That seems doubtful… Meanwhile, the Islamic Courts Union, which had extended some valuable forms of unified control over much of the country prior to the Ethiopian invasion but were dispersed and brutally repressed by the Ethiopians, have been largely replaced by a younger generation of Islamist “shabab” (young men) who seem to be more hardline than the ICU.
The chief Ethiopian/US proxy in Somalia has been “President” Abullahi Yusuf, installed after the Ethiopian invasion. He and his backers have always been adamant, until now, that they would not negotiate in any way at all with the Somali Islamists. But the Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, has been more inclined to negotiate with the Islamists and other opposition forces. He and parliament opened impeachment proceedings against Yusuf yesterday.
Yusuf’s base of support has also been considerably weakened by two other developments: Big neighbor Kenya yesterday withdrew its support, calling him an “obstacle to peace.” And big demonstrations were reported in favor of PM Nur in Mogadishu and neighboring areas.
So it definitely looks as if Yusuf’s days are numbered. I hope Nur Hassan Hussein has the political smarts that will be needed to negotiate an internal political settlement in the country, because it seems there is absolutely no outside force capable of doing so.
On Tuesday, Condi Rice asked UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-Moon to send UN peacekeepers to Somalia. Ban responded (not unreasonably) that (1) there was no peace to keep, and (2) none of the 50 countries he had asked, had agreed to commit any troops to this. So he looks incapable of pulling Pres. Bush’s chestnuts out of the Somali fire on this occasion.
Meanwhile, the main way the chaos in Somalia has been impinging on the international community in recent weeks has been through the spreading of the lawlessness on the country’s land into– and sometimes far beyond– its coastal waters.
International cruise ships filled with fun-loving Australians have been threatened! Supertankers carrying Saudi crude to the gas-guzzlers of North America have been threatened!
Notice that those incidents of piracy– few of which have been fatal to the people on the targeted ships– have received a whole lot more attention in the western media than the continuing, mega-lethal agonies of the people of Somalia.
The Somali “pirates” say they started their actions against international shipping after they became fed up with international vessels using their country’s waters to engage in illegal fishing and illegal trash-dumping. Quite possibly so… since of course, Somalia has no governmental coastal protection force capable of policing its long and fish-rich coastline.
On Tuesday, the UN Security Council did finally get around to doing something regarding Somalia. It passed Resolution 1851, which authorizes nations to use force to engage in,

    (Article 2)… seizure and disposition of boats, vessels, arms and other related equipment used in the commission of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia, or for which there are reasonable grounds for suspecting such use…

Once these “suspicious” boats and vessels have been seized, the resolution apparently allows the seizers, or other countries with which they have agreements, to hold and try the accused pirates, “provided that the advance consent of the [Somali Transitional federal Government] is obtained for the exercise of third state jurisdiction by shipriders in Somali territorial waters… ”
It all sounds like an organizational and jurisdictional nightmare. Not helped when the US State Department declared yesterday, that it considers that resolution 1851

    “authorizes states cooperating with the Somali Transitional Federal Government to extend counter-piracy efforts to include potential operations in Somali territorial land and air space, to suppress acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.”

So can we now expect to see US airpower being deployed against Islamists or others in Somalia, under the (in practice, hard-to-investigate) pretext that these targets are somehow connected with “piracy”?
The next few weeks will be important ones for the people of Somalia. And for the international “system” as a whole. The power projection capabilities of the US military are still hopelessly over-stretched, so it seems unlikely that the Pentagon’s planners will have the stomach for any particularly sustained campaign of attack against Somalia, under any pretext. Ships from numerous national navies are meanwhile steaming toward the Gulf of Aden and the Somali coast, to contribute to the anti-piracy efforts. The contributing navies include various European navies, the Indian navy, the Russian navy and probably also– playing for the first time ever a potentially combat-ready role in these waters– China’s navy.
Xinahua reported yesterday that,

    Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei confirmed that the government is “seriously considering sending naval ships” to the waters in the near future when speaking at a ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council on Somali piracy in New York on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, btw, a Chinese shipping boat that came under threat from the Somali pirates was rescued by members of other unidentified navies in the Gulf of Aden. That was, I think the fifth or sixth Chinese boat to have been targeted there.
A Chinese anti-pirate naval deployment to the East African coast will be the first deployment of a combat-ready force to the continent since the truly massive armadas the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He took to Africa in the 1420s. As I said, interesting times we’re living in.

Somalia: Worse than ever? Worse than Darfur?

What will end up being the most serious indictment on the charge-sheet leveled against the Bush administration for its reckless mishandling of foreign policy since 2001? Oh my! So hard to tell. The candidates for this sad honor are legion.
But we’ll have to put Somalia on the list somewhere. Somalia where, you’ll remember, in November and December 2006 the Bushites plotted with the government of Ethiopia and other parties to launch a massively armed assault against the body that was just then, however tenuously, starting to bring some order to Mogadishu and other areas of the country…
That was the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a body that– like the Taliban in Afghanistan– had found a unifying Islamist ideology that helped its supporters to rebuild some social solidarity within a country riven by ferocious and mega-lethal warlordism.
In late November 2006, the wise analysts of the International Crisis Group warned the US of the expected, very escalatory consequences of an impending US decision to arm and support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
The Bushites went ahead anyway.
Things went violently awry from almost the very beginning of the Ethiopian occupation of much of Somalia that ensued.
Today, the NYT’s Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Somalia that,

    The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt, several top United Nations officials said…
    Top United Nations officials who specialize in Somalia said the country had higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting peacekeepers and aid money.
    The relentless urban combat in Mogadishu, between an unpopular transitional government — installed partially with American help — and a determined Islamist insurgency, has driven waves of desperate people up the Afgooye road, where more than 70 camps of twigs and plastic have popped up seemingly overnight.
    The people here are hungry, exposed, sick and dying. And the few aid organizations willing to brave a lawless, notoriously dangerous environment cannot keep up with their needs, like providing milk to the thousands of babies with fading heartbeats and bulging eyes. “Many of these kids are going to die,” said Eric Laroche, the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia. “We don’t have the capacity to reach them.”

Today, too, the spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Jennifer Pagonis, announced in Geneva that the number of displaced people in Somalia, population nine million, has now risen to one million.
She added that,

    Sixty percent of the population [of Mogadishu], or some 600,000 people, are believed to have fled from the lawless Somali capital… since February this year – nearly 200,000 of them in the past two weeks alone, leaving entire neighbourhoods in the volatile capital empty.

Now, I am quite certain that, when the Bushites discuss and then authorize various military actions around the world, they do not intend that those actions end up inflicting massive harm on large populations of non-Americans. But look at the record! Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia today. (Or look at the US-authorized prolongation of Israel’s assault against Lebanon last year.)
These are almost unbelievably reckless and harmful operations.
Someone needs to rein in the militarists who have taken over the White House– and also, I fear, far too much of rest of the US political elite. Mainly, it is the responsibility of the rest of the US citizenry– the anti-militarists amongst us– to do this. But it would be great if we could also count on a ready and capable United Nations, and a coalition of the world’s other, non-US powers to help us turn the tide of history away from mindless militarism and back toward a real commitment to using non-military ways to resolve the many conflicts among the peoples of the world.
So many such ways exist! And the UN could be– if the other powers really wanted to make it so– a powerful vehicle for diverting the energies of governments, including my government, away from violence and back toward the really constructive work of negotiation, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.
Pray for the people of Somalia tonight. And then tomorrow, let’s resume the campaign to do all we can to save the world from the forces of militarism.
By the way, this is Reliefweb’s excellent portal to the latest news of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.

Somalia: a sadly familiar scenario

Hey, does any of this story-line sound familiar? Some years ago, the US military was engaged in a conflict in Country X that US leaders described as being of great “geopolitical” significance… Then, inexplicably, the US shrugged off its interest and concern for X. (And since, during the 1990s, the US was widely judged by other governments to be the global hegemon, no other world power showed much concern for Country X, either.)
For many years, the various communities of Country X fell into ever greater political chaos, warlordism, impoverishment, social disorder, and de-development…
Then one day, along comes what seems like a fairly dedicated Islamist movement. It wins popular support by promising to rescue people from the ills of the warlordism that besets them. Propelled by this popular support, it seizes power in the capital…
Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1996– or Mogadishu, Somalia, today?
I watched some intriguing footage from Mogadishu on the BBC t.v. news tonight. It showed what looked like a mass rally being held by the the Islamist movement, which is called the Union of Islamic Courts, which looked very large indeed.
That piece I linked to from the BBC website says that officials with the UIC say that talks are taking place with fighters still loyal to the warlords.
Somalia’s shell of a national government has its hesadquarters not in the capital but in Baidoa, some 200 miles (I think) to the south. The BBC reports– presumably from Baidoa– that Interim Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi says his government wants to begin dialogue with the UIC. It adds:

    Earlier, Mr Ghedi sacked four powerful Mogadishu-based warlords who had been serving as ministers.
    Nine of the 11 Mogadishu-based warlords have now left the city, reports the BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan.
    The four sacked ministers include Security Minister Mohammed Qanyare Afrah and Trade Minister Muse Sudi Yalahow who over the weekend lost control of their Mogadishu strongholds.
    Most of Mr Qanyare Afrah’s fighters have joined the Islamic militia, but Mr Sudi Yalahow and his commanders remain in the capital and are locked in talks over their next move.
    This year’s clashes in the capital have been the most serious for more than a decade, with some 330 people killed and about 1,500 injured in the past month.
    In a statement read over local radio stations, the Union of Islamic Courts leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said the control of Mogadishu by warlords was over and he urged residents to accept the new leadership.
    “The Union of Islamic Courts are not interested in a continuation of hostilities and will fully implement peace and security after the change has been made by the victory of the people with the support of Allah,” he said.
    “This is a new era for Mogadishu,” he told AFP news agency, adding that the Islamic Courts were ready for dialogue.
    Local people in Mogadishu gave a cautious welcome to the news.
    “They said they would work with residents to improve security in the capital,” city resident Ali Abdikadir told Reuters news agency.
    “This is good news for us because the warlords were always engaged in battles. We are looking forward to a life without fighting.”
    But some seemed unconvinced that the weeks of bloodshed were really over.
    “It’s good to see conflict resolved but I don’t want to celebrate a temporary victory,” housewife Hawa Ismail Qorey told AFP. “Mogadishu is witnessing political history but it may be good or it may be bad.”
    And others expressed concern about what the future might hold with Islamists who want to introduce Sharia law in control.
    “What I am afraid of is if they interfere with the education system and bring religion by force to the schools,” Asha Idris, a mother of five, told AFP…
    The violence began earlier this year when warlords who had divided Mogadishu into fiefdoms united to form the Anti-Terrorism Alliance to tackle the Islamic Courts, who they accused of sheltering foreign al-Qaeda militants.
    The Islamic Courts deny this. They were originally set up in Mogadishu as a grassroots movement by businessmen to establish some law and order in a city without any judicial system.
    The head of the BBC’s Somali service described the rise of the Islamic Courts as a popular uprising.
    The Islamic Courts have long said the warlords in the Anti-Terror Alliance were being backed by the US.
    Washington merely says it will support those trying to stop people it considers terrorists setting up in Somalia but stresses its commitment to the country’s transitional government, which functions from Baidoa, 250km (155 miles) north-west of the capital.
    President Abdullahi Yusuf had urged the US to channel its campaign against Somalia’s Islamists through his government, rather than the warlords.

Reuters, meanwhile, is reporting from Washington that:

    Warlords were getting cash payments of more than $100,000 a month from the
    Central Intelligence Agency, according to Somalia expert John Prendergast of the think-tank International Crisis Group. He said he learned about the support during meetings with members of the warlords’ alliance.

Well, now we need to see what the international community (with or without the US) is prepared to do, to help Somalia’s seven million people get out of this long-festering mess…
Meanwhile, both Afghanistan and Iraq now show many signs of being threatened by an imminent collapse (or for Afghanistan, relapse) into outright warlordism. The militarism and arrogant hegemonism that have characterized the United States’ engagement with the world over recent decades have a lot to answer for.
US militarism has indeed been a powerful force for social collapse and human suffering in many countries around the world. At this point, the US military machine needs to be trimmed radically– back to the rock-bottom level that is needed for absolutely immediate national defense. US citizens need to turn our back quite decisively on all these feverish dreams of world domination that have gripped the Bush administration (and before it, the Clinton administration), and find out how to re-engage with the other peoples of the world as the human equals that we all are…
Then, think how many freed-up national resources we would have that we could pour into starting to repair some of the harm we have caused around the world, and to build up productive and self-confident communities everywhere.
Meantime, though, let’s wish the very best for all the people of Somalia.