Al-Shabab's killing of African Union peacekeepers in revenge for the
assassination of its leader in a US drone strike indicates that no end is in
sight in Somalia's vicious cycle, writes Gamal Nkrumah
Friday,12 September, 2014
Somalia as a failed state is a cart before the horse, as it were. The
sprawling East African country, perhaps the only nation state on the
continent to have only one religion, Islam, and only one ethnic and
linguistic group, Somali, was formed by unifying former separate Italian and
British colonies.
The Arab League member state was a predominantly non-Arabic, Somali-speaking
nation whose borders were drawn as an artificial political entity created to
express a consensus amongst rival and oft-warring tribes.
This fetish for unanimity, for all the tribes spoke Somali, and were devout
Muslims, could only have sprung from colonial control and manipulation.
Ethnic Somalis in neighbouring Djibouti, where they constitute a third of
the population, in Kenya, where they number at least four million, and in
Ethiopia, where they have their own autonomous region with five million
inhabitants, were excluded from becoming part of Somalia on independence in
1960.
Islam, a pivotal factor in Somali politics, was introduced to Somalia from
the 8th Century AD, almost from the very inception of the religion.
Geographically, Somalia is extremely close to the Arabian Peninsula. Yet
most contemporary Somalis embrace Islam with the fervour of a fresh convert.
Western assumptions about poverty-stricken, predominantly Muslim,
potentially rich countries such as Somalia are often too wrapped up in their
petty details for easy refutation in the international media. The United
States fantasised that if Osama Bin Laden fell, Al-Qaeda would be finished.
On both timescale and potential disorder on a regional and even continental
scale, policymakers in Washington have time and again been proved
conclusively wrong. This has left an indelible mark on the collective
national psyche of impoverished nations such as Somalia.
Violence instigated by the Somali-based militant Islamist terrorist movement
Al-Shabab, therefore, looks the way it does in the war-torn country and
casts the shadow it does precisely because it has persistently been the
belief of many Somalis, and not just Al-Shabab sympathisers, that the
internationalisation of the Somali civil war was a western plot.
These anti-western sentiments have found fertile ground in Somalia because
of a central western mistake in dealing with groups such as Al-Shabab. The
west consistently assumes that the major challenge will be military and not
social. Western powers do not focus on the battle to win hearts and minds.
And as a result, at least 12 people were killed Monday when an Al-Shabab
suicide car bomber blasted a convoy of African Union (AU) peacekeepers on
the outskirts of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, perhaps in retaliation for
the abduction and rape of Somali women by AU troops.
However, Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Abdi-Aziz Abu-Musaab explicitly stated
that the attack aimed to avenge the killing of the militant group's leader
Ahmed Abdi Godane. "We have carried out the attack because we knew that the
drone that killed Ahmed Abdi Godane and other Al-Shabab commanders, was
launched by the US military," Abu-Musaab declared on the Internet. "We shall
continue targeting Americans and AU troops and personnel," he added.
Abu-Musaad was assassinated by a US drone on 1 September. Both Washington
and the Somali government confirmed Godane was dead.
Bin Laden was assassinated by the Americans and yet Al-Qaeda survived him.
Likewise, Al-Shabab will undoubtedly remain largely intact long after
Godane.
In sum, Somalia's predicament is that its countless civilian casualties lie
at the heart of the conspiracy theory most Somalis uphold, that Al-Shabab
was a successful western - or American to be precise - plot that not only
ran amok, but likewise ran to its intended conclusion.
The war by proxy, with AU peacekeepers doing America's dirty business, only
exacerbates the suspicion among Somalis that Washington harbours ill
intentions towards Somalia.