From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Mar 11 2010 - 05:54:27 EST
Folly in Somalia
We and the rest of the world ought to leave the Somalis to their own devices
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
By <http://www.post-gazette.com/search/archive.asp?cCat=374> Dan Simpson,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Reports that the United States is providing military assistance to the
so-called government of Somalia to help it conquer uncontrolled parts of the
capital, Mogadishu, reveal continued folly in U.S. policy toward that
tormented country.
I could view the situation with icier detachment if I had not served as the
last U.S. ambassador and special envoy to Somalia in 1994 and 1995. This
role allowed me to get to know some Somalis and to gain a certain
understanding of the country, so it is difficult for me to view it coolly,
from afar.
The Somalis have made an awful mess of their country. There has been no
government with national authority since 1991, moving its population of 9
million toward two decades of chaos. (I, for one, refuse to take seriously
the appeal that an absence of government might have for America's own tea
party movement.)
No government in a place like Somalia means no health care, no education, no
infrastructure maintenance and the absence of law and order that comes when
everyone is armed to the teeth and perhaps high on drugs.
Somalia has suffered an amazing amount of foreign intervention from 1991 to
the present. The United Nations and then the United States intervened in the
early 1990s to prevent Somali militias from interfering with humanitarian
efforts to meet famine and other disasters in Somalia in the wake of the
collapse of government and subsequent clan fighting.
The problem came when the United Nations and the Clinton administration
turned from the humanitarian mission to nation re-building. It would have
been difficult to keep the humanitarian program going without foreign troops
unless a viable government were in place to assure law and order. But it was
a question of how to get from a state of almost total disorder to the
re-creation of viable government.
When the world tried to take on that chore, the Somalis began to concentrate
their efforts on making the foreigners' presence unbearable. Worse, the
foreigners had their own view of which Somalis should be running the show.
The Somali leader who had led the forces that had overthrown the previous
dictator was Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aideed, who was not only unacceptable to
many Somalis but also had a personality and sense of entitlement to the job
of president that made him unacceptable to most of the foreigners, including
the Americans.
By the time I got there in 1994, the "Blackhawk Down" killing of 18 American
troops and the subsequent withdrawal of almost all of the rest had taken
place and the United Nations was reduced to paying the Somalis just to meet
with each other, a sad state of affairs. Soon, the U.S. government decided,
against my recommendation, that it was too dangerous to maintain an embassy
and special envoy there and we were withdrawn. U.N. forces were taken out
months later.
Since then, there have been two streams of effort on the part of the world
to try to reestablish government in Somalia. One cobbled together a
government after months of talk in Kenya. This produced the one that now
holds a few blocks of Mogadishu with the help of African Union forces. The
other has been up-and-down efforts of an Islamic group called the Shabab to
establish rule in Somalia.
The American government has decided that the Shabab is too infected with
Islamic extremism, including perhaps influence by al-Qaida, to be permitted
to take power, even though it probably would if the African Union withdrew.
In the name of keeping the Shabab out, the United States provided air and
intelligence support for an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in 2006. The
Ethiopians eventually found trying to keep the provisional government in
power such a miserable business that they withdrew last year.
Now, apparently, U.S. forces are providing arms, advisers and other military
support to the African Union and newly trained forces of the provisional
government to try to enable them to enlarge the small area of Mogadishu they
currently control.
There is reason to believe this effort will fail, partly because the Shabab
are determined and their forces large, partly because the African Union
forces are not highly motivated to die in Somalia and partly because the
provisional government forces are likely to fragment into clans, be
ineffectual and eventually loot the American arms, perhaps diverting them to
the Shabab and other militias.
So why, apart from the only lightly documented charge of Islamic extremism
among the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia at this time?
Part of the reason is because the United States has its only base in Africa
up the coast from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. The
U.S. Africa Command was established there in 2008, and, absent the
willingness of other African countries to host it, the base in Djibouti
became the headquarters for U.S. troops and fighter bombers in Africa.
Flush with money, in spite of the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the Department of Defense obviously feels itself in a position to undertake
military action in Africa, in Somalia. Whether it makes sense to do so, or
whether the Somalis would be more likely to set up and consolidate a working
government in Mogadishu in the absence of foreign intervention, is another
question altogether.
When I left the issue in 1995 I was persuaded that the best thing for
Somalia -- and therefore for America and the rest of the world -- was to
leave the Somalis to sort out their problems. Given what has happened since,
and what is likely to happen now with the new U.S. military effort, I still
think so. Why not let the Shabab take the place and then do business with
them?
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (
<mailto:dsimpson@post-gazette.com> dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1976).
<http://www.post-gazette.com/search/archive.asp?cCat=374> More articles by
this author
Read more:
<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10069/1041414-374.stm#ixzz0hrdLwXBi>
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10069/1041414-374.stm#ixzz0hrdLwXBi
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