From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Mon Sep 08 2008 - 22:22:52 EDT
Homeland Security Today - news and analysis - Home
Monday, 08 September 2008
Major terrorism threat against US interests looms in Horn of Africa,
according to new report.
by Phil Leggiere
Even the most assiduous news consumer would be hard pressed to find much
mention of Somalia in discussions this election year about either
foreign policy or counterterrorism. Indeed, most current attention is on
Pakistan and Afghanistan as the epicenter of planning and organizing of
jihadist attacks on US interests. A new report by the Washington, DC
based think-tank Center for American Progress and Enough, a Brussels,
Belgium based human rights group, however, argues that Somalia is fast
and alarmingly becoming an incubator for a new generation of terrorists,
in part due to self-defeating strategies of US counterterrorism efforts
there.
The report, titled Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Foreign Policy
Nightmare, is authored by Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson College professor who
is regarded as one of the foremost US experts on the Horn of Africa. It
portrays Somalia in a condition of rapid humanitarian, political and
military meltdown. The fallout from this meltdown, Menkhaus believes, is
likely to be an epidemic of Islamist extremism. Click here to see full
report.
"The world has grown numb to Somalia's seemingly endless crises-18 years
of state collapse, failed peace talks, violent lawlessness and
warlordism, internal displacement and refugee flows, chronic
underdevelopment, intermittent famine, piracy, and regional proxy wars,"
Menkhaus writes.
Given that, he acknowledges, "It would be easy to conclude that today's
disaster is merely a continuation of a long pattern of intractable
problems there, and move on to the next story in the newspaper."
"So Somalia's in flames again-what's new?," he asks semi-rhetorically,
before answering that, " much is new this time."
What's different now, says Menkhaus, is that, "Whereas in the past the
country's endemic political violence-whether Islamist, clan-based,
factional, or criminal in nature-was local and regional in scope, it is
now taking on global significance."
Observing that this is the exact opposite of what the United States and
its allies sought to promote when they supported the December 2006
Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia to oust an increasingly
bellicose Islamist movement in Mogadishu, Menkhaus attempts to address
the question of how it got to be this bad.
The catalyst of the current crisis in Somalia, Menkhaus believes, began
in 2004 and 2005, when national reconciliation talks produced an
agreement on a Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.1 The TFG,
Menkhaus explains, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf, was intended to be
a government of national unity, tasked with administering a five-year
political transition.
In fact, however, he writes, "the TFG was viewed by many Somalis,
especially some clans in and around the capital Mogadishu, as a narrow
coalition dominated by the clans of the president and his prime
minister, Mohamed Ghedi. It was also derided by its critics as being a
puppet of neighboring Ethiopia." Further, Yusuf's deep animosity toward
any and all forms of political Islam alarmed the increasingly powerful
network of Islamists operating schools, hospitals, businesses, and local
Islamic courts in Mogadishu. In opposition to the TGF a coalition of
clans, militia leaders, civic groups, and Islamists called the Mogadishu
Group arose. Though unified against the TGF this coalition, however, was
riven by internal conflicts between a minority of hard line radical
Islamists, in some cases supportive of foreign al Qaeda operations
called shabaab, taking root in Somalia, and moderates.
As Menkhaus recounts it the hardliners, led by Hassan Dahir Aweys, one
of only two Somalis designated as a terror suspect by the U.S.
government, , began pushing the anti- TGF coalition into increasingly
bellicose and radical positions that alarmed neighboring Ethiopia and
the United States. " the hardliners," he writes, "did everything they
could to provoke a war with Ethiopia, and in late December 2006 they got
their wish. For its part, the United States understandably grew
increasingly frustrated with the coalition's dismissive non-cooperation
regarding foreign al Qaeda operatives in Mogadishu, and as a result
became more receptive to, and supportive of, an Ethiopian military
solution."
Over the past two years then Ethiopian military force and support for an
Ethiopian backed TGF government have, according to Menkhaus, become the
centerpieces of US antiterrorism strategy in the region. In the short
run, he says, this strategy was ostensibly successful in militarily
defeating the hardliners and installing an anti-radical Islamist
government in Mogadishu.
Viewed more strategically, he warns,, the strategy has actually inflamed
both anti-US sentiment among then Somalia population and given rise to
what he describes as a complex anti-Ethiopian and anti-US
insurgency-composed of regrouped shabaab, clan militias, and other armed
groups..
"Since early 2007," he writes, " attacks on the TFG and the Ethiopian
military have been daily, involving mortars, roadside bombs, ambushes,
and even suicide bombings. The Ethiopian and TFG response has been
extremely heavy-handed, involving attacks on whole neighborhoods,
indiscriminate violence targeting civilians, and widespread arrest and
detention." "TFG security forces," he adds, " have been especially
predatory toward civilians, engaging in looting, assault, and rape."
In the past eighteen this cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency has
produced, according to Menkhaus, a massive wave of displacement with
over 400,000 of Mogadishu's population of 1.3 million forced to flee
from their homes, the virtual collapse of the already fragile economy of
south central Somalia, failure by the TFG to establish even a token
civil service or advance a national political solution, a military
quagmire for Ethiopia and, most ominously for the future, the
"radicalization" of masses of formerly secular and moderate Somalis by
their treatment at the hands of the TFG and Ethiopian forces. Thousands
of Somalis, Menkhaus argues, "despite deep misgivings about the
insurgents' indiscriminate use of violence," have become " either active
or passive supporters of the increasingly violent shabaab and other
armed groups."
Exacerbating the crisis has been the behavior of the TGF government in
blocking humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of Somalis
displaced from Mogadishu and facing starvation conditions. "Humanitarian
agencies in Somalia are facing daunting obstacles to delivery of food
aid," writes Menkhaus. "There is now virtually no "humanitarian space"
in which aid can safely be delivered. Until recently, the TFG and its
uncontrolled security forces were mainly responsible for most obstacles
to delivery of food aid. TFG hardliners view the provision of assistance
to ID Ps as support to an enemy population-terrorists and terrorist
sympathizers in their view-and have sought to impede the flow of aid
convoys through a combination of bureaucratic and security impediments.
They also harass and detain staff of local and international
non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and U.N. agencies, accusing
them of supporting the insurgency. Uncontrolled and predatory TFG
security forces, along with opportunistic criminal gangs, have erected
over 400 militia roadblocks (each of which demands as much as $500 per
truck to pass) and have kidnapped local aid workers for ransom."
"Far from rendering Somalia a less dangerous terrorist threat," Menkhaus
concludes, " the effect of the Ethiopian occupation has been to make
Somalia a much more dangerous place for the United States, the West, and
Ethiopia itself. Somalis are being radicalized, blaming the Ethiopian
occupation and the uncontrolled TFG security forces for the
extraordinary level of violence, displacement, and humanitarian need.
But the blame does not stop there. Most Somalis are convinced that the
Ethiopian occupation is directed by the United States. Though this is a
misinterpretation of the complex and often turbulent relationship
between Addis Ababa and Washington-two allies with distinct agendas and
preferences in the Horn of Africa-it is an article of faith in the
Somali community."
And the Somalis are not entirely wrong," he adds. "The United States has
provided intelligence to the Ethiopians, is a major source of
development and military assistance to Ethiopia, has shielded Ethiopia
from criticism of its occupation in the U.N. Security Council, has
collaborated with the Ethiopians and the TFG in multiple cases of
rendition of Somali suspected of terrorist involvement, and has engaged
in gunship and missile attacks on suspected terrorist targets inside
Somalia. These and other policies give Somalis the clear impression that
the United States has orchestrated the Ethiopian occupation and is
therefore responsible for its impact."
The report urges that US policy in the Gates of Horn must strategically
shift from a counter terror strategy based on military support for the
TGF and Ethiopia to a strategy that hastens Ethiopia's withdrawal from
Somalia, marginalizes hardliners in the TGF and strengthens the
possibilities for a centrists coalition of TGF moderates and Islamic
moderates against extremists on both sides.
"The cornerstone of international policy in Somalia today is
peace-building," Menkhaus writes, "specifically, the hope that moderates
from the TFG and the opposition can be brought together in a new
centrist coalition that will lead to a cease-fire, a power-sharing
accord." However, a peace-building agenda, he warns, "that is built on a
strategy of building up a centrist coalition of government and
opposition leaders is unlikely to succeed if those moderates are far
weaker than hardliners on both sides. The peace-building agenda needs to
be linked to a robust strategy designed to strengthen the moderates and
contain or marginalize the hardliners in both camps, not arm
hardliners."
The cautionary concept of "unintended consequences"is widely
acknowledged in discussions of domestic issues. Menkhaus's study
strongly suggests that this concept should inform counter terror
strategy as well.
About the author:
Business Editor/Online Managing Editor, is a journalist and business
analyst based in New England, who specializes in reporting on
information technology and related industries
http://hstoday.us/content/view/5062/149/
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