[R-G] Somalia, the Third Front Revisited

[Anthony Fenton]

Somalia, the Third Front Revisited
December, 01 2008 By Matthew Blood
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/19831

Somalia today is approaching a cataclysm not seen since the early  
1990s, and the U.S. role has added in no small part to the misery that  
once again engulfs the war-weary Horn of Africa nation.

The brutal Ethiopian military occupation of Somalia that began on  
Christmas Eve 2006 has sustained heavy losses over the past 20 months.  
The conflict has strained Ethiopian resources and Addis Ababa is  
currently reviewing its overall strategy. What remains of Somalia's  
Transitional Federal Government (TFG), barring a massive new foreign  
military intervention, teeters on the edge of collapse. In its place  
an already powerful Islamist insurgency is strengthening rapidly.  
Warlordism, criminality, and piracy are reaching new heights. All the  
while, the Somali population remains under siege, caught between  
abuses on all sides as its society literally disintegrates.

Underwriting a significant portion of the bloodshed has been a U.S.  
administration engaged in expansive warfare with a preference for  
covert military operations. Somalia has long been of strategic  
interest to U.S. policymakers. The country sits next to the strait of  
Bab al-Mandeb, a key oil transit waterway between the Red Sea and the  
Indian Ocean—the second closest point between Africa and the Middle  
East. During the Cold War the dictatorship of General Siad Barre was  
the long-time recipient of generous amounts of U.S. military and  
economic largesse. In 1991, after years of unrest, rebellion, and  
protracted drought, Barre's regime collapsed into famine, war, and  
chaos. George H. W. Bush ordered U.S. forces into the country a year  
later in support of the United Nations relief program, culminating in  
the Battle of Mogadishu and the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident.

At the time of the U.S. withdrawal and international disengagement, no  
single actor was strong enough to establish and maintain control.  
Somalia fractured along semi-permanent tribal lines and warlord  
fiefdoms that would come to define the country's social and political  
landscape. For more than a decade and a half, the territory was left  
to fester in ungoverned criminality and violence, only rarely making  
international headlines.

September 2001 and the wars in the Middle East brought renewed U.S.  
focus to the Horn of Africa. For some time, a diverse group of  
Islamists, clan leaders, businesspeople, militia heads, and civic  
actors had been coalescing into what would in 2005 become the Union of  
Islamic Courts (UIC), a heterogeneous movement seeking to establish a  
semblance of law and order after years of chaos.

The Courts proved to be well organized, disciplined, and effective  
civil administrators. They were popular with average Somalis, even the  
less devout, all of whom were desperate for relief from the criminal  
gangs and brutality that had long ruled their country. The Islamists  
also began to challenge the weak, faction-ridden TFG—the successor to  
13 previous failed attempts at creating a central government—which had  
been confined to the provincial town of Baidoa, headed by President  
Abdullahi Yusuf, closely linked to Mogadishu's warlords.

Alarmed at the Islamic Courts' growing strength and popularity, in  
early 2006 the CIA began supplying significant quantities of arms and  
money to a coalition of secular Mogadishu warlords under the name  
Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).  
The CIA program had been a poorly conceived attempt to hunt down the  
small number of al-Qaeda affiliated individuals involved in the 1998  
bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, then thought to  
be hiding in Somalia. But the operation failed disastrously and,  
according to reports, "the payoffs added to an anarchic situation that  
led many Somalis to turn to the Islamic Courts for  
protection" (Washington Post, May 13, 2007).

The Islamists struck preemptively and decisively, routing the warlords  
and seizing control of Mogadishu within a matter of weeks. For six  
months in 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts proceeded to establish  
security and the provision of basic social services in much of Somalia  
for the first time in 15 years. The peace provided by the Islamists  
also came with more conservative social policies and a type of sharia  
law. For average Somalis, however, the security of the Courts brought  
a brief respite from their usual suffering.

The Bush administration, seeing Somalia and the Islamic Courts through  
the lens of its war on terror and, having botched the earlier warlord  
program, began stepping up aid to long-time ally and neighboring  
Ethiopian autocrat Meles Zenawi. Zenawi has held power in Ethiopia  
since the early 1990s. During a crackdown against popular protests  
after fraudulent elections in 2005, Zenawi's security forces massacred  
nearly 200 people, injured 760 more, and arrested an additional  
20,000, among them opposition leaders, foreign aid workers, and  
journalists. Nonetheless, since 2002, Ethiopia has received nearly $25  
million in overt U.S. military assistance while at least 100 U.S.  
military personnel currently work inside Ethiopia in advisory  
positions as part of what the Pentagon characterizes as a "close  
working relationship" with the Ethiopian military.

Less than two weeks before the invasion, in mid-December 2006,  
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer  
publicly declared, "The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by  
al-Qaeda cell individuals, east Africa al-Qaeda cell individuals." The  
claim was dubious and he provided no evidence. Horn of Africa  
specialist Ken Menkhaus noted in February 2007 that the Islamic Courts  
"movement as a whole was far from an al-Qaeda front. Only three  
foreign al-Qaeda operatives were said by the US to be in hiding in  
Mogadishu, a number far lower than those suspected of residing in  
neighboring Kenya."

Assistant Secretary Frazer warned of "a risk Al Qaeda may take up  
bases in Somalia," but denied that the United States would take  
military action against the Courts. Similarly, then-UN Ambassador John  
Bolton told reporters in early December 2006: "The United States  
strongly believes that a sustainable solution in Somalia should be  
based on credible dialogue between the [TFG] and the UIC and we  
continue to work with our African and other partners toward that end."

Behind the scenes, General John Abizaid, at the time U.S. Centcom  
commander, had already visited Addis Ababa to express some last minute  
reservations to Prime Minister Zenawi. The decision had been made,  
though, and ultimately Washington lent its support to the invasion.

The Ethiopian military crossed the Somali border on December 24, 2006  
and later reports indicated that "CIA agents traveled with the  
Ethiopian troops, helping to direct operations" (the London  
Independent, February 9, 2008). The United States provided important  
satellite intelligence and other battleground information from  
unmanned Predator drones. "A lot of what we taught them was used to  
fight that global War on Terror," observed a U.S. military advisor who  
had trained Ethiopian soldiers now fighting in Somalia. In terms of  
weaponry, he noted, "They got what they needed."

U.S. Special Forces also conducted periodic operations inside Somali  
territory, possibly moving out of a rumored CIA base in eastern  
Ethiopia. The full extent and exact type of activity is not known, but  
reports of their movements have been confirmed by Somali officials. As  
TFG Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein explained to reporters in  
February 2008, "The presence of the CIA, the presence of [U.S.]  
troops, is not a big issue. We like that they are here. But right now  
they don't have a permanent military presence. They come in and out."

U.S. warships moved into position off the coast of Somalia in  
anticipation of the invasion. Acting on intelligence from the ground,  
Washington ordered bombing raids targeting what it believed to be  
Islamic militants. U.S.-piloted AC-130 gunships and cruise missiles  
have blasted Somali territory at least a half dozen times since  
January 2007. The first of these air raids killed what turned out to  
be 70 Somali goat herders whom the Pentagon had initially claimed were  
Islamic fighters. After several other attempts, in May 2008, the  
bombings finally succeeded in killing the leader of the al-Shabaab  
militia, Aden Hashi Ayro. The strike also demolished the surrounding  
homes, killing ten others and leading to anti-U.S. protests.

The Ethiopian military captured Mogadishu before New Year's Day 2007.  
The most powerful army in the region devastated organized UIC forces.  
But the remaining militants fled and quickly melted back into the  
larger civilian population. As predicted, the collapse of the Islamic  
Courts and the subsequent Ethiopian occupation led to a relentless  
Iraq-style insurgency—one that has been rapidly gaining strength.

The insurgents have successfully used roadside bombs, hit-and-run  
attacks, and assassinations targeted at government officials to  
assault the TFG and its Ethiopian backers. Increasingly, they have  
routed Ethiopian and TFG military forces in direct confrontations,  
moving to capture and hold swathes of territory for extended periods  
of time.

Ethiopian and TFG forces, for their part, responded with a ferocious  
campaign to root out militants in Mogadishu and surrounding areas. The  
vicious counterinsurgency has seen the regular shelling of densely  
populated urban neighborhoods. Distinctions between civilians and  
insurgents are often irrelevant to security forces that frequently  
prey on the Somali population. Looting, rape, torture, mutilation, and  
cutting the throats of victims are regular tactics of Ethiopian and  
TFG forces. These are the same methods the Ethiopian military has used  
to suppress another ongoing insurgency in the Ogaden desert. The most  
recent report from Amnesty International recounts episodes too  
horrific to quote here.

Thus, Somalis are caught in the crossfire between Ethiopian and TFG  
security forces, insurgents, warlords, criminals, and U.S. gunships.  
The "more common complaint among ordinary Somalis," according to  
reporters, however, "is that the Ethiopians are 'indiscriminate' in  
their reprisals—and that this is why Mogadishu has been emptied of  
people."

The human cost has been staggering. The forces of war and drought are  
rapidly converging on the Horn of Africa nation in a perfect storm  
against the Somali population. The civilian death toll since the  
invasion is fast approaching 10,000. More than a million people have  
fled their homes, including half of Mogadishu, and are now living in  
squalid, makeshift refugee camps.

The food and fuel crisis that has affected international markets has  
combined with the disruption of fighting, looting, inflation, and a  
failure of the seasonal rains to push Somalia to the absolute brink.  
The country now stands on the verge of famine on a scale not seen  
since the early 1990s when an estimated 300,000 Somalis starved to  
death. Recent UN estimates hold that more than 3.25 million people,  
nearly half the population, are currently in need of food aid.  
International officials have long been calling the situation the most  
horrific humanitarian disaster on the African continent.

As in Iraq, the war on terror in Somalia has become a self-fulfilling  
prophecy, sowing the increasing radicalization and anti-Westernization  
of an entire population of poor Third World people. In recent months  
there has been new evidence of foreign fighters inside Somalia— 
decidedly not the case when Jendayi Frazer declared two weeks prior to  
the invasion that Somalia was "now controlled by al-Qaeda cell  
individuals."

While the leadership of the Islamic Courts was originally a mix of  
moderate and conservative Islamic actors, the insurgency no longer  
maintains this character. A peace agreement between the former  
moderate elements of the Courts, now called the Alliance for the Re- 
Liberation of Somalia, and the TFG has already concluded to no effect.  
The old leaders of the Courts no longer control the insurgency. Battle- 
hardened al-Shabaab militants, perhaps poised to succeed the  
Transitional Federal Government, espouse a far more radical and anti- 
Western Islamic ideology.

For the moment, the intervention in Somalia appears to be coming full  
circle. In September two Somalis in their early 20s were arrested at a  
German airport on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks somewhere in  
the West. They were released due to insufficient evidence, but German  
intelligence officials believe the men were arrested too early.

Somalia has indeed been a third front in the war on terror. A quiet  
front, but a front nonetheless. Six months after the Ethiopian  
invasion, Defense Department spokesperson Bryan Whitman told  
reporters, "The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the  
success of those operations, is often predicated on our ability to  
work quietly with our partners and allies." Now, almost two years into  
the occupation, few can still maintain delusions of success in the  
Horn of Africa. Perhaps most troubling is that the current episode  
must be seen against the background of the recent creation of AFRICOM  
and the larger militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa.

What becomes of Somalia remains to be seen. What is certain is that  
the U.S. has taken a group of the world's most destitute, desperate,  
and brutalized people and brutalized them some more. We might expect  
to see angry young Somali bringing violence to the West in the future.  
Whether we know it or not, we have certainly brought it to them. This  
is the Bush administration's legacy and it will be with us for a long  
time to come.

Z



Matthew Blood is an independent journalist who has lived and traveled  
in sub-Saharan Africa.