The US Role in Somalia's Calamity

Pirates have put Somalia back on the international agenda, but Somalia's people have yet to receive as much protection as the international tankers off-shore. The brutal, widely ignored conflict in Somalia has crept back into the headlines only after spawning a massive humanitarian crisis and Islamist extremism, as well as piracy. But to deal with these issues, the Obama administration will have to break with failed policies that have helped push Somalia into calamity.

Two years ago Somalia stood at a crossroads. After 16 anarchic years without a government, a coalition of Islamic courts had taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, bringing both ominously harsh rule and unprecedented stability. But Somalia's powerful neighbor Ethiopia saw the rise of the bellicose courts as a threat to its national security, and the Bush administration accused the Islamic courts leadership of harboring terrorism suspects -- including individuals suspected of plotting the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. When Ethiopia intervened militarily to crush the Islamic courts in December 2006, Washington supported its operation.

The last two years have been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Somalia. The conflict pits the Ethiopian forces and Somalia's ineffectual, internationally backed transitional government against a powerful but fragmented insurgency. All sides have routinely committed war crimes and serious human rights abuses. I have interviewed young girls raped by militiamen from the transitional government; mothers whose children were cut to pieces by indiscriminate Ethiopian bombardment; and common laborers shot in the streets by insurgent fighters who saw them as unsupportive of their cause.

Thousands of civilians have been killed, more than a million people are displaced from their homes, and millions of people teeter at the edge of famine. Aid workers, who had managed to assist Somali communities even during the most lawless periods before 2006, have been the targets of dozens of killings and kidnappings in 2008 and now watch helplessly from neighboring Kenya as the situation spirals out of control.

America's most visible response to the crisis has been a series of air strikes against terrorism suspects that have mostly killed civilians. The air strikes--and the way in which US officials have ignored overwhelming evidence of Ethiopian and transitional government war crimes -- have fueled anti-American sentiment.

US policy not only has displayed a callous disregard for the basic human rights of Somalis, but it has failed on its own terms, breeding the very extremism it sought to eliminate. Drawing on widespread hostility to the Ethiopian intervention and resentment of the abuses, insurgents loosely grouped under the banner of a group called Al-Shabaab ("youth") have become the most powerful military force on the ground. Al-Shabaab's leaders preach a kind of Islamist extremism that had never managed to take root in Somalia before the nightmare of the last two years. Meanwhile attacks at sea by Somali pirates have grown, unchecked, a product of the lawless chaos that prevails on land. Ethiopia says its battered military will soon withdraw, leaving US policymakers desperate to empower relatively moderate Somali opposition leaders to fill the vacuum.

The Somali crisis is also a regional problem. Tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing into fragile Kenya, which now has the world's largest concentration of refugees, and thousands more face abuses or even death on dangerous journeys across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. And the unresolved border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia continues to exacerbate regional tension, with each government supporting opposing sides in Somalia.

The Obama administration has an opportunity to bring a fresh approach to this escalating, complex crisis. It will have to weigh diplomatic initiatives involving all the countries in the region, the viability of the transitional government forces and peacekeeping forces in Somalia, and the role of the United States military. Accountability for the serious abuses that underpin both the suffering of Somalia's people and the growth of violent extremism is only one element in these challenges, but it is critical. It will mean publicly demanding accountability from all of the parties responsible for war crimes on the ground -- including Ethiopia, Washington's most important strategic ally in the region. The US relationship with Ethiopia is important, but complacency toward war crimes in Somalia will undermine US efforts to address the broader crisis.

There is no easy solution to Somalia, but Washington can show that it is ready to address the challenge by quickly appointing a high-level US envoy on the Horn of Africa and supporting a UN commission of inquiry to investigate the most serious crimes. These steps cannot undo the damage failed US policies have caused in Somalia but they would send the message that the Obama administration is moving in a new and more principled direction.

Comments

[DonReinaldo]

Albin-Lackey paints a grim picture of the situation in Somalia. His critique identifies challenges the Obama administration must address to resolve the humanitarian and geopolitical crisis.

I was in Somalia during the 1980’s – the President Siad Barre years --when he was commonly referred to as the “Mayor of Mogadishu.­” This term reflected his limited authority and the actual management of Somali territory by tribes and clans.

I worked in a dozen counties before arriving in Somalia. Mogadishu was a civilized urban center and I felt safer on the streets at night than in Nairobi, Kinshasa, Bogotá or New York. The complex, diesel-pump water development projects were successfully implemented and efficiently managed by rural communities. The Somali process of decision-making in regard to their planning and management was a model of democracy, one in which women as well as men participated.

The problems in recent decades in Somalia are related to the cold war and competition for influence in the region between the west and the U.S.S.R. They are also due to the shortsighted and administratively naïve approach of humanitarian agencies during episodes of famine. They contributed to an epidemic of armed militias beyond the control of traditional authorities.

The Obama administration needs to engage Somalis in the USA, Europe, Kenya and Yemen in this process. They, together with their relatives and clansmen in Somalia have the necessary will, imagination and intelligence to achieve a sustainable solution.

Dr. Ronald A. Schwarz
Anthropologist

[Okay]

Mr. Schwarz,

No disrespect to your post, I appreciate it very much since you have actually been there, but the U.S. reneged on its defining role in the early 90s. I have yet to see any fundamental change in the region's geopolitical climate that would suggest the U.S. has any increased expectation of success by reestablishing that role.

[LMPE]

Apparently when "Black Hawk Down" got released in Somalia, the Somali people complained that it glossed over the deaths of Somalis. I never saw it, and have no intention to see it. I seriously doubt that the US army went into Somalia to deal with some warlord.

[drvck70]

Why don't you heap the extinction of the dinosaurs on the United States too while you are at it, I mean cmon

[Okay]

There is no major U.S. Role in Somalia. We've been there. Clinton had us leave. We did. What? Let the U.N. intervene.

[The Albany Kid]

If the events associated with the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (of "Blackhawk Down" fame) are any indication, anti-American resentment would have burgeoned in Somalia regardless of U.S. foreign policy during the past ten years.

Perhaps Somalia should become a League of Nations-style "mandate", controlled by the African Union.

[bannorhill]

The Battle of Mogadishu showed the world that after a few US casulties the anti war movement in the US would fire up and we would run with our tails between our legs. If Clinton had taken care of the Somalia problem then we would not have the problem now. Instead we pulled out.

Now in Iraq we are FINALLY making progress twords a stable government. Hopefully we don't pull out before the job is done there.

[The Albany Kid]

But what if Clinton had created a virulent insurgency by doing so? Think of how much (more) he would be reviled by the Right and by Hawks in general.

Let's pray that Iraq is stable, and *remains* stable, when we eventually withdraw.