From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Mon Dec 21 2009 - 23:43:33 EST
>From The Times December 22, 2009
The West has helped to create in Somalia the very thing it feared the most
Jonathan Clayton
The red lines on the intelligence agency’s map plotting phone calls of
known al-Qaeda operatives converged in one thick swath on Mogadishu, the
capital of war-wracked Somalia.
The lines arched across Africa from Zanzibar in the east; Sudan, Kenya,
Uganda, Ethiopia, to Djibouti in the north, even across the Gulf of Aden to
Yemen.
The calls were made in December 2002, a few days after suicide bombers had
hit the Hotel Paradise in Mombasa and then tried to shoot out of the sky a
chartered jet ferrying Israeli holidaymakers home. Some had originated from
abandoned phones known to have belonged to the bombers or their relatives.
It was proved later that the two Sam7 missiles fired at the aircraft had
come from Somalia, which still contained remnants of one of Africa’s
biggest arsenals of the Cold War. In August 1998, investigators had shown
me a similar map. Then, it had charted the likely routes from Somalia in
and out of Tanzania and Kenya of those responsible for planning and
executing the simultaneous car bombings of the US embassies in Dar es
Salaam and Nairobi in which 224 people were killed. Some of those
responsible for that incident are still believed to be in Mogadishu. Even
by that time, Somalia had been a failed state for almost a decade, already
a haven for terrorists, criminals or those with just a good reason to hide.
“Somalia is a classic case of what not to do. The US and the West have
created a lawless state where terrorist training camps and anti-Western
views can flourish,” said a frustrated Western diplomat. It is hard to
think of a country that is less suited to be left to its own devices than
Somalia. Since the infamous Black Hawk incident in 1993, when 19 US
servicemen were killed in a botched attempt to arrest the warlord Mohamed
Farrah Aidid, the West has had no coherent strategy for Somalia.
Since then, half-hearted Western diplomatic initiatives have, in fact, made
the situation worse. The US in particular, but with Britain not far behind,
has sided with historic rivals, such as Ethiopia, or supported deeply
unpopular local politicians because they mouthed pro-Western slogans.
In so doing, the West has created the thing it feared most: a festering
sore on the body politic of the region. “It is ironic that it has taken a
bunch of modern-day pirates to show how Somalia is now the most dangerous
terrorist breeding ground in the world,” the diplomat added.