From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Sep 16 2009 - 08:54:59 EDT
The badlands of Somalia: the new front line The West has repeatedly got
Somalia wrong, and could once again be sleepwalking into another costly
military misadventure, writes Nick Meo.
By Nick Meo
Published: 7:36PM BST 15 Sep 2009
With unmanned drones in the skies and the launch of secret commando raids,
Somalia must feel like familiar territory for the CIA veterans who have
moved to East Africa. They are hunting terrorists in a failed state, ruled
for decades by tribal chieftains and brutal warlords. Its desperate people
are turning in fear to an Islamist militia. al-Qaeda senses a chance to
re-establish itself in the Horn of Africa.
It's all strikingly reminiscent of Afghanistan, where many of the special
forces operatives and intelligence agents have just come from, probably with
British SAS colleagues alongside them.
Americans have been on Somali soil before – during America's disastrous
intervention in the early 1990s, which ended after the firefight that was
later made into the film *Black Hawk Down*. Since then, the outside world
has tried hard to ignore the unlucky country. But now Somalia is showing
signs of becoming a second crucible of terror, one that could cause the West
as much trouble as the lawless borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has
warned of the risk of al-Qaeda leaders moving into the African country,
which terrorists see as a good base for spreading mayhem on a troubled
continent. Security services fear that under the control of al-Shabaab – a
militia similar to the Taliban which has taken over much of the south and
most of the capital Mogadishu – Somalia could become a new bolt hole for
al-Qaeda's leadership. They are under pressure in the badlands of
Waziristan, in Pakistan, which have served as their main base since bin
Laden's men were driven out of Afghanistan in 2001. The route from there to
Mogadishu is long but unpoliced.
Hence American raids such as the one on Monday, when a terrorist mastermind
was killed in a helicopter raid. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was wanted in
connection with the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in 2002. Americans are
believed to be hunting other dangerous men who have arrived more recently.
If US commandos did land from their helicopters, as has been reported, it
would have been the first time the US has had boots on the ground in the
country since 1994.
Somalia's simmering and confused conflict has heated up considerably in
recent years. In 2006 a conservative group called the Islamic Courts Union
took over Mogadishu, and were welcomed by most Somalis for bringing
security, at the cost of imposing moral repression. But they looked too much
like the Taliban to Washington, which recalled training camps al-Qaeda had
in the south of the country in the 1990s. So Somalia's old enemy, Ethiopia,
was encouraged to invade and reinstall a government comprised of former
warlords.
It didn't work. Hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers died in an unwinnable
guerrilla war, the streets of Mogadishu became lawless again without the
Courts militia to police them, and the ranks of the al-Shabaab ("the Youth")
swelled as young men joined to attack the invader.
Earlier this year the bloodied Ethiopians pulled out. Their defeat has been
a huge boost for al-Shabaab, which has transformed itself from the youth
wing of the Islamic Courts into a much more radical movement, praised by
al-Qaeda for resisting Christian Ethiopia and its US backers.
Since then the confused fighting has only got worse. Somali leaders, the
United Nations, the African Union and foreign diplomats are all apparently
unable to come up with a political solution.
Thousands of civilians have died, more than a million have fled their homes
for miserable shanties outside the capital or across the border in Kenya,
and nearly half the population needs aid to survive. It is one of the worst
humanitarian disasters in the world, and makes an ideal breeding ground for
terrorism.
America's alarm was heightened earlier this year when it emerged that the
children of Somali immigrants had travelled from Minneapolis to their
parents' homeland to join the jihad. Three of them are believed to have
died, including one who may have become the first American suicide bomber.
There are fears that the sons of Britain's Somali community may also be
answering al-Shabaab's rallying cry. Somali immigrants to Britain went there
to flee war. Most are interested in making money, not fighting jihad. But
elders are concerned that the virus of jihad may be taking root among the
young. Like the sons of law-abiding Pakistani immigrants, there are those
among the second generation who believe their faith is under attack from
America, and some are willing to defend it.
So far the fighting has been confined to Somalia, but there are fears that
attacks could be launched in Britain and the US. One of the aims of the
special forces' secret war in Somalia is to prevent that.
But the West has repeatedly got Somalia wrong, and could once again be
sleepwalking into another costly military misadventure.
"What you have in Somalia is a dangerous mix, and it is a place that we
should keep an eye on," says Roger Middleton, an expert on the country with
Chatham House. "How much al-Qaeda contributes to the war, we simply don't
know."
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