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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Jul 27 2010 - 18:21:55 EDT
<http://www.independent.co.ug/index.php/the-last-word/the-last-word/3-the-la
st-word/3248-why-we-should-pull-out-of-somalia-> Why we should pull out of
Somalia
27 July 2010 23:08 By Andrew M. Mwenda
http://www.independent.co.ug/images/stories/issue67/andrew.jpgSince Uganda
was bombed on 7/11, Al-Shabaab “terrorist” group in Somali claimed
responsibility. There has been a lot of tough talk in Kampala. President
Yoweri Museveni has promised to hit back at Al-Shabaab by increasing our
troops in that country. Many Ugandans support the government in its
posturing for a “surge.”
Yet the surge will increase rather than reduce the problem of the
fragmentation of the state in Somalia. It will also increase the financial
and human cost on the state of Uganda. No amount of UPDF presence in Somalia
will bring peace to that country. Only Somalis can. Uganda’s troops can only
assist in peace-building if there are strong internal forces with a strong
vested interest in peace. Somalia needs a warlord able to mobilise resources
and build a military capability to take effective control of the entire
country.
The crisis of the state in Somalia, though initially created by internal
factors, has been worsened by international interference in its domestic
politics. Indeed, it is part of the wider African dilemma. Although our
problems and the demands for a solution are locally generated, the solution
is never informed by the factors that gave birth to the crisis. Always, it
is drawn from a textbook theory based on a context of other nations.
It is this attempt to impose outside solutions on Africa’s internal problems
that has bedeviled our continent. In the case of Somalia, the biggest
threat to the evolution of an effective state has been the United States. US
involvement in Somalia began with the 1991 intervention that was largely a
humanitarian gesture.
However, when America shifted its mandate from humanitarian intervention to
peace enforcement, it got entangled in a war with Mohammed Aideed. This led
to the death of 18 Americans in the famous “black hawk down” battle in
Mogadishu that caused a US withdrawal. Had America allowed Aideed, who had
the best chance of capturing the whole country militarily, to take control
of Somalia, it is highly likely that a more stable and effective state would
have emerged in that country.
The American position was reinforced by the international humanitarian
groups and their ill-informed and misguided African chorus singers. They
looked at that country’s problem from a purely humanitarian perspective and
missed the vital importance of effective military control of Somalia as the
only foundation for a stable future. Instead, they supported the ascendance
to power of civilian groups claiming to be democratic but which were
opportunistic and incapable of holding the country together.
I harbour a fundamental disagreement with democracy and human rights groups
in Africa. Democracy exists in stable and effective states, not in anarchy.
Yet we are continuously told that only a democratic order built around a
consensus would bring a stable peace in Somalia. It is an obvious fallacy to
argue that liberal democracy gives birth to liberal democracy. What Somalia
needs is a military strongman with the organisational ability to marshal
resources and bribe, coerce and cajole other military and civilian groups
together as Yoweri Museveni did in Uganda in 1986.
The result of this foreign interference with a naďve notion of democracy has
been to stifle the evolution of a militarily strong organisation that could
establish order in the country. This state of affairs favoured weak and
incompetent warlords who now began to control small pockets of the country
from whence they could rip a small fortune. However, nothing short of death
can stop human initiative. In the mid 2000s, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU)
grew and spread rapidly, establishing order over large parts of the country.
It organised around a unifying ideology of Islam and began implementing
Sharia law.
However, post 9/11 America was scared of anything Islamic and thus saw the
ICU as an enemy. It financed Ethiopia to dislodge them from power. From the
ashes of their defeat emerged the Al-Shabaab with largely terrorist
intentions rather than a desire to build a strong state. America should have
worked with ICU to create a stable state in Somalia by using financial
incentives to stop it from becoming an auxiliary to Al-Qaeda.
America was unwilling to send in troops to hold the peace because it was not
politically sellable. It subcontracted that role to Uganda and Burundi.
Museveni, seeing an opportunity to be central to US geo-strategic interests
in the region offered to send in troops. I am reluctant to believe that
Museveni was driven by a desire for peace n Somalia. This is because it is
Museveni who convinced me that such ill advised foreign military
interventions, however well intentioned, tend to create more problems than
they solve.
In 2002, Museveni even gave me a speech he delivered at the Victoria Summit
in Zimbabwe in August 1998 about Uganda and Rwanda’s role in the removal of
Mobutu of Zaire. I was struck by how profound his insights on the subject
were. He argued that external actors tend to distort local politics by
creating artificial winners and artificial losers. Because the winner is
supported by foreign forces, he lacks incentives to seek internal political
integration – hoping to rely on foreign allies to consolidate his/her
position domestically.
Therefore, failure of the evolution of an effective state in Somali, and the
rise of Al-Shabaab, are more a byproduct of nature of international
intervention than domestic warlord politics. It is also difficult to see the
strategic gains for Uganda in this intervention. However, it is
strategically important for Museveni. Ugandan troop presence in Somalia
helps improve his standing in Washington DC, a factor that is vital for his
domestic politics.
In fact, when he came to power, US President Barack Obama showed a cold
attitude to Museveni; quietly despising him for clinging to power and
presiding over a corrupt system. Now, with Ugandans paying with blood for
American geo-strategic interests in this region, Museveni is indispensable
to Obama’s plans for this region. Because the gains from Somalia are
personal to Museveni rather than national to Uganda, I think we should pull
out our troops; not because we are afraid of Al-Shabaab, but because we are
not doing Somalis any good.
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