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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Aug 25 2010 - 15:48:59 EDT
http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article113761.ece
Somalis pay price of US stupidity
By GWYNNE DYER | ARAB NEWS
Published: Aug 25, 2010 22:46 Updated: Aug 25, 2010 22:46
The US decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia in 2006
was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. This week,
some of the chickens spawned by that decision came home to roost.
On Monday the Al-Shabaab militia launched a “massive war” against the
6,000 African Union peacekeepers, most of them Ugandan, who are
protecting the so-called government of Somalia. In reality, however,
all it actually governs is a few dozen blocks in Mogadishu, and its
members are just a group of Somali warlords and clan leaders who
proclaimed themselves to be the “Transitional Federal Government”
(TFG) in 2004.
Six “members of Parliament” were among the 40 people killed when an
Al-Shabaab suicide squad stormed the Al-Muna hotel in Mogadishu on
Tuesday, but there will be no by-elections to replace them. They were
never elected in the first place. The TFG made no progress in
reuniting the country, and now its surviving members sit surrounded by
Al-Shabaab fighters who control most of the sprawling capital.
Southern Somalia has been trapped in an unending civil war since the
last real government collapsed in 1991, but the current round of
killing was triggered when the United States invited Ethiopia to
invade the country in 2006. This was a bit high-handed, especially
since Ethiopia was Somalia’s traditional enemy, but Washington’s aim
was to destroy the “Islamic Courts “ in Somalia.
The TFG failed utterly to impose its authority and restore order in
Somalia, but the Islamic Courts Union took a different approach. Its
roots were in the merchant class in Mogadishu, who simply wanted a
safer environment to do business in, and they understood that Islam
was the only common ground on which all of the country’s fissiparous
clans and militias might be brought together again.
The Islamic courts, applying Shariah law, were the instrument by which
the society would gradually be brought back under the rule of law —
and for about six months, it worked amazingly well. The zones of peace
and order spread throughout southern Somalia, the epicenter of the
fighting, and trade and employment revived. A made-in-Somalia solution
had spontaneously emerged from the chaos.
Inevitably, some of the younger supporters of the Islamic Courts
movement enjoyed ranting in public about the virtues of Al-Qaeda, the
wickedness of Americans, and other matters of which they knew little.
Almost every popular movement has a radical youth wing that
specializes in saying stupid and provocative things. It is the job of
the adults, inside and outside the organization, to contain their
excesses and NOT TO PANIC.
Alas, the United States panicked, or at least its intelligence
agencies did. The mere word “Islamic” set off alarm bells in the Bush
administration, which had the lamentable habit of shooting first and
thinking later.
Washington, therefore, concluded that the Islamic Courts Union,
Somalia’s best hope of escaping from perpetual civil war, was an enemy
that must be removed. Since the TFG was clearly not up to that task,
Washington asked Ethiopia, Somalia’s old enemy, to provide the
necessary troops.
Ethiopia agreed because it does NOT want stability in its old enemy,
Somalia. The Ethiopians understood perfectly well (even if Washington
did not) that the presence of their troops in Somalia would drive out
the moderate leaders of the Islamic Courts Union and leave the country
at the mercy of the crazies in the youth wing. A prostrate and divided
Somalia was clearly in Ethiopia’s long-term strategic interest, so why
not? Especially since the United States financed the whole operation.
The Ethiopian troops invaded in late 2006 and the Islamic Courts Union
was destroyed, leaving the field clear for the movement’s radical
youth wing, Al-Shabaab (The Youth). Attacks on both the TFG and the
Ethiopians multiplied, and civil war and chaos returned to Mogadishu.
After two years the Ethiopians, having thoroughly wrecked any prospect
of peace in Somalia, pulled their troops out and went home.
Since late 2008, only the 8,000 African Union troops in the country
have kept alive the fiction of a Somali government friendly to the
United States, but Al-Shabaab has now gone on the offensive. The two
suicide bombs that killed 74 people in Kampala last month were a
warning to Ugandans to bring their troops home from Somalia, and
Al-Shabaab is now trying to overrun the last small patch of Somali
territory still held by the TFG.
The northern half of former Somalia, ruled by the breakaway states of
Puntland and Somaliland, is already at peace and will remain so.
Southern Somalia will probably have to endure more years of violence
and despair because Washington never understood that the Islamic
Courts Union could be its tacit ally in stabilizing Somalia.
But nothing particularly bad will happen to anybody except Somalis, so
that’s all right.
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