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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Sep 15 2010 - 08:08:09 EDT
"It took the Ethiopians and some of the Somalis no time to figure out
that America's hot button since 9/11 has been "Islamic terrorism."
Suggesting that one's enemy was infected by -- or even in touch with
-- al-Qaida or some other radical Islamic group was enough not only to
get U.S. military aid, but even to get the Americans to attack the
enemy in question"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10258/1087505-374.stm
Hung up on the Horn of Africa
We should let the fractious region go its own way
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
With the exception of countries the United States has wrecked through
wars -- Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan -- the area where we have done
the most damage in recent years probably is the Horn of Africa.
The Horn of Africa is generally defined to include Djibouti, Eritrea,
Ethiopia and Somalia, the "horn" part referring to the fact that the
African coastline in the northeast takes that shape. Looking at the
region strategically, Sudan belongs to the Horn as well.
I take full responsibility for my own part in what has occurred in the
Horn, having served as U.S. ambassador and special envoy to Somalia
during the relatively ruinous years of 1994 and 1995, but there is a
fundamental problem for the United States in devising policy toward
the area: The people there have an unfortunate, pronounced
predisposition to settle problems among themselves by warfare and
violence.
They are fractious and heavily armed. If they ever lack arms, they do
not hesitate to sell whatever they have to sell to get them --
including their allegiances or humanitarian food deliveries from
abroad intended for their hungry populations. The regime of Ethiopian
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a sometime-favorite of American leaders,
provided the most recent example.
The people of the Horn are also enterprising in getting assistance,
including military assistance, from American administrations. It took
the Ethiopians and some of the Somalis no time to figure out that
America's hot button since 9/11 has been "Islamic terrorism."
Suggesting that one's enemy was infected by -- or even in touch with
-- al-Qaida or some other radical Islamic group was enough not only to
get U.S. military aid, but even to get the Americans to attack the
enemy in question.
That particular vulnerability on America's part has become even more
severe in recent years as the U.S. military has come to play a large
role in determining and carrying out U.S. policy in the Horn. Part of
this phenomenon is an accident of history.
For many years the United States had no military command dedicated to
Africa. When I was deputy commandant of the U.S. Army War College in
Carlisle, Pa., in 1993-1994 I wrote a monograph in which I noted that
there were military commands for Asia, Europe, Latin America, the
Middle East and South Asia but none for Africa. This, I argued, was to
slight Africa: It showed a lack of respect that there was no
military-to-military contact and none of the ample Department of
Defense resources flowing to Africa.
The Pentagon, certainly not because of my advocacy, created an African
Command in 2008. Because none of the African countries where AFRICOM
might have liked to have been located wanted its headquarters, AFRICOM
continues to be based in Germany. Its one base in Africa is in
Djibouti, in the Horn.
In late 2006, claiming radical Islamic activity in Somalia, Ethiopia,
backed by U.S. arms, aircraft, intelligence and possibly special
operations forces, invaded Somalia. The Somalis hate the Ethiopians a
lot, dating in part from the 1970s when the United States supported
the Ethiopians against them, then switched sides and supported the
Somalis in a Cold War-era regional war. Eventually the Somalis
"convinced" the Ethiopians to go home in 2009.
The bad part for the Somalis came in the fact that the only stable
government it's had since its armies forced dictator Mohamed
Siad-Barre out in 1991 was an Islamic Courts regime that was in power
in Mogadishu for the six months preceding the Ethiopian invasion. This
government was relatively moderate in Islamic terms. (When I was in
Somalia in the 1990s, Somalis in general were moderate Sunni Muslims.
The women did not go veiled, wore bright colors and played public
roles in society.)
By the time the Ethiopians had been driven out, the Islamic Courts had
morphed into the more radical and religiously rigid al-Shabab. In the
meantime, the world had organized a Somali "transitional" government
in Kenya -- after years of arm-twisting and bribes -- that was
installed in Mogadishu under foreign, African Union protection. The
members of this "government," busily fighting among themselves, are
now cornered in a few square blocks in Mogadishu, and the African
Union troops, from Uganda and Burundi, are cursing the day they got
dragged into the intra-Somali conflict.
My guess is that pretty soon al-Shabab will overrun the transitional
government enclave, forcing the flight of the fickle government forces
and obliging the AU to leave. I fervently hope the Americans at the
base in neighboring Djibouti do not intervene to help the government
hold on against the al-Shabab forces. But I don't rule that out.
In the meantime, elsewhere in the Horn, Ethiopia and Eritrea, both
with undemocratic, heavy-handed governments, continue to quarrel with
each other as they have since Eritrea's breakaway from Ethiopia in
1993. Djibouti hangs on -- a tiny, reasonably democratic state of
850,000 living like a chihuahua sleeping among pit bulls.
Sudan is what needs to be watched now. The basic problem there is that
an agreement brokered in 2005, including by the United States,
provides for the people in the south to vote on independence in 2011.
The South undoubtedly will choose independence. But the current
government is based in the north, in Khartoum, and most of the
country's oil wealth is located in the south -- a recipe for conflict.
The Obama administration is having internal policy differences over
what U.S. policy toward Sudan should be.
I would suggest that Sudan's fate is, almost entirely, none of
America's business. Last of all should U.S. military resources based
in Djibouti come into play in seeking to determine one outcome or
another in Sudan.
Just because you think you can do something doesn't mean you should,
particularly in the Horn of Africa.
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate
editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1976). More articles by
this author
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10258/1087505-374.stm#ixzz0zbD1v9AJ
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