Movement in Somalia—Does Anyone Care?

Afghanistan scarcely flickers in the American campaign debate, and we have 90,000 troops engaged in active combat there. So it’s no wonder that Somalia, where there are no regular U.S. troops on the ground, doesn’t register at all with the American political class. 

Yet Somalia is, after Afghanistan, the most hotly fought war zone in the world, where international forces are battling to prevent a country’s takeover by Al Qaeda allies. And the Obama administration has crafted alliances that are apparently turning the tide against Islamic extremists, alongside a multilateral naval force securing international shipping against piracy.

It’s not surprising that Americans have erased Somalia from their memories. The U.S. abandonment of a United Nations peace operation there after American deaths in a botched Rangers raid in Mogadishu in late 1993 was humiliating—and is said to have emboldened Osama bin Laden to global designs.

Besides, Africa doesn’t matter, does it?  Then-Senate minority leader Robert Dole remarkably declaimed after “Black Hawk Down” that the lives of 500,000 Somalis weren’t worth the life of a single American soldier—which so spooked the Clinton administration that it stonewalled U.N. intervention against genocide in Rwanda six months later.

But leaving Somalia to its warlords has spawned Islamic extremism, much as the infighting among Afghanistan’s mujaheddin warlords in the 1990s gave rise to the righteous Taliban. Patient efforts by the United Nations to patch together an inclusive interim regime have foundered on the Transitional Federal Government’s infighting and its failure to inspire strong public support—and on attacks by al-Shabaab, the group that holds the Al Qaeda franchise in Somalia.

After an Ethiopian incursion to overthrow the Islamists at the end of 2006, the African Union began to assemble an African “peacekeeping” force under U.N. Security Council authority to support the transitional government. Al-Shabaab furiously fought the African troops—largely from Uganda and Burundi—and their mandate was soon changed to enforcement against the insurgents. 

The advance into Somalia of Kenyan forces last fall has tipped the military balance significantly against al-Shabaab, permitting a faint optimism that Somalia’s long nightmare of anarchy might yet end. In a series of coordinated moves over the past week, the international community has intensified the pressure both on al-Shabaab and on the ineffectual transition government whom the internationals are backing. 

The Security Council on Wednesday approved a 50 percent increase in the size of the African Union force, to 17,730, and relaxed its previous bar to participation by Somalia’s immediate neighbors so that the Kenyan force now in the country’s south could be integrated into the A.U. force. As part of the African Union force, Kenya is to receive funding for its costs from Washington and the United Nations. The force has been funded in part by voluntary contributions from outside powers—the United States has contributed $338 million to date (a rounding error compared to its costs combatting jihadists in Afghanistan)—with some logistical support from the United Nations.

The Security Council also set August 20 as the date for closing out the “transitional” government and underscored its commitment to the “territorial integrity” and “unity” of Somalia. Would-be breakaway enclaves in the north—“Somaliland” and “Puntland”—are to be knitted back into a federal Somalia.  Last Friday regional leaders from across the country joined in a U.N.-sponsored national constitutional conference in Garowe that laid out arrangements for governance and power-sharing in the successor government, with selection of a national constituent assembly and two houses of parliament, with 30 percent of each body to be women.

In a sign of the importance the United States attaches to resolving the twenty-year war, secretary of state Hillary Clinton joined an international conference on Somalia  in London yesterday to insist that the international community should now shift to supporting the country’s reconstruction as the new political arrangements take hold, pledging an initial U.S. commitment of $64 million to that end. Still, the conference focused less on rebuilding the country than on suppressing terrorism and combatting off-shore piracy.

By chance, it was with Somali pirates that President Obama first claimed the mantle of toughness against terrorists, when in April 2009 he authorized Navy snipers to kill pirate kidnappers of an American vessel’s captain. And he can claim success in strengthening the international coalitions on Somalia—coalitions that began to take shape during the Bush administration: the one on the ground that has been winning the country back from Qaeda control, and the one at sea against pirates that has harnessed dozens of countries’ navies, many of which have never cooperated with each other. 

Still, the gradual restoration of peace in Somalia is hardly something for which American voters will reward a president. The country is obscure, and the progress is slow and very tentative. Indeed, all that can be claimed, U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon reminded leaders in London yesterday, is that "we have opened a space for peace and stability in Somalia. It is a small space but it presents an opportunity we cannot afford to miss."

Comments

[Mohammad Nafees]

A good article by Jeffrey Laurenti highlighting a crisis that has been constantly brewing up in the African continent with its link to Al-Qaida and Taliban. Is it only the responsibility of American leadership to wake up and include Somalia into their agenda? I tend to disagree with it. We have to develop an international consensus on the constant rise of militant Islamist in most of the Muslim countries. The UN should take a position on this subject. Either the militancy be given acknowledgement as a legitimate right for its supporters to pursue their agenda or it should be condemned by the international community to put a clear cut signal to all those who are using it for their particular interests. The world community and not America be asked to include it in their political agenda.

[Sally McMillan]

A very informative article. While cutting back here in the U.S. it seems that we are continually spending millions to solve problems in other countries around the world. The reasoning is that we must get rid of Islamic extremists. We and the U.N. don't address the question of "Why are there these Islamic extremists?" My answer to that is because of our policies toward Israel/Palestine. If that problem could be solved, and it could be if we would end our unconditional support for Israel. Then Islamists would not be enemies of the U.S. and could be internal problems for nations that they were active in, and the UN could work with those nations. I agree with Mohammad that it is not the U.S. alone that should tackle these problems.

[John Burton]

Jeffrey, the unexamined myths contained in your second paragraph continue to misdirect humanity toward failure. The diversity of alternatives to the dominate story need to be illuminated.
John W. Burton
Past President, United Nations Association, Sacramento Chapter

[Jeffrey Laurenti]

I appreciate the thoughtful comments. Mohammed Nafees seeks an international consensus on what drives people across parts of the Muslim world to "militancy," and there has been a good deal of research into what those drivers might be. (Sally McMillan is right to note that--despite resolute efforts by opinion-molders here to suppress any talk of a connection--it is remarkable how ordinary Muslim believers from Pakistan to Morocco volunteer the suffering of the Palestinians as a principal concern, a reality that underscores the urgency of an equitable two-state peace settlement that realizes permanently the partition of Palestine promised internationally agreed as far back as 1947.) The so-called "Arab spring" has allowed fervent Islam to find political space where it was rigorously excluded, and the world watches with bated breath to see if these new regimes will respect democracy and minority rights.

There is clearly an international consensus, however, that "militancy" expressed in terrorist violence, Al Qaeda style, must be confronted and suppressed. Whether Mussolini's squadristi or Hitler's brownshirts or Al Qaeda's suicide killers, terrorist violence to destabilize societies and open the door to their takeover by extremists does not lead to a more just or peaceful world. That is not a myth.