Hiiraan Online

By Joel Brinkley
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Friday, January 02, 2009

In the jargon of foreign policy, a nation that is not working well is called a "failed state." Have you ever wondered which evidences the greatest failure? The competition is great. Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma come to mind. But Foreign Policy magazine gave the 2008 prize to ... Somalia. The nation, on central Africa's eastern coast, presents a dark picture to the world. Somali pirates have hijacked 42 ships in the Gulf of Aden in the last year. Fourteen are still being held. Right now, three Chinese war ships are steaming to the gulf where they are to join an impromptu navy formed by more than a dozen nations over the last few weeks.

That's the international response to the catastrophe that is Somalia: treat the most overt symptom. In mid-December the United Nations gave up its effort to create a peace-keeping force to restore some semblance of order. "Not one nation has volunteered to lead," acknowledged Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general.

A so-called transitional government controls no more than a few square blocks of downtown Mogadishu. Even with that, the nation's president resigned on Monday, adding to the turmoil. Meantime, a virulent breed of Islamic militants battle for the rest of the country while imposing a form of Islamic governance so extreme that it might give even the Taliban pause.

In their mosques, these militants preach jihad against America and threaten air traffic flying into Mogadishu as well as the shipping lanes. All the while, Somalia's people have little food or fresh water. Many are starving.

Desperation

Some grow so desperate that they pay smugglers to take them to Yemen - hardly a beacon of security and prosperity. But too often, Somali smugglers cram hundreds into their boats, take their money, ferry them a few miles offshore of Yemen, then throw them overboard. They have to swim ashore through shark-infested waters.

Most people still in Somalia rely on humanitarian assistance, but militants are also kidnapping aid workers.

Why should we care? People are wasting away in a dozen or more nations around the globe. What makes Somalia "special?" It's just the sort of nation -- lawless, disaffected, anti-Western -- _ that attracts al-Qaeda operatives and others of that ilk.

Turning a blind eye

Western intelligence officials have been saying for weeks that these people are already making homes there. They need only stand outside one of those mosques preaching jihad to find willing recruits. The day is past when the West can turn a blind eye toward troubled nations. The world is connected in so many ways, both laudable and malign. It's perfectly understandable that no nation would be eager to send peacekeeping troops to so treacherous a place.

What other nation has hosted a peacekeeping mission that was such a spectacular failure that it spawned a major motion picture: "Black Hawk Down?"

But the stakes are just too high, and not just for the United States. When the Bush administration helped Ethiopia invade Somalia in 2006 to depose the Islamic regime, that inexorably led to the chaotic, failed state that is Somalia today. The nation wound up with an Islamic regime that also hates America.

Still, a nation that Islamic militants control is not going to host jihadists whose only targets are in the United States. Western interests everywhere are fair game.

If anyone has any doubt how evil these people really are, consider a repugnant incident two months ago. In Kismayu, a port city, 13-year-old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow set off to visit her grandmother when three thugs pulled her off the street and raped her.

Her family tried to report the rape to the al-Shebab militia that controls Kismayu. But after hearing the story, the militiamen charged Aisha with adultery and, on the spot, sentenced her to death.

Two days later, militiamen hauled her to a city stadium, where a deep hole had been dug. The 13-year-old was buried up to her neck. About 50 men stoned Aisha to death as 1,000 spectators in the stands looked on. Asked about this later, the killers explained that they had thought she was older.

I understand how hard it is to send young men to serve in such a terrible place, even under a United Nations blue hat. But don't think only about al-Qaeda and the other terror groups that are setting up shop there. Think of Aisha.

Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University.

Source: McClatchy-Tribune, Jan 02, 2008