Hiiraan Online

To assert this inter-departmental collaboration, based with the new reality of the 21^st century, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote – in the same magazine on its November/December issue – an article entitled “Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining American Diplomacy and Development” which calls comprehensive review of State Department programs, policies, resources, and strategies for the present and the future.

However, after reading these articles, many Somali experts who were critical of the recent U.S policy on Somalia which mainly relied on the Ethiopian military invasion of Somali and the current African Union troops, embraced this pragmatic shift. As sectary Gates highlights the new approach calls “building partner capacity” or “helping others defend themselves” from transnational threats, and in the case of Somali violent extremism.

 For Somalia, the new approach implies that the U.S government will rethink the failed policy of the past five years that propelled Al-Shabaab and other violent extremists to their current status, and rendered the TFG dysfunctional. Nevertheless, reviewing this policy and reassessing the situation on the ground would identify the incongruence between the failed policy and the current reality.

The problem with the U.S counter terrorism policy in Somali is that it relies on obsolete clan paradigm that presupposes that the root of the protracted Somali conflict as clan power struggle. Thus, this policy created false hope and relied on TFG and its power sharing mechanism of four and half as the ultimate solution of the conflict.

Unfortunately, this paradigm has became out dated early 2000, and did not hold with the event of summer of 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) defeated discredited clan warlords that dominated Somali politics since the collapse of the state in 1991, and led the civil war that devastated Somalia.

What this policy did was that it relied on incompetent and criminal clan warlords that were in sharp decline and finally defeated by UIC which was led by Islamists and supported by the business groups, civil society, and the local population who fed-up with the warlord’s zero-sum calculation that failed to provide security to fellow clan members.

Instead of reaching out to the moderate elements of UIC the U.S government opted to dismantle the UIC which they accused of having ties with terrorist groups. The subsequent actions such as the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia at the end of 2006 and pursuing clan reconciliation provided Al-Shabaab a rallying point to advance their nihilism and unprovoked violence.   

This erroneous policy alienated moderate members of UIC’s and when their organization collapsed immediately after the Ethiopian invasion, they flee to Eretria to find political solution to the Somali problem, while the extremist leadership stayed behind to build robust organization.

 In addition, the U.S continued to support this policy despite deteriorating humanitarian conditions including massive internal displacement and war crimes committed by both TFG and the insurgency groups that turned Mogadishu and its adjacent cities a war zone that left the country’s infrastructure, economy, security and living standard in ruins.

The conflict has transformed from decade and half of clan extremism to a religious extremism, unfortunately this transition took place when United States and its allies on war terrorism committed to prevent such scenario.

In October 2010 U.S Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jonnie Carson unveiled a new U.S policy called a “Dual-Track Approach to Somali” it is a continuation of failed policy that stick to the old reality, the only difference with this policy is that it calls for engaging the two stable and self-governing regions of Somaliland and Buntland.

This policy doesn’t reflect the strategic reality that the two secretaries Clinton and Gates embraced. It is consistent with the Council on Foreign Relations report written by Bronwyn Bruton’s that calls “constructive disengagement” in Somalia. However, this report fails to diagnose the root cause of the Somalia problem and instead offers very pessimistic policy options. In her explanation of what she called “constructive disengagement” said the policy “may appear to be a counterintuitive approach, but doing less is better than doing harm, and there are good reasons to believe that the results will be more successful”.

For those who are concerned about growing radicalization of Somali-American youth and the ever-increasing piracy in the coast of Somalia “Dual-Track Approach” will not help to reverse these worrisome trends.