Business Daily
Thursday, August 12, 2010
None of these issues can be addressed, however, without taking account of security issues, and it is precisely that security which the endemic and ongoing crisis in Somalia is now threatening. The problem has existed since 1991 when the Somali government fell apart and entered that ‘state of anomy’ which the international community somewhat clinically refers to as a ‘failed state’. The inability of Somalis to order their house is paralleled by the fact that African states have only sporadically engaged the Somali crisis, and when they have intervened it has not always been with the greatest sensitivity. You do not need great insight into the labyrinthine byways of Somali clan politics to see the country as an example of how, even when you have one language, one culture and a strong sense of national identity, of Somali-ness, it can still fall apart in disarray.
The Somali problem was compounded by the growth, in the wake of the ending of the Cold War, of what became known as ‘the war on terror’, in which extremist Islam felt moved to increasingly take on the West. It was fuelled by the perception that the West (with the US in the lead) was biased against Islam, fuelled above all by the continued lack of solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Repercussions from this were first seen in Africa in the bomb blasts at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which the main casualties were the African population.
After the raising of stakes with the ‘twin towers’ attacks of 9/11 in 2001, it was inevitable that the divisions and anarchy of Somalia became fertile territory for jihadis’ For a long time Somalis internal feuds and rivalries, as the US intelligence itself recognised, had been “inoculated against all kinds of foreign extremist movements.” The first evidence of Somali militancy was actually seen in the copycat failed attempts London in July 2005, but by 2006 the impeding arrival in power in Mogadishu of the Islamic Courts Movement caused George W Bush to proclaim a new front in his war on terror.
The US-backed Ethiopian invasion, endorsed rather passively by the AU, while unseating the Islamic Courts, provoked a strongly nationalistic Somali reaction, and effectively internationalised the conflict, bringing in al-Qaeda which had previously had difficulty in establishing a foothold. Prudence should have dictated some kind of dialogue with a movement that seemed to have the best chance of uniting the whole country. The age-old hostility between Somalia and Ethiopia meant the intervention proved a disastrous mistake, bringing about the present alarming stalemate.
In this situation African states have been unable to resist US pressure, and so with Ethiopia obliged to withdraw, we have the unfortunate sight of a puppet government sustained by AU troops with western backing, notionally in power only in part of Mogadishu, while the al-Shabbab movement controls a large part of the country and openly proclaiming itself as an al-Qaeda ally. How did the AU get itself into this situation, which now looks dangerously like a self-fulfilling prophecy turned into quagmire?
Uganda has been the most willing to play the US game, and has born the brunt of a certain rashness, as seen in the vicious bomb attacks in screenings of the World Cup Final (chosen to get maximum publicity, but at what cost!). They have had support from Burundi, and now after the Kampala Summit, the AU force (AMISOM) has been increased from 6,000 to 8,000 with troops from Guinea and Djibouti, although the host President Museveni had sought 12,000. The heads also indicated that the African Stand-by Force that is due to become ‘operationalised’ (with international donor support, especially from the EU) before the end of the year, would also be called in to reinforce AMISOM.
The summit made no mention of any ‘terrorist’ threat in West Africa, but there is evidence of growing activity from a Salafist group based in southern Algeria called al-Qaeda in the Mahgreb (AQIM) which has been increasingly showing its face in fragile Sahel countries such as Mauritania, Mali and Niger. The recent killing of a French hostage in Mauritania brought some exaggerated threats of reprisals from French President Sarkozy, and alarmist reports of growing numbers in AQIM in French media, but there has been a US advisory troops build-up in the Sahel region for some time uttering fearful warnings. Is it naïve to see here more evidence of self-fulfilling prophesies?
Source: Business Daily