The War on Terror comes to Africa
By Nick Dearden, January 2007
"The president is not going to allow Somalia to become a safe haven for terrorists." US spokesperson, May 2006
Statements from the Bush administration last year should have given ample clues as to events that would unfold in Somalia over Christmas 2006. Ethiopias attack on Somalia was based on regional considerations Ethiopia and Somalia have been unhappy neighbours for many decades. But the nod which George W Bush gave to Ethiopia's action is the clearest sign yet that the region is high on the USs agenda in its all-consuming 'war on terror'.
Ethiopia was well aware of the role it was playing. Referring to the Somali Islamic Courts, the group which has until recently been de facto ruling Somalia, as a 'terrorist group', Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zanawi told the Washington Post:
"It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them."
Bush Junior himself couldnt have put it better quite literally. It's a dangerous game to play, as the Horn of Africa's history pays testament to.
Cold War
Throughout the Cold War Ethiopia and Somalia were used as proxies, receiving billions of dollars worth of weapons while famines and wars raged. US support of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia from the Second World War until 1974, ensured US access to the important spy base at Kagnew, while next door the Soviets backed Siad Barres Marxist regime in Somalia.
On the back of US aid, Ethiopia developed one of the largest armies in Africa, which it used to devastate Eritrean society. As Haile Selassies policies became increasingly unpopular (as 100,000 peasants were known to have died in a famine, one of his Ministers said "If we could save the peasants only by confessing our failure to the world, it is better that they die"), this very army overthrew his rule, with Mengistu eventually taking control of the ruling military committee, known as the Derg.
Ultimately, Mengistu preferred a relationship with the Soviets. Seeing Ethiopia as a more important prize than Somalia, the Soviet Union outbid the US, sending $9 billion in military hardware before Mengistu was ousted in 1991. Soviet aid allowed Mengistu to unleash a terror on political opponents, as well as many ordinary civilians, and increase the war drive against Eritrea.
To add to the murky politics, Mengistu also received a little help from Israel, who bribed him to allow the deportation of Ethiopian Jews that it needed to bolster the Jewish population of Israel. Shortly after the deal, Israeli-made cluster bombs started falling on Eritrean towns.
Across the border, the US supported Somalia. As early as 1977, the US promised to find allies who would be able to supply Somalia the military assistance that it would need to attack Ethiopias Ogaden region. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan rushed in with the required aid.
In 1980, the US signed an arms deal which allowed it access to Somali bases. Under Regan, the US supplied more than $680 million to Said Barre, at least $195 million of which was intended for military use (dramatically higher when related aid is counted), despite Congressional obstacles.
The US claimed its relationship had a moderating impact on Somalia. Human Rights Watch disagreed claiming that 50,000 of Barres own civilians were killed and half a million displaced in the late 1980s.
For the US and the Soviet Union, local suffering counted for no more than did the proclaimed ideology of their proxy dictators. The important thing was the global edge that arming such countries could bring to their overall game.
Humanitarian Intervention?
While the Cold War wound down, and as Siad Barre was ousted from power, the US initiated a humanitarian intervention to clean up the mess left in Somalia (with no mention of the role of US support in creating this situation), which included a raging famine and rampant warlordism. The result of the 1992/3 UN-backed Operation Restore Hope was disastrous. It is estimated that between 6,000 and 10,000 Somalis died before President Clinton terminated the operation after 18 American soldiers were killed. But few questioned the purity of Bush Seniors motives.
Stephen Shalom was a notable exception. Writing in the early 1990s, Shalom detailed how the US military establishment was desperately searching for a post-Cold War justification for its budget levels and the central position the military played in policy-making. The war on drugs was tried in Latin America, sovereignty in Kuwait, and humanitarian intervention in Somalia.
These justifications served for the down times, but ultimately the attack on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 solved the problem. The war on terror has begun.
The War on Terror
Like the Cold War, the war on terror is an all-encompassing analysis of world affairs which ignores local reality in order to project US power.
The US Administration has stated that the Islamic Courts is "controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals". This has supposedly justified US funding of the very warlords that threw its troops out of Somalia a decade earlier in Operation Restore Hope. In January 2006, an International Crisis Group expert reported that between $100,000 and $150,000 was being funneled by the US to the warlords in Kenya every month, effectively breaching the UN embargo on arms to Somalia. The money was sent through a Pentagon force which has been based in Djibouti since shortly after September 11, 2001.
The real tragedy is that Somalia, as so many other places, is actually more complex than the US or its Ethiopian ally would like to admit. Since 1991 there has been no stable government. In 2004 Kenya, worried by the impact that a politicised brand of Islam in Somalia would have on its own Muslim minority, helped get agreement from various warlords to establish a Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The TRG, itself made up of some very unsavory characters, initially ran Somalia from Kenya, and until very recently controlled almost none of the country. Nonetheless it has received international backing, as an attempt to unite the warring factions.
The Islamic Courts did not have international recognition, but did control most of Somalia. Verdicts on the Islamic Courts differ markedly many praise the stability that it brought after so many years of chaos and violence, but it also takes a hardline on internal law and order. However, the International Crisis Group wrote in 2005 that Islamist extremism has failed to take a broader hold in Somalia because of Somali resistance not foreign counter-terrorism efforts.
It was in this context that Ethiopia secretly stationed at least 8,000 troops in Somalia from the Transitional Federal Government capital in Baidoa. In October 2006, the Islamic Courts issued a threat to Ethiopia to leave Somalia, and Ethiopia, with US backing, decided it was time to invade properly, conducting air raids and entering the capital Mogidishu, as the Islamic Courts withdrew.
Ethiopia appears to have won, for now, with the warlords in the TFG installed as Somalias de facto, as well as de jure, government. Ethiopia claims 1-2,000 have been killed with 4-5,000 wounded while tens of thousands risk being displaced. Martial law has been declared to attempt to rein in the chaos that has returned to the streets of Mogadishu. The TFG is unstable, unpopular and broke, while the Islamic Courts is likely to re-start an insurgency.
Even more worrying is what this means for the future of the region, where the war on terror is now firmly implanted. Eritrea supports the Islamic Courts while Kenya supports the TFG both are religiously mixed countries. Religious and ethnic divisions in Sudan are well known.
The situation has worrying similarities with Afghanistan a quick victory for a foreign-installed warlord government, triumphing over an Islamic group which threatens an insurgency, all as part of a simplistic world analysis based on the requirements of US power rather the regional realities. Traditionally ignored by activists, it is time for the Left to shine some light on this pat of the world which has already suffered massively for the strategic interests of the West.
Nick Dearden is an independent activist based in London