| Still another War |
| Nicholas Berry |
| July 01, 2009 |
The Somali Civil War, which has been raging off and on since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, presents the Obama administration with another war to deal with. And deal with it, it must. The stakes are not as high as those with Iraq and Afghanistan, but high enough to put it on Obama’s agenda. The rebel group, al-Shabab, made the list of the State Department’s terrorist organizations and aligned itself with al-Qaeda operatives, who have a safe haven in the Somalia territories al-Shabab controls. U.S. officials say that these al-Qaeda terrorists were responsible for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Denying safe havens for radical Islamic terrorists is an essential part of counterterrorism strategies, as is the requirement to have intelligence agents on the ground in countries where terrorist recruitment and training can take place. And for this strategy, contacts with the country’s domestic intelligence network are highly desirable. Somalia also presents the Obama administration with a humanitarian crisis, something it is committed to ameliorate. According the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the war has killed 250 civilians and forced more than 160,000 Somalis out of their homes in May. There is also the problem of piracy. So far the pirates belong to tribal-based organizations operating as independent entrepreneurships. That is bad enough for international shipping, but with a radical Islamic government tied to al-Qaeda, piracy could very well be taken over by terrorists and used by them as a fruitful source of funds. Squelching the funding of terrorism is also an essential counterterrorism strategy. Wisely, the United States has not put troops on the ground in Somalia, where, as with the 1993 Black Hawk down episode, they would become a rallying cry and target for Somali radicals. Instead, the Bush administration paid for Ethiopian troops to bolster the moderate Islamic government in Mogadishu (since withdrawn) and shipped relief supplies, which the Obama administration continues. Under the purview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States now pays troops from Uganda and Burundi under the African Union banner to provide security and training for Somali soldiers and has recently shipped 40 tons of munitions to the Somali government. In an attempt to isolate al-Shabab from receiving foreign assistance, reportedly from Eritrea, efforts have been made – so far unsuccessfully – to cut off that aid. President Obama, unlike his predecessor, has not hyped a global war on terrorism, which had the unfortunate effects of elevating the status of al-Qaeda and the like and creating the image of an American war on Islam. This is why the Somali Civil War rarely makes the front page, and the U.S. strategy is to keep it that way. Nicholas Berry is Director of Foreign Policy Forum and co-author with Michael G. Roskin of the forthcoming “IR: The New World of International Relations, 8th ed.” (Longman, 2010) |
--------- July 01, 2009 -- Foreign Policy Forum |
| www.foreignpolicyforum.com |