Somalia’s deadly 16-year game of no-hands government has taken an ominous turn, with warning signs that it might become the new Afghanistan.
American interest in the chaotic Horn of Africa waned after the 1993 withdrawal of the United States-United Nations peacekeeping force following the death of 18 troops, but appears to have revived, with portentous results.
President George W Bush’s views on the country, expounded in Laredo, Texas, this week, have set alarm bells ringing: “The first concern, of course, would be to make sure that Somalia does not become an al-Qaeda safe haven. Somalia mustn’t become a place from which terrorists can plot and plan. When there’s instability anywhere in the world, we’re concerned. And there is instability in Somalia.”
He said the US is watching develop-ments in Somalia “very carefully”. “We will strategise more when I get back to Washington as to how to respond,” he said.
While Bush didn’t give any further specifics, regime change is not an option as Somalia has been without an effective government since the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Analysts concur that any multilateral action is unlikely, and that the US going it alone would pose a further threat to the credibility of the UN. But they are not ruling out direct, albeit limi-ted, military action — a smaller version of what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For some months the US has intervened by providing clandestine financial support for secular faction leaders under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism who oppose Islamic fundamentalist militia .
Transitional president Abdullahi Yusuf has repeatedly denounced this funding, insisting that the US should be playing a more even-handed role in restoring democracy to Somalia.But Yusuf’s credibility is deeply compromised, given his inability to move his interim government to Mogadishu, owing to security concerns. In Washington this week, Yusuf’s refrain was taken up by African Union president Denis Sassou Nguesso.
After a month of fighting — which cost more than 300 lives and injured about 1 700 people, mainly civilians — the US-backed warlords took a beating when Mogadishu fell to the Islamist warlords last weekend.
Interestingly, some independent analysts argue that development could bring some stability to the country on the basis that any form of government is better than none.
Sharif Shaikh Ahmed, the leader of the fundamentalist faction popularly known as the Islamic Courts, insists that they do not have a political agenda but are intent on nothing more than restoring a semblance of order to the country, to allow the Somali people to decide their own future.
“We are a popular revolution by the Somali people after 16 years of anarchy and killing, plunder and kidnapping,” Ahmed told the BBC’s Arabic service. “This body is not a political one.”
Sharif denied links with alQaeda and challenged Washington’s claims that masterminds of the 1998 bomb attacks on the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi had operated out of Somalia, and that terrorists loyal to Osama Bin Laden move freely in and out of the lawless country. Ahmed also moved swiftly to try to allay fears that the Islamic Courts intend to establish a Taliban-style fundamentalist government.
François Lonseny Fall, the UN special representative for Somalia, has issued a statement urging the Islamic Courts to begin a dialogue with the secular warlords, who are regrouping in preparation for an assault on Mogadishu. Their forces have moved to the town of Jowhar, north of the capital, where several of them fled after the fall of Mogadishu.
Much depends on how Washington responds in the days and weeks ahead. The US wants to see Somalia build government institutions and end the factional fighting, US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said this week. The question is whether the US will continue to back the warlords, or even escalate its support for them.
There is no denying this is a huge setback for US policy in the Horn, with the defeat of the warlords yet another bruising lesson for the US in a region that has been a painful and expensive classroom for them. The rest of the East African region is also showing signs of losing its patience after years of mediation to put the transitional government in place.
Kenya has closed the door on warlords, expelling Abdul Rashid Hussein Shiry, who sought shelter after this week’s defeat in Mogadishu.
Military considerations aside, Somalia is sitting on a humanitarian timebomb. The UN reported last week that 1,4million people — a fifth of the Somali population — are in “urgent” need of emergency aid and asked international donors for $326million to fund aid projects in Somalia this year.