America’s Disengagement from Somalia is a Faulty Foreign Policy
WardheerNews Editorial
July 11, 2006

America’s foreign policy hawks suddenly woke up from their stupor in June this year when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) unexpectedly defeated the Mogadishu based warlords, who have terrorized the over two million residents of Somalia’s capital.

Until then, the United States has decidedly disengaged itself from Somalia, mainly because of its botched military operation of October 3, 1993, when its ill-fated attempt to capture a recalcitrant warlord, the late Mohamed Farah Aidid, resulted in the death of 18 rangers and many militia men and non-combatant Somali civilians.

Presidents Bush and Clinton

In the Clinton administration, the Somalia issue was a thorny subject all along not to be touched. Despite Clinton’s overt flirtations with the idea of nation building in countries where nation states had failed, Somalia was early on written off by the U.S. State Department.

As early as 1992, Ethiopia was feeding the U.S. intelligence community with false information about Al-Qaida being operational in Mogadishu. Instead of the U.S government engaging Somalia directly, the U.S.-Somalia policy was put in the back burner.

Right after the 9/11 terrorist bombing of the World Trade center, the Bush administration had nothing in place for Somalia in manner of constructive policy, but the threat of carrying surgical air strikes against Somalia and using Ethiopia and the now defeated client warlords to carry a clandestine proxy war.

Moreover, it had no policy all along, except to rely on Ethiopia, Somalia’s long time enemy and the only Christian dominated neighbor on any number of recommendations of how to deal with Somalia. It was precisely because of Ethiopia’s opportunistic interest in Somalia that perpetuated destabilization in that country, which in turn led America to camp with unpopular Mogadishu-based notorious warlords.

The US backed Mogadishu warlords who were recently defeated by the ICU

With America camping with warlords and Ethiopia, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, refusing to help and some times undermining the fledgling Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that is currently based in Baydhabo, 200 miles south west of Mogadishu, Islamic Courts Union (ICU) steadily emerged as the only alternative in Mogadishu city. Most Somalis in the capital sided with the ICU on issues of law and order.

One wonders, therefore, why America disengaged itself from Somalia, a nation of 10 million Sunnis without any functioning central government for over 15 years? The United States was the last super power patron to that country, and was closely associated with the dictatorial regime of the late Mohamed Siad Barre. But America simply cut and run once the Somalia civil war was in full swing.

The question remains whether the U.S. disengaged itself from Somalia because it feels fatigued especially after its over zealous involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the Bush administration is so self-confident about its covert actions, involving CIA and proxy warlords who are allied with Ethiopia that it does not need constructive Somalia policy?

We know now that the Bush administration has been following the later faulty option. With its victory, the ICU success in Mogadishu has exposed the covert operations of the Bush administration and its illegal dealings with warlords, whose hands are tainted with blood, including the blood of several western journalists and international aid workers killed in Mogadishu.

The United States must re-engage itself in Somalia afresh. In light of a recent survey of 100 non-partisan foreign policy experts, the U.S. public diplomacy in the Islamic world has been a total failure (National Public Radio (NPR), June 6, 2006). Ignoring or trying to “tame” Muslim societies through war and military means had led to a total collapse of U.S. foreign policy visa-a-vi the Islamic world, concluded the experts.

The question is what does the U.S. need to a) become relevant in the affairs of Somalia in the face of the recent victory by the Islamic Union Courts; b) clean up its image, which has been tainted by its covert support to criminal warlords, who have been one of most vexing Somalia’s problem?

The United States must come to the table with the intent of helping the reestablishment of the Somalia national government, its institutions and start helping the TFG take off. Key to this effort is to take Ethiopia out of the Somalia equation while at the same time addressing the following:

WardheerNews would like to send an un-wavering message to the ICU that radical actions like the killing of a cinema owner and a young girl in Dhusa Mareeb town during a protest against a ban on watching Germany play Italy in the semi-finals of the world cup is un-Islamic and un-Somali. Knowing that the ICU is a group belonging mainly to one clan (Ayr of the Hawiya clan,) wearing an Islamic mask, it should move with caution and with the intent of facilitating the move of the TFG to a pacified capital. Somalia is not and should not be made another Afghanistan.

Sh. Shariif Sh. Ahmed - Chairman of the executive committee of the ICU

The ICU is aware that its victory came because the residents of Mogadishu, who have been fed up with 15 years of terror and mayhem, gave primacy to law and order as well as creating the right conditions for re-establishing their national government. They did not want the warlords who have been hindrance to this vision. If the public in Mogadishu sees the ICU as another group that could hinder national goals, or a masqueraded Ayr militia with Islamic mask, then they could be easily routed out of Mogadishu.

The Bush administration must know that Somalis have national vision and would like to be engaged constructively by Washington. If the Bush administration, however, continues to disengage itself from Somalia, a defiant ICU and other fundamentalist groups may gain further influence beyond Mogadishu and to the detriment of both national and international stability.

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