Citizen Journalism by Josh Mull

From the New York Times via Nur al-Cubicle:

United Nations officials now concede that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia’s Islamist movement last year. “It was more peaceful, and much easier for us to work,” Mr. Laroche said. “The Islamists didn’t cause us any problems.”

Mr. Ould-Abdallah called those six months, which were essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years, Somalia’s “golden era.”

For a quick recap of the situation in Somalia, Middle-East-Online has this:

US secret services have detected dangerous signs of “Talibanisation” in the traditionalist outlook of the UIC, such as bans on music, football, videos, and women working, and are keen to avoid the creation of a new Afghanistan in the region. They tried to buy some of the Somali warlords in February 2006. But the specially created Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism was unable to check the advances of the Islamist militias, who had won overall control of Mogadishu by July.

This new setback was followed by a bold move: There would be no repeat of Black Hawk, nor any US forces deployed on the ground, at least officially. Instead, with a mandate from Washington, the Ethiopian army marched into Somalia to support the TFG, which had been unable to take possession of its capital. By December 2006, the Ethiopian forces had removed the Islamist militias from Mogadishu.

The US army’s hunt for real or supposed members of al-Qaida continued. In January 2007, it undertook its first major operation, the machine-gunning of a group of “fugitives” by a heavily armed C-130 Spectre gunship, first used in the Vietnam war. Operations such as these, unscrutinised, in semi-secrecy, mark the return of a robust US stance in the secret war in the Horn of Africa. In February, special forces carried out operations in the south of Somalia and on 2 June, a US navy warship fired on targets near the port of Bargal in Puntland, which, it was claimed, were hideouts for “fugitive members of al-Qaida” — though these claims are unverified.

Raids against the jihadists have also increased in Mogadishu since the Ethiopians and President Abdullahi’s forces took control. Just being a former member of the UIC is sufficient grounds for being classified as a terrorist. Estimates of the number who have disappeared range from 200 to 1,000; they are believed to be being detained in the Villa Somalia in the port or in the National Security Agency’s underground cells. This augured ill for a reconciliation conference scheduled for June in Mogadishu. It opened a month late and lacked any participants from the Islamist groups and the Hawiye, the majority clan. It concluded on 30 August without any significant outcome.

It seems obvious at this point that Somalia under the leadership of the UIC was a far more stable and peaceful place than under the anarchy of the warlords. It begs the question of why the US would continue to fight the UIC when the islamists were able to pacify a country the US had so far failed to pacify itself. It’s not as simple as anti-islamic attitudes, as the US military has proved it will work with such elements if its strategically viable, notably in northern Afghanistan or Iraq’s restive Anbar province. Similarly, there isn’t much to gain from a determinately pro-Ethiopian policy now that the Cold War is over. One can therefore reasonably assume that the US has some strategic interest in seeing Somalia destabilized.

My personal theory is that this strategic interest is a future home for AFRICOM. When it was announced in February 2007, hot on the heels of an apparent UIC routing in Somalia, the US State Department had this to say:

The Defense Department is creating a new U.S. Africa Command headquarters, to be known as AFRICOM, to coordinate all U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent, the Bush administration announced February 6.

“This new command will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa,” President Bush said in a White House statement. “Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.”

Until now, U.S. military involvement in Africa has been shared among the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. Pacific Command. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called this divided responsibility “an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War.”

Creating AFRICOM “will enable us to have a more effective and integrated approach than the current arrangement of dividing Africa between [different regional commands],” Gates said February 6 before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

As the sharpened tip of the Horn of Africa, an AFRICOM in Somalia would have immense strategic value in protecting energy resources not only on the African continent, but also as a bolster to CENTCOM, Central Command, and their fledgling outposts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with Israel in the Mediterranean, the US would effectively lock down all energy sources west of the Black Sea. Short of South America, Russia and China will have only each other to look to for energy.

Basing AFRICOM has so far been a problem for the Pentagon; Most African countries want nothing to do with it, Nigeria being the latest. However, even with this opposition, Somalia is wide open. It’s pretty clear that most African governments, friendly or not, don’t want to allow US bases on their land. Quite simply, the US will need land with no government to allow it. That’s where an unstable Somalia is especially suited. Somalia doesn’t just have a weak government like Sudan or Libya, it has no government. It’s essentially anarchy. The TGF in Mogadishu is abysmally ineffective with no credibility, so much like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US can claim that Somalia has no sovereignty to violate when we inevitably violate it. Learning its lessons from Afghanistan, however, means that this time the US will also wipe out any religious elements. This may actually severely weaken the legitimacy and credibility of any insurgency that’s likely to emerge once the US moves in. The US will install a friendly government and, again like Afghanistan, they will ask us to stay.

AFRICOM will have a home. Somalia will be pacified. While it’s true that this is essentially about energy security, and thus may seem to be a bit insensitive to the self-determination of Somalis, the introduction of massive, overt Western influence on Africa may have positive benefits in terms of opening up closed societies to free market prosperity and democratic institutions. The same could also be said for the current US enterprise in the Middle East. In both Somalia and the Middle East, however, no benefits are yet visible from US influence. Quite the contrary, actually. But, the Long War is just getting started.

For more on AFRICOM: Official – Wikipedia

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