At least 3.5 million Somalians are now on the edge of a precipice, without access to food, health services or basic security, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
IF YOU live in the West, you assume that the “war on terror” invented by George Bush’s neo-conservative allies was an unfortunate episode that ended with the election of Barack Obama. If you visit east Africa, as I did last week, you find that its consequences are becoming ever more acute. In the West, Somalia is a place known for the film Black Hawk Down and pesky pirates. In Kenya, where I was, it is the source of refugees and guns flowing across the border, and a threat so grave that there is now serious talk of sending in troops.
Somalia is the classic failed state, and many of us remember the early 1990s when Mary Robinson drew attention to a humanitarian crisis and Bill Clinton launched an ultimately disastrous military intervention.
For a short period, however, Somalia seemed to be emerging from anarchy. For seven months in 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a broad coalition of Islamist factions, managed to govern all of Mogadishu and most of south-central Somalia. The ICU established the rule of law and a good level of general security for the ordinary population. It opened the seaports and the international airport.
Unfortunately, however, the US and the EU were supporting a chimerical “transitional federal government” (TFG), cobbled together at international conferences but with virtually no support on the ground. Unfortunately, too, some hardliners within the ICU began to push irredentist territorial claims against Ethiopia and to ally themselves with Ethiopia’s enemy Eritrea. With US support, Ethiopia invaded Somalia and routed the ICU. The TFG returned to Mogadishu under Ethiopian patronage, but without any discernible popular support. Within a few weeks, there was a renewed insurgency against the Ethiopians and the TFG. The response was vicious, with indiscriminate attacks on civilian neighbourhoods, involving murders, arbitrary arrests, looting, beatings and rape.
The Ethiopian invasion and the depredations of the TFG were supported, either openly or tacitly, by the West. The US provided intelligence and military assistance, shielded Ethiopia from criticism at the UN, used the Ethiopians for the “rendition” of Somali terrorist suspects and launched its own gunship and missile attacks inside Somalia. The TFG police, which committed vicious crimes against the civil population, are funded by western governments. A number of warlords have been directly armed by the US as part of its counter-terrorism operations.
The result has been what many would have considered an impossibility – Somalia is now in a worse situation than it was in the 1990s. Anarchic and apocalyptic Islamist groups, collectively known as al shabaab (the youth) and made up in many cases of child soldiers, are taking control of most of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia. The West has conjured up in reality the monster it was fighting in theory – an extreme and unpredictable jihadist movement, ideologically aligned to al-Qaeda. The “war on terror” has called forth the enemy it needs.
Politically, the so-called international community has done nothing but harm in Somalia. By colluding in abuses of civilians and supporting the Ethiopian invasion, the West has managed merely to discredit itself in the eyes of Somalis while leaving them to the tender mercies of the very extremist Islamism it was trying to fight.
Seeing Somalia through the lens of the “war on terror”, the US and the EU supported a “government” that has no ability to govern, and aided an Ethiopian invasion that was seen by a majority of the population as a proxy for the US. The result has not been to create a bulwark against Islamist extremism but to give a massive boost to hardcore jihadists within Somalia. By helping to destroy the complex coalition of Islamists in the ICU (whose reign is now seen as a relative golden age) the US created, not a moderate pro-western government but a potential Islamist equivalent of the Khmer Rouge. The ultimate measure of this failure is that the US and the EU now support Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, leader of the old ICU and now president of the theoretical western-backed government. Having helped to topple him when he had authority, they now try to prop him up when he has none.
The result of all of this has been a terrible, but largely unreported, humanitarian disaster. At least 3.5 million people are now on the edge of a precipice, without access to food, health services or basic security. Levels of malnutrition are among the highest in the world. Conditions in camps for displaced people and refugees are appalling. Access for aid agencies (and journalists) is increasingly difficult.
No one seems to know what to do about Somalia, but pretending that there is a nice democratic government to support is doing more harm than good. The EU, including Ireland, must stop the pretence and refuse to give arms or aid to anyone who is abusing civilians. The US and the EU must look again at Somalia, not through the narrow prism of the “war on terror” but with profound shame that other people are still paying for the West’s ignorance and arrogance.