Puppet government near collapse in Somalia

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Dec 3, 2008

The Ethiopian government on Nov. 25 announced it was withdrawing its military forces from neighboring Somalia. This represents a defeat for the foreign policy aims of Washington, which encouraged the government of Meles Zenawi to invade Somalia in December 2006.

The Ethiopian military force is now down to some 2,000 troops from an initial 12,000. The Ethiopians are supposed to be replaced by 8,000 African Union “peacekeeping” forces.

However, only 2,600 AU troops, supplied by the U.S.-backed countries of Uganda and Burundi, have been deployed in the capital of Mogadishu. Other nations such as Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Kenya, which had pledged to send troops, have not deployed any.

In a candid statement, President Abdullahi Yusuf of the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government in Somalia, which is bolstered militarily by the Ethiopian army, said the regime is “on the verge of collapse.” (Reuters, Nov. 16) Fighters from the al-Shabaab organization have not only taken control of vast areas of the country, but are openly challenging the puppet forces inside Mogadishu.

“Most of the country is in the hands of Islamists and we are only in Mogadishu and Baidoa, where there is daily war,” said Yusuf, speaking before an assembly of 100 Somali legislators in Kenya.

Yusuf spoke about the fragility of the TFG government, saying: “We, ourselves, are behind the problems and we are accountable in this world and in the hereafter. Islamists have been capturing all towns and now control Elasha. It is every man for himself if the government collapses.”

In a further sign of disarray, Yusuf accused Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein of the political problems within the regime. The government has failed to appoint a new cabinet since the previous one was dissolved months ago.

Resistance forces advance

As the TFG bickered over cabinet seats within an ineffective regime, reports from the ground in Somalia indicated that the al-Shabaab resistance movement had taken control of the port town of Barawe, located approximately 110 miles from the capital. During the week of Nov. 10, the movement seized the town of Merka, where a strategic airstrip is located.

In Mogadishu, where the TFG claims it still maintains control, al-Shabaab fighters operate openly, carrying out recruitment drives and training exercises. The organization is already presenting itself as a parallel government to the U.S.-backed TFG.

The resistance forces also consist of groups within the Union of Islamic Courts that are negotiating agreements with the TFG in Djibouti. This faction, led by Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, has been described as more “moderate” than al-Shabaab, which was the youth wing of the UIC during its burgeoning period of influence prior to the Ethiopian invasion.

Another prominent Islamic leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who was also a part of the UIC, has rejected talks with the TFG until the Ethiopians withdraw. The U.S. government has accused Aweys of supporting “terrorism” and has actively discouraged the TFG from reaching any agreement with his forces.

An article in the Nov. 24 Chicago Tribune by correspondent Paul Salopek points out the central role of the U.S. government in the current situation in Somalia.

“It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts. The raids’ success or failure is almost impossible to verify,” writes Salopek.

“It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and ... secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.”

Salopek states that U.S. efforts in this Horn of Africa nation are bound to result in another defeat: “It is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that Washington appears to be losing, if it hasn’t already been lost.”

The article quotes Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina: “Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11. By any rational metric, what we’ve ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted.”

Will policy change under Obama?

It is not yet clear whether the incoming U.S. administration will make any significant changes in its military policy toward the Horn of Africa. However, President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of several top-level Clinton administration figures indicates a continuing reliance on military force in the region.

Bill Clinton inherited the invasion of Somalia initiated by the George H.W. Bush administration in December 1992. The situation grew tense during 1993, leading to coordinated resistance by the Somali masses that forced the U.S. to withdraw from the country in 1994.

This Nov. 20 the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution to impose sanctions against so-called “pirates, arms smugglers and perpetrators of instability in Somalia.” (AP, Nov. 21)

The council’s “quick approval of the British-sponsored resolution was followed by an open meeting on the deteriorating situation in Somalia—both on land and at sea off its nearly 3,900-km coastline, which includes some of the world’s most important shipping routes.”

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Rosemary DiCarlo appealed for immediate measures to address the situation in the Horn of Africa, which is threatening an Oct. 26 ceasefire agreement between some Islamic groups and the TFG. The more militant resistance forces such as al-Shabaab are not party to the Oct. 26 agreement.

DiCarlo called for strengthening the 3,450 African Union troops in Mogadishu, supposedly so much-needed food aid can be delivered to the population—the same excuse given for the U.S. intervention in 1992.

DiCarlo said that if 6,000 AU forces from various countries cannot be mobilized, then the U.N. should intervene directly in Somalia.

A greater U.N., U.S. or E.U. military involvement in the Horn of Africa will prove disastrous for these entities. The Somali people have a proven history of successful resistance against imperialist intervention.

The peoples of the U.S. and the E.U. have no desire to see their governments drawn into a protracted struggle in this region. The anti-war forces in these countries must oppose military intervention and uphold the right of self-determination and sovereignty for the Somali people and other nations throughout the Horn of Africa.