Somalia's chaos: The Iraq model leads again to trouble

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The administration of President Bush has done it again, this time in Somalia, as in Iraq having replaced what it considered to be a flawed government with one of its own choice, which turned out to be incapable of governing, leading to violent chaos in the country.

Somalia, a nation of 8.3 million on the Horn of Africa, had basically no government from January 1991 to June 2006, when the United Islamic Courts group gained control of virtually the whole country, having driven Somalia's U.S.-backed warlords out. During their period of control the Islamic Courts' government brought relative peace to Mogadishu and most of the rest of the country. Peace is, of course, the essential precondition to reconstruction, planning for which resumed under the Courts' government.

Its Islamic character, however, raised concerns on the part of the United States and neighboring Ethiopia. Ethiopia has been a chronic meddler in Somali affairs. It was Somalia's opponent in the 1977-78 Ogaden war and peddles itself as a Christian nation, even though only some 35-40 percent of its population is Christian.

Thus, in December, an estimated 20,000 Ethiopian troops crossed the border and, with U.S. air support, based in Qatar and Ethiopia, "spotted" by U.S. military personnel on the ground in Somalia, and with CIA assistance, routed Islamic Courts forces, driving them into Kenya or hiding. An also unelected Somali government, this time cobbled together by the United States and other international parties in Kenya over a period of two years, was moved to Mogadishu from its provisional capital, Baidoa, and installed in power, financed entirely by outside donors.

Now, Ethiopia wants to withdraw its forces as Somali nationalist insurgents begin to pepper them. Other African countries under the aegis of the African Union have pledged to provide peacekeeping forces, but haven't yet. In the meantime, Mogadishu has once again become the scene of deadly mortar exchanges and other combat that makes the place unlivable and serves as a formidable barrier to economic and social development.

In short, violent chaos is back in Somalia. And the United States can't or won't do anything to try to rectify the situation it helped to create in the miserable country. Given the financial and manpower resources that the United States and the United Nations devoted to trying unsuccessfully to put Somalia back together in the 1992-95 period, it would be hard to recommend that the United States intervene again in Somalia, even if it had the means to do so with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars taking a higher priority.

At the same time, it is fair to ask if the Bush administration leaders who decided that the Islamic Courts group had to go also thought about what would come afterward. Or did they not think about that? Or did they simply not care what happened to 8 million Africans as long as their own quest for Muslim enemies could be pursued by military means again?

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