October 12, 2006

Summary

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Oct. 10 to discuss cooperation in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa. Concerned with Somalia's Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), Washington is signaling a shift from diplomatic engagement of the SICC alone to containing the SICC via regional and Somalian proxies. The move will contain SICC in southern, central, and northern corridors in Somalia. The Islamist group, however, will not accept this without a fight -- which will threaten U.S. interests in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Analysis

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Oct. 10 to discuss cooperation in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

Concerned about Somalia's Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), Washington is signaling a shift from diplomatic engagement of the SICC alone to containing the group via regional and Somalian proxies. The move will contain SICC in southern, central, and northern corridors in Somalia. The Islamist group, however, will not accept this without a fight -- which will threaten U.S. interests in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Many outside governments fear Somalia will become a training ground for jihadists, and that SICC recruits foreign fighters. This concern was reinforced Oct. 9 when SICC leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed -- formerly seen abroad as SICC's moderate face -- declared a jihad against Ethiopia, which he said had sent 35,000 troops to the defense of Somalia's interim government. Ahmed's likely exaggeration of Ethiopian troop levels -- which more realistically consist of several hundred troops in-country and a several-thousand strong ready-reserve in Ethiopia -- is seen as a tactic to inflame nationalist and Islamist sentiment that Somalians are unjustly suffering from anti-Islamic foreign interference.

Having had its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed by jihadists operating out of the region, Washington wants to prevent the Horn of Africa from being used again by jihadists to attack U.S. interests. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States established the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa command center in Djibouti. Countries within the region, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, share these concerns about Islamist threats. Ethiopia and Uganda are fighting Islamist insurgency groups that the SICC could support, while Kenya wants to prevent the SICC from becoming a threat to Kenya's internal security and stability by interfering with Kenya's sizeable Muslim and ethnic Somali population. These shared concerns could result in greater cooperation with the United States.

Kenya, which has a history of U.S. ground-force and naval cooperation out of its Manda Bay naval base, announced Oct. 10 that it has massed troops and armored vehicles at points along its border with Somalia to contain a southward SICC expansion. In addition to providing training programs to Kenyan officers, the United States has beefed up Kenya's maritime security by giving Nairobi patrol craft Oct. 6. Kenya will use the boats to help prevent its coast from being used a smuggling route to Somalia.

Uganda , a U.S. ally that has participated in joint military exercises with the United States, is rumored to be a candidate for a U.S. regional forward operating base. Ugandasent troops to Baidoa, Somalia, the seat of the interim Somalian government, on Sept. 26 to prevent SICC from being able to support Islamist insurgencies throughout East Africa. Uganda faces its own Islamist insurgency from the rebel Allied Democratic Front, and will need to maintain a secure overland corridor from the Kenyan border through the Somalian city of Baardheere to Baidoa in order to prevent the SICC from cutting off its supply route to Ugandan forces in Baidoa.

Ethiopia has been the leading African purchaser of U.S. arms, and Washington has provided officer training to the Ethiopian armed forces. Ethiopia is a useful ally for dealing with Somalia, as Ethiopia has mounted a defense of Somalia's interim government due to its own national security concerns. Ethiopia will control a corridor along its border with central Somalia to Baidoa in order to prevent Somalia's Islamists from provoking an anti-Ethiopian insurgency among Ethiopia's ethnic Somalian population.

Within Somalia itself, the United States will take advantage of Somalia's fractured clan system to contain the SICC threat. Should his government be threatened with collapse, Interim President Abdillahi Yusuf will retreat north toward the city of Gaalkacyo and his Darood clan. The Darood are intimately familiar with SICC military leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, having fought a decades-long war against him and his Hawiye clan. The Darood clan can be expected to maintain a line against the Hawiye clan, effectively containing northward SICC expansion.

The SICC adamantly opposes foreign interference that threatens its designs to preserve an Islamist government that would give it a free hand to train and plan out larger operations. It will thus combat any encirclement, and will seek to scale up its military capabilities. Recruiting foreign fighters to ramp up its forces likely will yield foreign fighters preferring to attack U.S interests rather than Ethiopian, Kenya, and Ugandan troops. Since Somalia lacks prominent U.S. targets, U.S. facilities in Kenya (the site of the 1998 embassy bombing), Ethiopia, and Djibouti present likely alternatives for jihadists aiming at striking U.S. interests.

Rather than acting unilaterally, the United States is now acting via proxies with a deep understanding of the history and threat presented by Somalia's Islamists -- a significant adjustment.

Source: Stratfor