Distorted by the terror prism

The US attack on Somalia was driven by the search for al-Qaida operatives and showed no regard for for Somalia's domestic complexities.

By Ian Black

January 9, 2007

American policy towards Somalia has been driven for years by the search for the al-Qaida operatives suspected of carrying out the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998. But the US air strike in the south of the country breaks new ground - and risks opening up a new and volatile front in the "global war on terror".

The attack, mounted from a US base in nearby Djibouti, is the first American military action in Somalia since Bill Clinton withdrew US forces after the notorious "Black Hawk Down" episode in 1993. That was part of an ill-fated UN peacekeeping effort that showed how messy the post cold-war era was going to be - and just how bad things were going to get in this benighted country in the Horn of Africa.

It was made possible after a dizzying succession of events in recent weeks, culminating in the defeat of Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts by the forces of the weak, western-backed transitional government. The key was a speedy Ethiopian offensive that was quietly supported by Washington in much the same way as the US backed Israel's offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon last summer.

The rationale of the US move is to strike al-Qaida targets when and where it can - though its record of successful action by air strikes or pilotless drones is patchy to say the least, and the likelihood of "collateral damage" is very great. The wider problem is that yet again Washington is looking at an issue through the distorting prism of the "war on terror" - without regard for Somalia 's domestic complexities and their intertwined regional repercussions.

The attack clearly carries risks for the Mogadishu government, some of whose most unpopular warlord supporters were covertly bankrolled by the CIA in an "anti-terrorist" alliance. It will clearly not help advance desperately needed efforts at national reconciliation and possible power-sharing for it to be seen to be colluding with Washington and Addis Ababa.

Somalia is the quintessential failed state. Much American analysis draws parallels between the situation there and Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, when the country's "stabilisation" under the Taliban allowed Bin Laden to set up shop and operate with impunity. The 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania - in which over 220 people died - were the organisation's early and most devastating successes.

The attack again raises questions about how the US can fight its "war on terror" when its foreign policy has been so discredited by the war in Iraq and its repercussions. But its most alarming aspect is the way it serves as a mirror image to threats by al-Qaida. Only last week the organisation's number two, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, denounced Ethiopia's military intervention as another "crusade" by "slaves of America" that must be resisted by "martyrdom campaigns" on a new Muslim frontline. Somalia badly needs patient diplomacy, peacekeeping and reconstruction, not a new jihad.

Source: Guardian Unlimited