Most Somalis are already well aware that southern warlords have turned to using religion as a vehicle for gaining political power. But what has come as a surprise to many is that the US, too, is now taking the same approach and is using the Sheikh Sharif faction of the Islamic Courts to achieve its political agenda in Somalia. Those who were surprised by this sudden detour in US policy were perhaps taken in by the rhetoric from segments of the US political establishment which claims that there is an inherent conflict between Islam and the West, when the record shows that the West in general, and the US in particular, have a long history of encouraging, supporting and using Islamic political movements to achieve their foreign policy objectives. For instance, the US has long been an ally of Saudi Arabia, the home of the Wahabi brand of radical Islam; and before that, the British not only gave monthly monetary subsidies to Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, the founder of al-Ikhwan, a radical Wahabi militia in his early years as he struggled to gain power in the Arabian Peninsula, they also provided him with an advisor, Captain William Henry Shakespear who was killed in one of the battles between al-Saud and his rivals al-Rashid.
In the sixties, the US worked closely with Arab regimes that espoused Islamist ideology in order to thwart and discredit nationalist and secular movements.
The alliance between the US and political Islam reached its peak during the Afghan war, where the US supported Afhgani religious warlords such as Ghulbuddin Hikmatayar and Rabbani as well as radical Wahabi militants including Bin Laden, in their war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. US championing of the Afghani Mujahidin was so high, President Reagan even compared them to the American founding fathers.
Even, in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks, some top US foreign policymakers still think that the US decision to use radical Islam to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan was sound. Zbigniew Brzezinski, US National Security Adviser in the Carter administration when asked by the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur whether he regretted supporting the future terrorists in Afghanistan, scoffed at the question and answered, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
We will leave it to Americans to decide if 9/11 was a worthwhile price for defeating the Soviet Union. But we don’t need to wait for such debate in the case of US involvement in
Somalia. US attempts to support and market the Sheikh Sharif’s faction of the Islamic Courts as the legitimate government of Somalia will only further encourage more Somali warlords to don the mantle of religion and the spread of radical Islamist ideology. Only this week, Sheikh Sharif’s shaky government announced that it intends to impose Sharia law on the little territory that is under its control, which means that pretty soon his militias would start chopping hands, severing heads and stoning people to death. It also means that the US would be blamed, and rightly so, for aiding and abetting the perpetrators of such crimes. Clearly, such an outcome will neither serve US nor Somali interests. A better and more profitable approach in the long run would be the strengthening of civil society and democratic forces in the region so they would provide a real counterweight to Muslim extremists. An obvious step in this direction would be granting diplomatic recognition to Somaliland.


 

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