[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Somalia: Background Documents, Links

[Al Kagan]

FYI.  I think it is important to get this information out since there 
are very positive reviews of Black Hawk Down, even in The Octopus. 
Perhaps Carl could mention this again in his column.  And thanks to 
David Green for his current letter on Somalia in The Octopus.

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>Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 15:55:54 -0500
>Subject: Somalia: Background Documents, Links
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>Somalia: Background Documents, Links
>Date distributed (ymd): 020121
>Document reposted by Africa Action
>
>Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
>service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
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>+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Region: East Africa
>Issue Areas: +security/peace+ +US policy focus+
>
>SUMMARY CONTENTS:
>
>This posting contains a short commentary on "Errors of Fact and
>Analysis" and a longer essay on background to U.S. involvement with
>Somalia, both from the Foreign Policy in Focus project. It also
>includes links to other commentaries and background documents.
>These include three critical reviews of the new film "Black Hawk
>Down;" links to the original newspaper articles by Mark Bowden
>which, in contrast to the film, do offer some background to the
>October 1993 battle in Mogadishu; and links to an op-
>ed by Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah and a variety of other
>sources.
>
>+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Somalia: Errors of Fact and Analysis
>
>By Ken Menkhaus
>
>From: The Progressive Response, 18 January 2002, Vol. 6, No. 2
>http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume6/v6n02.html
>
>Among the most common and potentially dangerous errors of fact and
>analysis about Somalia include the following:
>
>** Somalia's Islamist movement, al-Ittihad, is synonymous with
>al-Qaeda. This is wildly wrong. Al-Ittihad is a small, relatively
>weak organization, with a mainly domestic agenda. Some individual
>members have had links to al-Qaeda which merit close scrutiny, but
>the group as a whole is in no way a subsidiary of al-Qaeda.
>
>** Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) is a front for
>al-Ittihad. The TNG is not the Somali equivalent of the Taliban
>government. It is extremely weak, controlling only half of the city
>of Mogadishu, and while it has some al-Ittihad members in its
>parliament, it is by no means a front for Islamists. An attack
>against the TNG would be a serious error.
>
>** Somalia is home to terrorist bases and camps. This is the
>rationale for considering a bombing campaign there. But Somalia's
>al-Ittihad movement abandoned the few towns and rural outposts it
>once controlled, and has since integrated into local communities as
>teachers, health workers, and businessmen. Bombing abandoned
>outposts would be a pointless exercise in rearranging rocks.
>
>** Somalia will be a likely safe haven for fleeing al-Qaeda
>members. On the surface, this concern has merit. Somalia is a
>collapsed state with no functional central government; global
>outlaws there could presumably escape the reach of law. In reality,
>Somalia is a lousy refuge for non-Somali radicals. Foreigners
>cannot operate in secrecy in Somalia; everyone knows who you are
>and what you're doing, and the Somalis would be delighted to hand
>over a non-Somali.
>
>(Dr. Ken Menkhaus <kemenkhaus at davidson.edu> is associate professor
>of political science at Davidson College, NC. He is a specialist on
>the Horn of Africa and has served as a consultant to the UN and the
>U.S. government.)
>
>Also see:
>
>Warlordism and the War on Terror
>By Ken Menkhaus
>http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0112quidproquo.html
>
>*******************************************************
>
>Somalia as a Military Target
>
>By Stephen Zunes
>
>(Stephen Zunes <stephen at coho.org> is a senior analyst with Foreign
>Policy In Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org) and associate
>professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies
>Program at the University of San Francisco.)
>
>January 11, 2002
>
>The east African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with
>increasing frequency as a possible next target in the U.S.-led war
>against international terrorism. Somalia is a failed state--with
>what passes for the central government controlling little more than
>a section of the national capital of Mogadishu, a separatist
>government in the north, and rival warlords and clan leaders
>controlling most the remainder of the country. U.S. officials
>believe that cells of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network may have taken
>advantage of the absence of governmental authority to set up
>operation.
>
>Before the U.S. attacks that impoverished country, however, it is
>important to recognize how Somalia became a possible haven for the
>followers of Osama bin Laden and what might result if America goes
>to war.
>
>A Cold War Pawn
>
>As one of the most homogeneous countries in Africa, many would have
>not predicted the chronic instability and violent divisions that
>have gripped Somalia in recent years. During the early 1970s,
>Somalia was a client of the Soviet Union, even allowing the Soviets
>to establish a naval base at Berbera on the strategic north coast
>near the entrance to the Red Sea. Somali dictator Siad Barre
>established this relationship in response to the large-scale
>American military support of Somalia's historic rival Ethiopia,
>then under the rule of the feudal emperor Haile Selassie. When a
>military coup by leftist Ethiopian officers toppled the monarchy in
>1974 and declared the country a Marxist-Leninist state the
>following year, the superpowers switched their allegiances--with
>the Soviet Union backing Ethiopia and the United States siding with
>the Barre regime in Somalia.
>
>In 1977, Somalia attacked the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia in
>an effort to incorporate the area's ethnic Somali population. The
>Ethiopians were eventually able to repel the attack with
>large-scale Soviet military support and 20,000 Cuban troops.
>Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-National Security Adviser under President
>Jimmy Carter, has since claimed that the conflict in this remote
>desert region was what sparked the end of detente with the Soviet
>Union and the renewal of the cold war.
>
>>From the late 1970s until just before his overthrow in early 1991,
>the U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars of arms to the Barre
>regime in return for the use of military facilities that had been
>originally constructed for the Soviets. These bases were to be used
>to support U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. The U.S.
>government ignored warnings throughout the 1980s by Africa
>specialists, human rights groups, and humanitarian organizations
>that continued U.S. support of the dictatorial Barre government
>would eventually plunge Somalia into chaos.
>
>These predictions proved tragically accurate. During the nearly
>fifteen years of support by the U.S. and Italy, thousands of
>civilians were massacred at the hands of Barre's increasingly
>authoritarian regime. Full-scale civil war erupted in 1988 and the
>repression increased still further, with clan leaders in the
>northern third of the country declaring independence to escape the
>persecution. In greatly centralizing his government's control,
>Barre severely weakened traditional structures in Somali society
>that had kept civil order for many years. To help maintain his grip
>on power, Barre played different Somali clans against each other,
>sowing the seeds of the fratricidal chaos and mass starvation to
>come.
>
>Meanwhile, by eliminating all potential rivals with a national
>following, a power vacuum was created that could not be filled when
>the regime was finally overthrown in January 1991, barely noticed
>outside the country as world attention was focused upon the start
>of the Gulf War. With the end of the cold war and with the U.S.
>granted new bases in the Persian Gulf countries, Somalia fell off
>the radar screen of U.S. foreign policy.
>
>There is widespread understanding among those familiar with Somalia
>that had the U.S. government not supported the Barre regime with
>large amounts of military aid, he would have been forced to step
>down long before his misrule splintered the country. Prior to the
>dictator's downfall, former U.S. Representative Howard Wolpe,
>then-chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, called on the
>State Department to encourage Barre to step down. His pleas were
>rejected. "What you are seeing," observed the congressman and
>former professor of African politics, "is a general indifference to
>a disaster that we played a role in creating."
>
>A U.S. diplomat who had been stationed in the Somali capital of
>Mogadishu acknowledged, "It's easy to blame us for all this." But,
>he argued, "This is a sovereign country we're taking about. They
>have chosen to spend [U.S. military aid] that way, to hurt people
>and destroy their own economy."
>
>As the U.S. poured in more than $50 million of arms annually to
>prop up the Barre regime, there was virtually no assistance offered
>that could help build a self-sustaining economy that could feed
>Somalia's people. In addition, the U.S. pushed a structural
>adjustment program through the International Monetary Fund that
>severely weakened the local agricultural economy. Combined with the
>breakdown of the central government, drought conditions, and rival
>militias disrupting food supplies, there was famine on a massive
>scale, resulting in the deaths of more than 300,000 Somalis, mostly
>children.
>
>Humanitarian Mission Goes Awry
>
>In November 1992, the outgoing Bush administration sent 30,000 U.S.
>troops--primarily Marines and Army Rangers--to Somalia, in what was
>described as a humanitarian mission to assist in the distribution
>of relief supplies that were being intercepted by armed militias
>without reaching the civilian populations in need. The United
>Nations Security Council endorsed the initiative the following
>month.
>
>Many Somalis and some relief organizations were grateful for the
>American role. Many others expressed skepticism, noting that the
>famine had actually peaked that summer and the security situation
>was also gradually improving. As U.S. troops began arriving, the
>chaos limiting food shipments was constrained to a small area, with
>most other parts of the country functioning as relatively peaceful
>fiefdoms. Most food was getting through and the loss from theft was
>only slightly higher than elsewhere in Africa. In some cases, U.S.
>forces essentially dumped food on local markets, hurting indigenous
>farmers and creating greater food shortages over the longer term.
>In any case, few Somalis were involved in the decisions during this
>crucial period.
>
>Most importantly for the U.S., large numbers of Somalis saw the
>American forces as representatives of the government that had been
>the major outside supporter of the hated former dictatorship. Such
>a foreign presence in a country that had been free from colonial
>rule for only a little more than three decades led to growing
>resentment. Contributing to these concerns was the fact that the
>U.S. troops arriving in Somalia were elite combat forces, and were
>not trained for such humanitarian missions. (Author and journalist
>David Halberstam quotes the U.S. Defense Secretary telling an
>associate, "We're sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going
>to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No
>one controls them.") Shootings at U.S. military roadblocks became
>increasingly commonplace, and Somalis witnessed scenes of mostly
>white American forces harassing and shooting black countrymen.
>
>In addition, the U.S. role escalated to include attempts at
>disarming some of the warlords, resulting in armed engagements,
>often in crowded urban neighborhoods. This "mission creep" resulted
>in American casualties, creating growing dissent at home in what
>had originally been a widely supported foreign policy initiative.
>The thousands of M-16 rifles sent, courtesy of the American
>taxpayer, to Barre's armed forces were now in the hands of rival
>militiamen who had not only used them to kill their fellow
>countrymen and to disrupt the distribution of relief supplies, but
>were now using them against American troops. Within the U.S. ranks,
>soldiers were heard repeating the slogan, "The only good Somali is
>a dead Somali." It had become apparent that the U.S. had badly
>underestimated the resistance.
>
>In May 1993, the U.S. transferred the failing mission to the UN.
>This was the first time the world body had combined peacekeeping,
>peace enforcement, and humanitarian assistance, as well as the
>first time the UN had intervened without a formal invitation by a
>host government (because there wasn't any.) Within Somalia there
>was little trust of the United Nations, particularly since the UN
>Secretary General at that time was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a major
>supporter of Barre when he led Egypt's foreign ministry.
>
>Even though the UN was technically in control, U.S. forces went on
>increasingly aggressive forays, including a major battle in
>Mogadishu that resulted in the deaths of 18 Marines and hundreds of
>Somali civilians, dramatized in the highly fictionalized thriller
>Black Hawk Down. The U.S.-led UN forces had become yet another
>faction in the multisided conflict. Largely retreating to fixed
>position, the primary American mission soon became protecting its
>own forces. With mounting criticism on Capitol Hill from both the
>left and the right, President Bill Clinton withdrew American troops
>in March 1994. The UN took its last peacekeeping forces out one
>year later.
>
>The U.S. intervention in Somalia is now widely considered to have
>been a fiasco. It is largely responsible for the subsequent U.S.
>hesitation around such so-called humanitarian intervention (outside
>of high-altitude bombing.) It was the major factor in the tragic
>U.S. refusal to intervene--either unilaterally or through the
>UN--to prevent the genocide in Rwanda during the spring of 1994.
>
>The Coming Debacle
>
>Most likely, the Somalia intervention was an another ill-advised
>assertion of well-meaning liberal internationalism in U.S. foreign
>policy. But there may have been other factors prompting the
>American decision to intervene as well: perhaps as a
>rationalization for increased military spending despite the end of
>the cold war, perhaps as an effort to mollify the Islamic world for
>American overkill in the war against Iraq and the inaction against
>the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia, and/or perhaps as a preemptive
>operation against possible Islamic extremists rising out of the
>chaos. If the latter was the goal, it may have backfired. Islamic
>radicals were able to find some willing recruits among the Somalis,
>already upset by the U.S. support for Barre, now with additional
>anger at the impact of direct U.S. military intervention in their
>country.
>
>In subsequent years, there has been only marginal progress toward
>establishing any kind of widely recognized national government.
>Somalia is still divided into fiefdoms run by clan leaders and
>warlords, though there is rarely any serious fighting. Some
>officials in the current Bush administration believe that Al-Qaeda
>has established an important network or cells within this factious
>country.
>
>If this is indeed the case, it begs the question as to how the U.S.
>should respond. It is possible that U.S. forces could obtain highly
>accurate intelligence that would allow them to pinpoint and take
>out the cells without once again becoming embroiled in messy urban
>counterinsurgency warfare, like that of 1993-94, or relying on air
>strikes in heavily populated areas, resulting in large-scale
>civilian casualties. Based on recent history, however, this is
>rather doubtful. The result of renewed U.S. military intervention
>in Somalia, then, could be yet another debacle that would only
>encourage the extremist forces America is trying to destroy.
>
>************************************************************
>
>Somalia: Land in Turmoil
>BBC Special Feature (January, 2002)
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/
>newsid_1747000/1747697.stm [type URL on one line]
>
>Will Somalia be Next? allAfrica.com Special 
>http://allafrica.com/specials/somalia
>
>"America, Spare Somalia for God's Sake"
>by Nuruddin Farah, January 2, 2002 in the Monitor, Kampala
>http://allafrica.com/stories/200201020381.html
>[A version of this opinion column by the renowned Somali novelist
>also appeared in the New York Times on January 9 under the title
>"Somalia is No Hideout for Bin Laden." This is available at:
>http://www.netnomad.com/farah-qaeda.html]
>                                                  
>"Is Somalia a Safe-haven for Terrorists" by Hussein Ali Soke
>from http://www.africanconflict.org (January 7, 2002)
>also at http://allafrica.com/stories/200201090390.html
>     
>Critical reviews of movie Black Hawk Down
>Aida Mashaka Croal, January 11 on:
>http://www.africana.com/Reviews/movies_74.htm
>Danny Schechter, January 8 at:
>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12175
>BBC, January 21
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/
>newsid_1773000/1773466.stm [type URL on one line]
>
>
>Black Hawk Down, newspaper series by Mark Bowden
>November-December, 1997
>http://www.philly.com/packages/somalia/sitemap.asp    
>including article with background analysis:
>http://www.philly.com/packages/somalia/dec14/analysis14.asp
>
>Somalia Watch
>News and Features in English and Somali
>http://www.somaliawatch.org
>          
>Somalia: Remittances and US Action (November, 2001)
>http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/som0111.htm
>
>Somalia: Situation Analysis by Ken Menkhaus
>(UNHCR, November, 2000)
>http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2001/
>som_unhcr_analysis_30nov00.pdf [type URL on one line]
>     
>Somalia Reinvents Itself (April, 2000)
>Le Monde Diplomatique
>http://www.en.monde-diplomatique.fr/2000/04/13somalia
>
>Somalia: Peace and Development (September, 1999)
>http://www.africaaction.org/docs99/som9909.htm
>
>Removing Barricades in Somalia, Options for Peace and
>Rehabilitation by Hussein Adam, Richard Ford et al.
>(October 1998)
>http://www.usip.org/pubs/pworks/pwks24/pwks24.html
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu