General Boykin's Christmas Vacation

There are still more questions than answers regarding American involvement in Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia. By Matthew Yglesias Web Exclusive: 01.16.07 What did you do over your Christmas break? Me, I did nothing. But the government of Ethiopia, the only Christian regime in the Horn of Africa, did something a bit unusual -- it conquered Somalia and began an occupation of the capital, Mogadishu. In this day and age, obviously, one doesn't just "conquer" a country, one implements regime change. In the case of Somalia, Mogadishu and most of the country (two areas in the north have already found stability under the control of separatist movements) had been under the control of something called the Islamic Courts Movement (ICU), a grassroots Islamist enterprise that inspired clichés about a "harsh brand of justice" but did manage to bring some law and order to the formerly warlord-plagued country. All this time, however, Somalia had a powerless de jure government set up by the international community, deeply divided amongst itself, and so lacking in support on the ground that its members didn't dare enter the capital. It did, however, control the town of Baidoa, where Ethiopia had stationed thousands of troops to protect it. And so things stood, with the stated American policy being efforts to avoid a larger regional war between Ethiopia and the ICU. Then came Christmas. While nobody was paying attention, Ethiopia's large and powerful (by African standards) military started marching on Mogadishu alongside some Somali government forces, which is to say warlord bands. Several thousand ICU soldiers were killed during routs of ICU forces in towns on the road between Baidoa and Mogadishu. At this point, the remaining ICU military began to "melt away," the Ethiopians marched into Mogadishu, and strict sharia law was rapidly displaced by Somalia's customary blend of moderate Islam and total anarchy, as militia roadblocks and disorder once again spread throughout the capital. The United States gave what the papers called "tacit support" to all of this, partly on the grounds that three suspects from the 1998 East African embassy bombings were in Somalia. This, to the best of my knowledge, is true, though only one of the three individuals was actually indicted and all had come to Somalia before there was an ICU. Some observers, like TAP Online's own Robert Farley, thought this tacit support made sense, since Ethiopia had its own reasons for acting, one might as well back the regional big dog if it's going to invade of its own accord, and the Ethiopia-backed interim government would be preferable to the ICU from the American standpoint. Things, however, appear considerably more complicated, and American involvement likely extended beyond "tacit support" for Ethiopia. As the Ethiopian advance was really getting under way on December 26, Major Kelley Thibodeau, who handles PR for the U.S. military's base in Djibouti, made the odd remark that "officially, we haven't put anybody in Somalia." (Why add that "officially" qualifier?) Then, on January 6, American special operations forces used an AC-130 gunship to attack an alleged al-Qaeda cell in Somalia. On January 9, Daveed Garstenstein-Ross, a right-wing terrorism consultant and blogger, reported that "U.S. air and ground forces covertly aided the Ethiopian military since its intervention began on Christmas day," citing military intelligence sources. Later that day, Newsweek reported that Lieutenant General William Boykin, mastermind of secret American special forces operations against suspected terrorists, was going to be sacked by new Defense Secretary Robert Gates. As of January 10, the Pentagon still wasn't saying who, exactly, had been hit in the AC-130 strike or why, though it still insisted "principal al-Qaeda leadership," whatever that means, were the target. Michael Hirsch and Mark Hosenball emphasized in their Newsweek article that there was no evidence that the Somalia operation in particular is the reason Boykin is going to be let go. On the other hand, they suggested that Boykin's general eagerness to unleash special operations forces into third world proxy wars was the issue, and that's exactly what happened in Somalia. What's more, readers may recall that Boykin is a bit unhinged. He's the same general who, describing his experiences battling a warlord in Somalia in the early 1990s to an audience, remarked "I knew that my God was bigger than his God. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol," also noting that America's real enemy in the war on terrorism is "satan" and that "if we come against them in the name of Jesus," victory is assured. Boykin is, in short, exactly the sort of person who might think a Christmas-week invasion of Muslim Somalia by Christian Ethiopia backed by American special forces was a peachy idea whether or not it actually made sense on normal counterterrorism grounds. Maybe he just ordered this up while everyone was on vacation, only to get sacked as soon as his boss got back to work at the Pentagon. Or maybe Bush and his whole administration were on board after all. Nobody real knows. And more to the point, nobody in Washington is talking about what we've actually done and why. Troops sent into Somalia to follow up on the AC-130 strike told The Washington Post that "no one can confirm a high-value target" was present at the scene. They did, however, find documents indicating that Aden Ayrow, not an al-Qaeda figure but a commander in the ICU military, had been there. The strike looks, in short, as if it was simply undertaken in support of Ethiopia's military adventure. Mogadishu is descending into chaos, with gun battles on the streets and predictable popular anger at the foreign invaders, their foreign backers (i.e., us), and their domestic puppets in the de jure government. An untold number of people have already been killed in the fighting, and many more are likely to die if Somalia devolves again into civil war, a situation that will only make the country more hospitable to al-Qaeda. What's more, nobody can quite explain what it is we've accomplished, what we hoped to accomplish, or what we think we may in the future accomplish by doing this. A January 13 New York Times articles cited special forces sources as arguing that the operation should be a model for future conduct, but their explanation, that it "flushed the Qaeda suspects from their hide-outs and gave American intelligence operatives fresh information about their whereabouts," is bizarre. Sponsoring a foreign invasion of an entire country to capture three suspects would be serious overkill by any reasonable standard, but pronouncing the operation a to-be-mimicked success when you haven't even captured the targets is inane. At a minimum, it's surely too early to talk about repeating this operation until we get some kind of account of what was done in the first place. The good news is that with a new Democratic Congress in place, there's actually some chance of getting answers. Senators and congressmen have a lot on their plates between Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq and the administration's renewed hints that it plans to launch a war with Iran, but the committees charged with overseeing America's military and intelligence services should try to spare some time for the Horn of Africa as well. Matthew Yglesias Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

Bad News about Africa

January 2, 2007 Tom Fenton The snippets of news about Somalia that American network television has been presenting these days are a sad reminder of how poorly Americans are informed by their mainstream media. There is no context, no background. Viewers, if they pay any attention at all to these second hand reports that were mostly cobbled together in newsrooms far from the scene of action, are left without a clue about what is really happening in that far corner or Africa, and why. That’s a pity, because what is happening there could become another big problem for the United States. Americans need to take a cold, hard, look at what their government is doing in sub-Saharan Africa and what may be the possible consequences. The latest outbreak of fighting in Somalia is more than just an isolated clan or ethnic conflict. It is one of a number of local conflicts in an inhospitable and sparsely settled region of Africa, from Darfur to the Red Sea, that could eventually lead to a broader war. Some of these conflicts go back for decades. There were religious and ethnic conflicts in Sudan and between Ethiopia and Somalia when I first went to Africa as a foreign correspondent 40 years ago. But the roots of these conflicts run far deeper. They can also be seen as part of a broad historical movement – a rise of expansionist Islam in sub-Saharan Africa that was temporarily halted by British imperialists in the late Nineteenth Century. It is now on the rise again. One of the first signs appeared in 1991 when the Islamic government of Sudan gave temporary refuge to Osama Bin Laden. Then American marines went to the aid of a starving population in Somalia and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of tribal warlords in 1993. The United States turned tail and left Somalia in the hands of the warlords. It became a lawless land that was reportedly used as a safe haven by the Islamic terrorists who blew up the American Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Since then, tension has been rising in the region. When the United States chased al Qaeda fighters out of Afghanistan in late 2001, Pentagon planners feared they might establish new bases in Africa. The Bush Administration quietly sent small numbers of special forces to the sub-Saharan region to equip and train local government forces to deal with the potential threat. It also deployed a 1200-strong Combined Task Force in Djibouti, within easy striking distance of both the Red Sea shipping lanes and the restless countries of the region, including America’s predominantly Christian ally Ethiopia, as well as that country’s enemies, Eritrea and Somalia. All of this was done without fanfare while the American public’s attention was fixed on Afghanistan and Iraq. After the 1993 debacle, Washington had no appetite for going back into Somalia, but the CIA apparently poured money into a clumsy, covert attempt to create an alternative Somali government out of a collection of mutually hostile local warlords. That didn’t work too well. Last June, an alliance of militant Islamic Somalis that calls itself the Union of Islamic Courts accomplished what nobody else had been able to do. It chased the warlords out of the capital Mogadishu, and most of the rest of the country, and restored a rough and ready Islamic brand of law and order after fifteen years of civil war. The people of Mogadishu were for the most part relieved to have a functioning government, even if it was puritanically Islamic. The Bush Administration was not. The Pentagon’s Plan B was apparently what we have just seen. Ethiopia’s armed forces, trained by the United States, swept into Somalia along with a small transitional government force and installed a puppet government in Mogadishu. That might be called a success for Washington if it were the end of the story. But it is not over yet. The transitional government’s forces seem too weak to hold the capital, let alone the rest of the country. Efforts are now being made to send in an African peacekeeping force, and the sooner that can happen, the better. Since Ethiopia is Somalia’s traditional enemy, the longer it remains in the country, the more the Somalis will resent a foreign (mostly Christian) army and the government it is propping up. Guns are coming out of closets. The old clan militias are back in Mogadishu, and militants linked to al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq are calling on Muslims to go to the aid of the Somalis. There are already early signs of an insurgency against the newly installed government in Mogadishu. There is also the danger that Eritrea, which had been sending arms and men to the Union of Islamic Courts, could be drawn into open warfare with Ethiopia. In addition, the several million ethnic Somalis who live in Ethiopia and neighboring Kenya could also be caught up in a broader conflict. If this happens, what will the American task force in nearby Djibouti do? Does the Pentagon have a Plan C? It’s all very complicated, so it might be a good idea if the American networks spent a little less time on such things as Americans who risked their lives in the dangerous sport of winter mountain climbing, and more on what is happening in Africa. Even if that would not be good for their ratings, it could be good for their country. Send us your thoughts on Tom Fenton's Journal at theworld@pri.org Tom Fenton Essayist Tom Fenton, whose long career as a foreign correspondent for CBS News covered more than three decades of world events, continues to follow international news from his base in London. He is the author of "Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News and the Danger to Us All."

Somali fighting is 'full scale war' - Islamist

By DPA
Dec 21, 2006, 13:00 GMT

Mogadishu - A leader of Somalia's Islamists has called fighting near the government's base 'a full scale war,' blaming neighbouring Ethiopia for starting the violence.

Fighting between the Islamists and forces loyal to the transitional government continued Thursday, a day after both sides agreed to return to peace talks.

The two sides exchanged missile, artillery and mortar fire for a second day near the interim government's seat of Baidoa about 250 kilometres west of the capital Mogadishu.

'It seems that Ethiopia started the full scale war,' said Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader who is charged by the US of having ties to al-Qaeda. 'The fighting will spark the entire region and it will be disastrous for Ethiopia.'

Several hundred Ethiopian troops were sent to Somalia, said to be training the government troops but the Islamists claim there are thousands of them fighting alongside the government forces. The Islamists have vowed to wage jihad (holy war) on any Ethiopian soldier in Somalia.

Each side blamed the other for intentionally violating a recently announced agreement to de-escalate the violence and attend peace talks without any preconditions, a diplomatic push made by the EU on Wednesday.

'The Islamists started the fighting to violate the EU's peace bid,' said Salad Ali Jelle, the government's Deputy Defence Minister.

On Wednesday, EU envoy Louis Michel met with both sides and convinced them to return to 'unconditional' peace talks.

His visit came after clashes overnight Tuesday and Wednesday in Buulo Jadiid, 20 kilometres east of Baidoa and Idale, 60 kilometres to south-west of the city in which both sides claimed to have killed dozens of enemy fighters. On Wednesday, missiles were fired near Dooynuunay, 20 kilometres east of Baidoa.

Jelle said some 71 Islamic militiamen had been killed and more than 200 wounded in the fighting. Islamist officials said their forces killed 70 Ethiopian troops. These claims had not been independently verified.

Jelle also said two Islamist fighters killed were foreigners.

Ukurey Isaak, a witness from nearby Dinsoor, told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa she saw 40 bodies of 'mostly innocent people' in and around Idale.

The clashes broke out overnight Tuesday, a day after a deadline set by the Islamists expired, warning Ethiopia to remove its troops from the country or face attacks.

The fighting came as both sides agreed to restart peace talks, in an effort to bring some sort of stability to the anarchic nation.

Tensions have been high for months, as both sides have been gearing up for a confrontation.

The Islamists, who took the capital Mogadishu in June and now control most of south-central Somalia, seek to establish an Islamic state based on Sharia (Islamic) law. The internationally-backed secular government is limited to its base in Baidoa and has been propped up by Ethiopian troops.

Experts warn an all-out war could break out that potentially escalate into a regional crisis. Ethiopian soldiers in the country are said to be training government forces while neighbouring Eritrea is said to have troops fighting for the Islamists.

The UN agreed to send a peacekeeping mission to the Horn of Africa nation - protection the government has demanded but the Islamists have vehemently opposed.