Fall of Mogadishu leaves US policy in ruins

Xan Rice in Asmara, Oliver Burkeman in Washington and Rory Carroll
Saturday June 10, 2006
The Guardian

It was a rout. After months of fighting that left hundreds dead
Mogadishu fell suddenly this week: pick-up trucks with mounted
machine-guns and young warriors scrambled to leave the city.

The victors broadcast a triumphant announcement that the warlords had
been ousted. In their place a relatively disciplined militia promised
order and security after 15 years of mayhem. At a victory rally a
militia leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, made another promise: to create
an Islamic state.

Mogadishu is now largely ruled by the Islamic Courts Union, a powerful
movement that advocates a strict version of sharia law, including
public executions, and has alleged ties to al-Qaida terrorists. The
Horn of Africa, say some analysts, has just acquired its own Taliban.

News of the takeover broke like a thunderclap over Washington.

“This is worse than the worst-case scenarios – the exact opposite of
what the US government strategy, if there was one, would have wanted,”
said Ken Menkhaus, associate professor of political science and
Somalia expert at Davidson College, North Carolina.

It has emerged that the Bush administration bankrolled the warlords,
who are secular, to gain access to al-Qaida suspects and block the
rise of the Islamic militia. CIA operatives based in Nairobi funnelled
$100,000 to $150,000 (£80,000) a month to their proxies, according to
John Prendergast, an International Crisis Group expert on Somalia who
has interviewed warlords. “This was counter-terrorism on the
cheap. This is a backwater place that nobody really wants to get
involved in, so [they] thought, let’s just do this and maybe we’ll get
lucky.”

Instead Washington got burned. Amid recriminations policymakers are
asking how did the fiasco happen, and just how bad is it for US
interests? Somalia has been without effective government since
Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Warlords control ports,
airfields and roadblocks, gaining great wealth while offering little
but trouble to the average Somali.

In the vacuum of a failed state Islamic courts were established along
clan lines to dispense justice where no other method existed. With
financial support from local businessmen the courts, popular with
Mogadishu residents for curbing some of the anarchy and providing
basic services, built up a militia capable of taking on the warlords.

In recent years radicals used the courts to promote the idea of an
Islamic state. Cinemas accused of showing immoral western and Indian
films were closed and celebrating new year was made a capital offence.

Assassinations

It is alleged that terrorists became active in the movement. Sheikh
Hassan Dahir Aweys, closely allied to the court leadership, was the
most prominent leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a fundamentalist
group linked to al-Qaidaand blamed for a series of bombings in
Ethiopia and kidnappings and assassinations in Somalia in the 1990s.

There are rumours that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys could soon take over
the leadership of the courts. If that happens, there is the “very real
potential for serious violence”, according to a Horn of Africa
analyst, as it would pit him directly against President Abdullahi
Yusuf, who is avowedly against Somalia becoming a fundamentalist
state.

An unnamed network run by one of Aweys’s proteges, Aden Hashi Farah
‘Ayro, has been linked to the murder of four western aid workers and
more than a dozen Somalis who allegedly cooperated with counter-terror
organisations. The courts are allegedly protecting three al-Qaida
members indicted in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, and possibly the team that staged attacks in Kenya in 2002.

The Bush administration faced a dilemma. It wanted to nab the al-Qaida
suspects but did not dare send US troops back to the scene of Black
Hawk Down, the ill-fated military mission that scarred Bill Clinton’s
presidency.

“The approach – strategy would be too generous a word – was to
strengthen [the warlords’] hand in order to try to eliminate the
threat posed by these individuals,” said Mr Prendergast.

In February a group of warlords formed a coalition called Alliance for
the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism and accused the courts
of harbouring al-Qaida. The courts called the alliance American
puppets. US diplomats in Nairobi who criticised the warlord payments
as shortsighted were ignored and, in one case, reassigned to another
country. The State Department, which favoured a wider policy of
nation-building, was trumped by the CIA and the Pentagon, which wanted
results fast.

“They didn’t realise their limited engagement would actually make
matters worse,” said Mr Prendergast. “It’s ignorance and
impecuniousness that have led us to be in a more difficult and
disadvantageous position than we were.” Alarmed by Washington’s
intervention, the militia escalated its operations in recent months,
culminating in this week’s seizure of the capital.

For the White House it was a humiliating reversal but not necessarily
a catastrophe. From their stronghold of Jowhar the warlords are
regrouping and talking of retaking Mogadishu. Revenue from smuggling
and business interests is likely still to flow, as will weapons from
Ethiopia in defiance of an international embargo.

Conciliatory

The courts would struggle to impose Taliban-type rule on a society
more wedded to clan than Islam. Their victory rally was countered by a
rival hostile demonstration. On Wednesday Sheikh Sharif Ahmed,
chairman of the joint Islamic Courts Union, softened his rhetoric. “We
want to restore peace and stability.

We are ready to meet and talk to anybody for the interest of our
people.” The ICU sent a conciliatory letter to the US and UN and
engaged with Somalia’s interim government, a feeble but potentially
significant player based in the provincial city of Baidoa. The
government is due to send a delegation to Mogadishu this weekend.

The Bush administration has offered an olive branch, of sorts, to
Mogadishu’s new rulers. “In terms of the Islamic courts, our
understanding is that this isn’t a monolithic group, that it is really
an effort on the part of some individuals to try to restore some
semblance of order in Mogadishu,” said a State Department spokesman.

Robert Rotberg, professor at the Kennedy School of Government and
director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict
Resolution, said the US must try to befriend the Islamists. “Most of
us suspect that if there are any real al-Qaida agents there, there are
handfuls, and these guys would turn them in for money in a heartbeat.”

This week’s worst-case scenario, said Professor Menkhaus, could yet
turn out well if the courts offer moderate leadership and participate
in a national unity government acceptable to Ethiopia. “We could get
lemonade from lemons.” However grateful for the relative calm,
Mogadishu’s residents know from experience to brace for something
bitter.

Backstory

Somalia, the product of the merger in 1960 between a former British
protectorate and an Italian colony, has had a violent and unstable
history.In 1970 President Mohamed Siad Barre proclaimed a socialist
state and started close relations with the Soviet Union. Frequent
conflicts with neighbours followed.

When the regime was overthrown in 1991, Barre went into hiding and the
country was carved up by heavily armed warlords. The long-suffering
population, which numbers more than 10 million, was plunged into
further misery when famine ravaged the country. In 1992 US Marines
arrived ahead of UN peacekeepers inan attempt to restore order, but
the “humanitarian intervention” ended in disaster when two US Black
Hawk helicopters were shot down. As warlords celebrated the death of
19 American soldiers the US beat a hasty retreat. Somalian clan elders
and other senior figures appointed Abdulkassim Salat Hassan president
at a conference in 2000, but little progress was made until 2004, when
a new parliament was created with Abdullahi Yusuf installed as
president. The fledgling regime soon stuttered and fighting between
the factions resumed.