Weekly Commentary - The U.S. and Ethiopia: Undermining Stability in Somalia

For the last decade and a half, Somalia has existed without a central government. The 1991 fall from power of the dictator and U.S. ally, Siad Barre, left the country with a power vacuum that would be filled by rival militias. For many Somalis, life for most of this post-1991 period has been defined by chaos and violence.

Stepping into the void, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) began in May 2006 to expand and consolidate its influence, capturing the capital Mogadishu, and establishing a governing authority that would displace the ineffectual transitional government - a body that is widely seen as the creation of foreign powers designed to serve international constituencies instead of the Somali people.

As noted by the International Crisis Group, the UIC, for all its faults, brought "a degree of peace and security unknown to the south for more than fifteen years. Mogadishu was reunited, weapons removed from the streets and the port and airport reopened." Mogadishu residents commented that the UIC liberated the city from the militias and numerous “roadblocks that had functioned like a hundred Berlin Walls.” Such were the restrictions on movement "that some residents had not seen friends and relatives in years, and children living only minutes from the crashing Indian Ocean had never laid eyes on the turquoise water.”

Following the U.S.-Ethiopian ouster of the UIC Islamists in December 2006, Somalia again began to slide into chaos.

What is especially noteworthy in this saga is how the U.S. role has been decisive in squashing these moves towards stability.

Leading up to the invasion, U.S. private military firms operated in Somalia in support of the transitional government, violating a UN arms embargo with the knowledge of the CIA. In the spring of 2006, Washington itself was “bankrolling an alliance of warlords, the same people whose armed gangs are keeping Somalia ungovernable,” in a futile attempt to prevent the UIC from gaining power.

More direct has been Washington's critical support for Ethiopia in its invasion of Somalia.

The U.S.-Ethiopia alliance itself is not new, and nor is Ethiopia's pitiful human rights record. Yet the shared goal of taking out the UIC further strengthened the ties between the two countries.

Demonstrating the closeness of the U.S.-Ethiopian collaboration, in preparation for the invasion Washington sent General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Veteran journalist Nicola Nasser noted that the U.S. violated its own UN Security Council Resolution (1725) by “providing training, intelligence and consultation to at least 8,000 Ethiopian troops” that entered Somalia in advance of the full invasion, and, as reported, by "mounting air raids on militia targets and stationing a U.S. Navy carrier battle group off the Somali coast."

Somalis were “opposed to foreign intervention” and displayed an “outpouring of popular support” for the UIC and in defense of the country’s sovereignty, though the U.S.-backed Ethiopian forces were able to unseat the UIC in short order.

Initial reports estimated the invasion may have killed about 1,000 people outright, with some 400,000 displaced. In the midst of the invasion, the African Union, UN Secretary-General, and European Union all demanded (to no avail) that Ethiopia withdrawal.

The results of the invasion have been clear. With the warlords returned to power, Mogadishu has seen "a steady breakdown of law and order," while the World Food Program reported that the invasion forced the organization to halt deliveries of food aid serving as many as a half million Somalis suffering from food shortages as a result of flooding.

Though it has managed to evade the careful eyes of Western media, a report from the Secretary-General of the UN estimates that over one third of those killed and injured in 2006 during the fighting were children, and that the transitional government has recruited and used child soldiers.

Nevertheless, in a disgraceful display of fealty to the world superpower, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his first formal press conference, refused to call the U.S.-Ethiopian aggression towards Somalia illegal under international law (though it clearly was).

However, the Security Council itself is “complicit” in the attack upon Somalia, as pointed out by former UN spokesperson Salim Lone. Aside from its silence regarding Ethiopian aggression, the Council passed in November a resolution supporting the very weak transitional government, a body devoid of popular support. As noted, the resolution came at a time when Somalia was experiencing more peace and security, thanks to the UIC, than it had seen in many years. Qatar, supported by the Arab League, sponsored a non-binding Security Council resolution demanding that “all foreign forces immediately withdraw from the territories of Somalia and cease their military operations inside Somalia.” The resolution was killed as a result of opposition by the U.S. and others to the phrase.

Yet if the invasion was bad, its aftermath has been catastrophic.

In a particularly bloody period starting in March, some 1,300 people were killed, representing the worst violence that Mogadishu had seen in 16 years. In May 2007, John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, said the crisis of displaced persons and refugees in Somalia had become a worse than that of Darfur, and accused the warring parties of violating international law. Since February, 340,000 people were displaced - in addition to the 400,000 who fled following the invasion, though some may indeed have been forced to abandon their homes more than once.

Further, as acknowledged by the German ambassador to Sudan, the foreign-backed Somali government is also guilty of “indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in Mogadishu's densely populated areas, the raping of women, the deliberate blocking of urgently needed food and humanitarian supplies, and the bombing of hospitals. This is a relentless drive to terrify and intimidate civilians belonging to clans” opposed to the occupation.

Such is the "complicated legacy" of the U.S. in Somalia, in the delicate phrasing of the New York Times. Less complicated has been the both initial and ongoing U.S. support for the destabilization of Somalia at the hands of its Ethiopian allies.