Surfing Somalia: How Many Missed Opportunities

Current TV, Al Gore's innovative TV channel, has done some pretty amazing things. They got film crews into North Korea, into places in Iraq far from the Green Zone, and were the first journalists into a Somalia arms market before the Islamic Fundamentalists took Mogadishu. It is their willingness to go where most journalists don't have the balls to go that makes the network worth watching.

Back when they went in to film Mogadishu in chaos, with battling warlords and their factions making arms dealing a major industry, it was astonishing the constant aura of threat that permeated Mogadishu under the warlords. These are the people Clinton had nearly defeated, but lack of Congressional support led to a withdrawal that allowed a resurgence of chaos. And Bush sat back allowing that chaos to happen, making the Islamic Fundamentalists the ONLY option Somalis had for stability.

When I participated in a live radio broadcast some months back discussing the initial takeover by the Islamic Fundamentalists, most of the Somalis who participated considered the Islamic takeover a good thing for one reason: it promised stability. They expressed their appreciation for the American intervention and a sense of betrayal at the American withdrawal. In the absence of American influence, they saw the fundamentalists as the only way to end the chaos.

And so Mogadishu and the whole Southern half of Somalia fell to fundamentalists and Bush did nothing. By and large the Western Press did nothing but report from a distance. But CurrentTV went in to see what life was like under the Somali Taliban.

Throughout their segment it is clear that the CurrentTV crew were the only Westerners around, and so were constantly targets for the wrath of people angry at the US. Two things struck me about the CurrentTV film: first, that the stability that the fundamentalists had imposed seemed real, but very fragile. Everyone was still armed and danger threatened constantly. But the city was starting to run again, with a lovely beach being safe enough to swim in for the first time in a decade (with one of the CurrentTV crew eagerly diving in to body surf) and the first public prayer gathering in 15 years. People were hopeful that better things were ahead even if it meant a theocracy.

Chaos or theocratic dictatorship. After awhile, chaos gets pretty damned awful and even theocratic dictatorship looks good. Many Somalis were opting for that...but the choice wasn't really theirs.

With the US mired in the Iraq quagmire and eyeing another insane war in neighboring Iran, Bush did nothing to stem the expansion of Islamic Fundamentalists in Somalia. It fell to Ethiopia, with a small amount of air-support from the US, to drive out the fundamentalists who I refer to as the Somali Taliban.

And make no mistake, despite protestations of being moderates, the Islamic Fundamentalists who were driven out by Ethiopia after our long neglect of the area showed every indication of following the path of the Taliban. I have no reason to mourn the defeat of the Somali Taliban...but the Somalis who found them to be the only force that gave them even a vague stability may well miss their presence.

As Ethiopia withdraws its troops, violence once again escalates, and the old anarchy of libertarian/warlord rule with no central authority threatens to return. Meanwhile, Ethiopia's intervention against the Islamic Fundamentalists in Somalia threatens to re-ignite their long-standing war with Eritrea, which supports the fundamentalists.

So, with ongoing chaos in Somalia and threats of a wider, regional war, what will the US do? Will they finally turn their attention to this area the way Bill Clinton advised, helping to stabilize the area? Or will they once again sit back after a brief, violent intervention and let warlords and fundamentalists fight it out, once again leaving the people of Somalia with no choice but to seek stability with a Taliban-style regime? With Mr. Bush at the helm, it is doubtful that we will do anything meaningful to stabilize the area, thus ensuring that al-Qaeda can function in the Horn of Africa just as freely as it has throughout Bush's watch. So much for the war on terrorism. We're too busy picking fights with nations that had nothing to do with the 9/11 plot but have everything to do with oil profits. And so the Somali tragedy continues.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | |