Editorial: Somalia crisis

Saturday, August 08, 2009

That Somalia is a political disaster zone is beyond question. It has an internationally accepted government headed by moderate President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed but it is a government in name only. The north runs itself as autonomous region from which pirates freely terrorize the Gulf of Aden and beyond; to its west, the former British colony of Somaliland is effectively an independent state; in the rest — the south — chaos rules. Hard-line Al-Shabab militants, while incapable of establishing themselves in power, have gradually eroded the government’s writ since January this year when Ethiopian military pulled out. In reality, the government is in exile. The country is in a vortex of anarchy — another Afghanistan in the making. But not the Afghanistan of today, rather the lawless Afghanistan of 1994-96, before the Taleban swept to power.

There is no doubt that if Al-Shabab were to establish themselves in control of the country, it would be disastrous for Somalis. They detest its extremism and thuggery. As in Afghanistan when the Taleban ruled and hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled the brutality of its twisted version of Islam, even greater numbers of Somalis have fled their homeland, not just to escape the fighting and the chaos but also out of fear of the militants.

A triumphant Al-Shabab regime would be terrifying for the world. Its tentacles spread far, as shown by the arrest in Australia last week of five men linked to it and accused of planning a major terror attack there. The world would not sit quiet in such a situation. Somalia under Al-Shabab would be an Al-Qaeda client state, intent on spreading terror abroad, especially to other Muslim states, not least Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has been a principal target of Al-Qaeda. Why would it not be a target of Al-Qaeda’s Somali minions?

Somalia would probably have been at peace now if governments in the Horn of Africa and beyond had kept out of its affairs. Ethiopia’s meddling, with its 2006 invasion, has been obvious. Eritrea’s has been more covert. Certainly, it denies arming and funding the militants although no one believes that.

Nonetheless, despite all this and despite Somalia’s desperate need for a stable government that truly reflects the views of Somalis, there has to be no small amount of concern at the way the US is responding to events.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after meeting with President Ahmed in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Thursday, said that the US will “take action” against Eritrea if it does not stop supporting the militants. Red warning lights start flashing with this sort of language. Is America threatening military action against Eritrea? Surely it has enough on its hands with Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if the action Clinton has in mind is merely diplomatic — adding it to its list of terror states and trying to blacklist it — this could backfire badly. It could easily be made to seem like a case of the US bullying a small, defenseless African state that is an easy target, unlike Iran or North Korea. In any event, will it work? With the president being a cult figure, its suspicion of the rest of the world, and its quasi-Stalinist one-party rigidly controlled system, Eritrea is increasingly seen as the North Korea of Africa; American threats will only increase its already evident paranoia. That will only destabilize the region even more.