War and famine, the only option? Parts I and II

In a two-part article originally posted on Znet, Stephen Roblin from the Indypendent Reader investigates the famine in Somalia and explains how Washington bears considerable responsibility for not only driving the country back into a state of civil war but also crippling the response to the recent explosion in the humanitarian crisis.

 

PART I

After two successive failed rainy seasons in one year, the Horn of Africa has been confronted with its worst drought in 60 years, a phenomenon environmental scientists are linking directly to climate change. The drought coupled with surging food prices, lack of food aid, and other structural factors have triggered what has been called “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today” by Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency.

The crisis “blew up” after April rains failed, leading to widespread crop failure and mass death of livestock, both primary means of sustenance for many in the region. Since then, all aspects of the overall crisis – child and adult mortality, starvation, malnourishment, displacement, and so on – have escalated dramatically. The situation is so severe that over twelve million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, while over two million children suffer malnourishment.

The crisis is most dire in Somalia, where a civil war ravages the central and southern regions of the country. Even before the drought reached historic levels, Somalia was faced with already one of the worst crises in the world, one which exploded after the failed rainy season and has reached catastrophic levels. During the last two months alone, up to thirty thousand Somali children have already died, and over one hundred thousand are inflicted with “severe acute malnutrition” and face “imminent death.”

On July 20 the UN officially declared famine in two regions in southern Somalia under the control of Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab is a loose coalition of Islamist militants and clan militias that since the withdrawal of Ethiopian occupying forces in January 2009 have waged war against the transitional government of Somalia, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and the African Union “peacekeeping” mission (AMISOM) that protects it. Famine has since been declared in six regions in Somalia; and it's expected to spread throughout southern Somalia in the coming weeks.

Respite from the drought is not expected to occur until December or January 2012, following the next rainy season which lasts from October to December. Thus, the course of action that is underway and the direction it takes over the next few months will determine the fate of millions.

The two most pressing obstacles to mitigating the current crisis have been: lack of humanitarian access to southern Somalia and the massive resource shortfalls (funding, food aid, medical supplies, etc). As we will see, these obstacles are consequences of the systematic dismantling of humanitarian aid in Somalia that has taken place over the past several years.

 

Consequences of Aggression

It is no accident that famine first broke out in Al Shabaab-controlled areas. In recent years, Al Shabaab has become notorious for barring Western aid agencies, like the World Food Program (WFP), from providing aid in areas it controls, as well as threatening, detaining, and even assassinating aid workers—all clear violations of humanitarian law. These actions, in addition to imposing taxes and transportation tolls, have obstructed humanitarian access in most of southern and parts of central Somalia.

On July 6 Al Shabaab's leaders reportedly lifted their ban on previously barred humanitarian agencies. But later that month Al Shabaab's spokesman denied lifting the ban and went as far as to call the UN declaration “baseless propaganda,” claiming that “the conditions are not as bad as they [UN officials] say.”

It has since been reported that Al Shabaab leaders are divided over the issue, which is fomenting further division within an already highly fractured coalition. This conflict appears to be manifesting in how local militias under the Al Shabaab umbrella are responding to humanitarian relief efforts underway. In some areas, aid agencies like the Red Cross, UNICEF, and especially Islamic organizations have been able to deliver aid with no resistance; in other areas, Al Shabaab militias are maintaining the ban and preventing Somalis from traveling to regions where relief is available.

Al Shabaab's leaders have deservedly been condemned for their crimes. But they have not been alone in sacrificing Somalis civilians while pursuing perceived strategic objectives. In waging the Somalia front in the “war on terror” (or as Obama prefers, the “war against al Qaeda and its affiliates”), Washington has played a central role in driving Somalia back into a state of civil war and obstructing the response to the misery war creates. These policies proved to be a boon for Al Shabaab, particularly its most extremist elements.

First of all, the rise of Al Shabaab as the most powerful force in southern Somalia is a direct consequence of the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of southern and central Somalia (December 2006 - January 2009). The military campaign was waged without UN Security Council authorization or a legitimate justification for self-defense. Therefore, it falls into the category of “aggression,” the “supreme international crime” according to the Nuremberg Tribunals

. But given the cast of aggressors, it has rarely been recognized as such.

The invasion successfully crushed a popular movement of Islamic courts and militias, called the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which after defeating a coalition of U.S.-backed warlords in June 2006 had ushered in a level of peace and security unknown to the region since the fall of the central government in 1991. After the fall of the UIC, its militant wing, Al Shabaab, waged a popular insurgency aimed at expelling the Ethiopian occupying forces that protected the widely despised TFG. Since the UIC's collapse, every aspect of the overall crisis in Somalia – the humanitarian catastrophe, piracy, and terrorism – has escalated radically, a fact that provides additional support for the inverse relationship between war and national security.

Prior to May 2008, the primary obstacle to the delivery of food aid came from TFG security forces, which were armed, trained and financed by the U.S. and other Western “donors.” According to Somalia scholar Ken Menkhaus, “TFG hardliners viewed the movement of food aid to IDPs [internally displaced persons] as support to an enemy population – terrorists and terrorist sympathisers in their view – and sought to impede the flow of aid convoys through a combination of bureaucratic and security impediments.” The impediments included harassing, kidnapping and detaining the staff of local and international NGOs and UN agencies, and erecting some 400 roadblocks so that TFG security forces and allied criminal gangs could charge for the passage of trucks carrying aid.[1]

During this time, Al Shabaab militias cooperated with local and international relief organizations, as the target of the insurgency was solely the TFG and Ethiopian forces. But in the Spring of 2008 Al Shabaab broadened its war to include Western targets inside and outside the country. According to analysts, this change was in direct response to Al Shabaab's designation as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration in March 2008 in addition to the illegal U.S. missile strikes on Somali soil in March and May 2008, the latter killing militant leader, Aden Hashi Ayro.[2] A report by the British think tank, Chatham House, states that the strike on Ayro “had significant negative consequences for the humanitarian community working in Somalia and resulted in a wave of killings of Somali staff working for international NGOs.”[3] Menkhaus corroborates this point by arguing that the threats and attacks against aid workers were “in direct response to the US designation of shabaab as a terrorist organisation . . . and the May 2008 US missile strike.”[4]

Al Shabaab has since fallen increasingly under the centralized command of its most extremist elements, some of whom are believed to be veterans of other “war on terror” battlegrounds. Thus, the Al Shabaab that now exists is “a very different organization than the one that had led the struggle against Ethiopia in 2007,” writes piracy expert Martin Murphy. In fact, while the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation was justified on the grounds that the UIC (and by extension Al Shabaab) was “controlled” by al Qaeda members, it was not until September 2009 (almost three years after the invasion began) that Al Shabaab leaders declared allegiance with al Qaeda. Analysts interpreted this move as an indication of the more global jihadist ambitions among its revamped leadership core and the growing influence of foreign fighters.[5]

In late February 2010 (five months after the declaration), Al Shabaab leaders barred the WFP from southern Somalia, claiming the quantity of food aid supplied by the WFP disadvantaged local Somali farmers. This decision came a month after the WFP had already pulled its staff from the region due to insecurity. Al Shabaab leaders later expelled other Western aid agencies for allegedly spreading Christian propaganda and spying for Western governments.

 

Politicizing Aid, War on Terror Style

Just weeks before Al Shabaab barred the WFP, Mark Bowden, the UN Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator for Somalia, criticized what he called the “politicization of humanitarian issues” in Somalia. Bowden's censure was directed at the Obama administration for imposing “impossible” conditions on aid agencies working in Somalia, effectively blocking humanitarian access for the agencies working in areas under Al Shabaab's control. The conditions were instituted ostensibly to prevent money and aid from being diverted to “terrorists,” though UN officials considered U.S. claims concerning the level of diversion to be exaggerated.

As a result of Al Shabaab's placement on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, humanitarian agencies agencies could face prosecution by the U.S. for providing militants “material support,” like paying taxes and transportation tolls, which, as we have seen, were necessary costs to providing relief in regions controlled by local U.S. allies. The threat of prosecution sparked an ongoing debate  between the Obama administration on one side and the UN and relief agencies on the other. The latter argued it would be impossible to provide relief in Al Shabaab-controlled areas while at the same time avoiding potential prosecution.

The new aid restrictions helped obstruct humanitarian relief at a time when Somalia was on “the brink of famine,” with one in five Somali children “wasting away from malnutrition” and nearly half the population dependent on humanitarian assistance, the New York Times reported in October 2009. Relief agencies operating in Al Shabaab territory were forced to pull out. A sharp reduction in aid revenues also ensued. Relief agencies responded by scaling back their operations throughout the country. For example, several months prior to Al Shabaab's February 2010 decision to expel the WFP, U.S. officials suspended millions of dollars of critical food aid that forced the WFP to cut fifty percent of its emergency rations for over one million displaced Somalis. According to New York Times journalist, Jeffrey Gettleman, UN officials and aid workers believed U.S. restrictions on aid were “one of the biggest challenges to helping Somalia's beleaguered population.”

The Obama administration reacted to criticisms by denying the devastating impacts of its restrictions and justified them on grounds that the U.S. would not “pay a terrorism tax to al-Shabaab.” Meanwhile, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Amnesty International had documented the extensive arms leakages from TFG, AMISOM and Ethiopian military personnel to Al Shabaab.[6] Knowing full well about the arms leakages, the administration increased its military assistance to the TFG and even applied for an embargo exemption in May 2009 so that it could supply some $2 million in cash to the TFG for it procure military materials.

In short, the administration was willing to provide arms indirectly to Al Shabaab as a necessary cost of beefing up its allies' military capabilities. But it refused to drop its crippling aid restrictions and risk Al Shabaab profiting from food aid as a necessary cost of preventing civilian death and suffering.

Obama's aid restrictions gained Security Council legitimacy with the March 2010 passage of Resolution 1916. The resolution calls on all member states and the UN “to take all feasible steps to mitigate” the “politicization, misuse, and misappropriation of humanitarian assistance by armed groups” and requires the UN Humanitarian Aid Coordinator for Somalia to regularly report to the Security Council on the implementation of these objectives. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) called the latter stipulation an “unprecedented requirement.”[7]

That same month, Canada and the UK joined the U.S., Australia and New Zealand by passing national legislation criminalizing financial support to Al Shabaab and introducing bureaucratic processes to ensure that aid does not materially benefit the militant group. UNOCHA has argued that these measures “compromise the independence and impartiality of humanitarian assistance,”[8] thereby further orienting aid agencies to be in line with U.S. foreign policy objectives.

When the humanitarian crisis exploded after April's failed rains, UN officials and aid agencies again began to criticize the U.S. government for its aid restrictions. The Obama administration's initial response was again to deny the impact of its aid restrcitions. After tens of thousands of deaths and increasing international criticism, the administration relented, and on August 2 informally loosened its restrictions by assuring relief agencies that they will not face prosecution "in the event their operations may accidentally benefit al-Shabaab.” There is no indication, however, that this step will be followed by formally removing the restrictions from U.S. and other nations' laws.

Plenty of Warning

The Obama administration's contribution to the dismantling of humanitarian aid in Somalia has been described in unequivocal terms. According to Jeremy Konyndyk, policy director of the U.S.-based Mercy Corps, “While poor access limited the humanitarian community’s ability to address needs in the south, the broader collapse in US humanitarian support to the whole of Somalia since 2009 has undermined humanitarian response and preparedness across the entire country.” The "collapse" in financial terms has translated into an 88 percent drop in U.S. aid to Somalia, from $237 million in 2008 to only $20 million in 2011. Some relief agency officials have claimed the resource shortfall has been as big an obstacle to relief efforts as lack of access due to Al Shabaab's restrictions. It should be noted however that the degree to which the administration has undermined overall relief efforts is by no means fully understood; thus further investigation is a matter of critical importance.

What we can be certain of is the ample time available to raise funding prior to the explosion of the crisis. Governments and aid agencies were informed about an impending food crisis as early as October 2010. The following month the UN launched the 2011 Consolidated Appeal for Somalia in order to raise $530 million in aid (an eleven percent decrease from the 2010 funding request). The UN forecast for the coming months was “reduced rains across the country,” leading to “a likely overall increase in the crisis.”[9] In January 2011, aid agencies warned that if rains failed again in April millions of lives would be threatened. But warnings never became "part of consistent policy," as observed by Randolph Kent, Director of the Humanitarian Futures Program at Kings College in London.

A clear indiciation of the disconnect was the response to funding calls. By early July, the UN received only half of the funds requested by the Consolidated Appeal for Somalia. This lack of funding caused drastic cutbacks in relief. The WFP, for example, was unable to purachse shipments of food between April and the beginning of July. The agency adjusted by slashing its food ration sizes; in May it could only provide 33 percent of its target rations.

The UN has since been able to raise over a billion dollars – still short of the $2.4 billion emergency appeal for the Horn of Africa – with the U.S. contributing close to $600 million. For making this contribution, the New York Times argued that the "Obama administration deserves credit for acting in advance to ameliorate the effects” of the crisis. A humane perspective would take into account the unncessary death of tens of thousands of children since May, a tragedy the administration played a pivotal role in creating and one that came as no surprise. But as is almost always the case in Somalia, narrow interests took precedence over preventing tragedy, a matter to which we turn in part II.

NOTES:

[1] Ken Menkhaus (2009), “Somalia: 'They Created a Desert and Called it Peace(building)',” Review of African Political Economy, 36: 120, 228.

[2] Ibid, 229; and “'So Much to Fear': War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia,” Human Rights Watch, December 2008, 96.

[3] Sally Healy and Ginny Hill, “Yemen and Somalia: Terrorism, Shadow Networks and the Limitations of State-building,” October 2010, 13.

[4] Menkhaus,“'They Created a Desert',” 229.

[5] Martin N. Murphy, Somalia: The New Barbary? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 154/5. See also “Somalia's Divided Islamists,” International Crisis Group, May 18, 2010.

[6] See Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia (S/2008/274) and (S/2008/769).

[7] S/RES.1916 (2010), March 19, 2010; and Consolidated Appeal for Somalia 2011, November 30, 2010, 11.

[8] Consolidated Appeal, 11.

[9] Ibid, 23 and 32.

 

PART II

As we saw in part I, in January aid agencies warned the UN and the TFG's various “donors” that the humanitarian crisis (already considered one of the worst in the world) would explode if rains failed in April. When the warnings came to pass, the crisis quickly reached famine levels in southern Somalia, in large part due to the systematic dismantling of humanitarian aid.

As soon as warnings of the pending crisis were known, the responsible response would have been to repair the broken system of humanitarian aid. Beyond making calls for funding (which were largely ignored until July), external parties could have: (1) dropped all crippling aid restrictions; and (2) pressured their Somali allies to call for a ceasefire and pursue direct dialogue with Al Shabaab leaders in order to guarantee humanitarian access throughout southern and central Somalia.
 

After tens of thousands of deaths and increasing international criticism, the Obama administration informally loosened its aid restrictions in early August. Regarding a ceasefire and negotiations, this option has not been seriously pursued. Recently, there have been calls to test the rift within Al Shabaab and initiate dialogue with the “moderate” elements over humanitarian access. So far, aid agencies have been left on their own to do so.
 

Recent reports claim that the issue of opening up humanitarian access is a source of internal division between the more “moderate” (nationalist-oriented) and “hardline” (international terror-oriented) elements of Al Shabaab. While divisions may be exacerbating, the disagreement over humanitarian access is not new. In January, The East African (Kenya) reported that a group of Al Shabaab commanders asked the top decision-making body to accept the return of aid agencies in the region. Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its backers could have tested the grounds for dialogue and negotiations then (and preferably years ago). Instead of doing so, the TFG and its loosely allied local militias and the AU "peacekeeping" mission, AMISOM, spearheaded a military offensive in February that has been backed by the UN and “donor” powers.

The refusal to pursue dialogue and negotiations as a potential opportunity to increase aid access is a clear indication that the TFG, AMISOM and their external backers have subordinated alleviating the humanitarian crisis to their respective military strategies, with Somali civilians suffering the consequences.

 

Spring Offensive
 

The military offesenive took place mainly inside Mogadishu and along the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia. Both Kenyan and Ethiopian governments deployed military units inside southern Somalia to back their proxy Somali militias, actions which were in direct violation of the longstanding Somali arms embargo. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on August 15 describing how all parties to the conflict are guilty of extensive war crimes and how these crimes and the “spike in fighting from February to May” has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.[1]
 

The impacts include:thousands of civilian casualties, overburdened hospitals filled with wounded civilians, and an increased number of displaced civilians. Fighting along the border has contributed to Somalis' woes by effectively blocking civilians from fleeing across the border for safety, as well as damaging vital infrastructure. For example, in April Kenyan tanks and artillery shelled a community hospital in a border town, which HRW suspects may have been deliberate.[2]
 

The TFG and AMISOM's military gains were marginal until the first week of August when Al Shabaab militants withdrew from Mogadishu. The withdrawal has allowed aid to be brought into capital, certainly a positive development--though one not without challenges. Government troops and allied clan militias have reportedly looted aid, which, in multiple incidents, resulted in the murder of civilian bystanders as they fought each other to steal food.
 

TFG officials have declared they will continue the offensive, while offering amnesty to Al Shabaab fighters in Mogadishu. With reprieve from the crisis not expected to occur until December or January, it is unlikely that the TFG and AMISOM will be able to extend their territorial gains in time to provide aid to Somalis subject to Al Shabaab's ban. Even with an AMISOM troop increase to meet its full mandate level of 12,000 (it is currently at 9,000), increasing territorial gains will be neither easy nor timely. Indeed, a likely scenario for the coming months is that TFG and AMISOM forces will have difficulties consolidating their control of Mogadishu against attacks from Al Shabaab, whose withdrawal was part of a tactical change that now focuses on “hit and run attacks,” which have already killed forty-five people in the capital, according to SomaliaReport.

In short, the military option remains replete with challenges, which raises the question: Why hasn't a peaceful option been pursued? For the TFG's top backer, higher pursuits got in the way of taking on the role of constructive outsider.
 

Higher Priorities
 

In recent years, Somalia has emerged as a central front in the Pentagon's global “secret war” that the Obama administration has expanded dramatically. The war is executed primarily by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), “a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach,” writes Nick Turse, who recently shed light on the development. SOCOM carries out a wide range of secret operations, most of which are criminal, that include: high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture and kidnap operations, night raids, foreign troop training, intelligence gathering, and more.
 

Al Shabaab is at the center of the Somalia front in this “secret war.” U.S. concerns over Al Shabaab have little to do with the threat it poses inside Somalia, but rather its potential reach outside of Somalia, particularly into the resource-rich Middle East that is at the center of U.S. geostrategic interests. Somalia's geographic position “puts the country astride the main trade route between Europe, the Middle East and Asia—waters through which 12 percent of total global maritime trade and 30 percent of the world’s crude oil shipments transit,” writes J. Peter Pham in the National Interest in June. The prolonged crisis in Somalia has created “conditions exceptionally favorable to piracy” and strengthened ties between Al Shabaab and terrorist organizations on the other side of the water.
 

The Al Shabaab threat has become more accute due to the popular opposition to long-time Yemen dictator and U.S. client, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Obama administration's fear, among other things, is that a new (democratic) government in Yemen – which sits on the opposite side of the narrow Gulf of Aden from Somalia – will jeopardize the free reign that Saleh has given the U.S. to carry out deadly airstrikes and drone attacks against alleged members of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
 

For years U.S. intelligence has pointed to growing ties between Al Shabaab and AQAP leaders.[3] In the last few months, U.S. officials have claimed the groups' leaders are forging closer ties and potentially planning attacks against the U.S. The administration has relied on this “new evidence” as a pretext to justify its counterterrorism operations conducted in recent months against Al Shabaab. Irrespective of the veracity of these claims, the operations are undoubtedly in response to the "destabilizing" situation in Yemen and the administration's frustration with the TFG's inability to consolidate its rule and serve as a viable “counterterrorism partner.”
 

In July, Jeremy Scahil from The Nation exposed key aspects of the Obama administration's counterterrorism program in Somalia. Operations have taken the form of targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and surveillance operations. The U.S. has also constructed a compound at Mogadishu's airport where the CIA trains Somali intelligence agents and operatives. The aim is to build “an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted 'combat' operations against members of Al Shabab,” writes Scahil. The CIA also has a secret prison in the basement of Somalia's National Security Agency headquarters that has been called an “out-sourced Guantanamo Bay in central Mogadishu,” where individuals with alleged ties to Al Shabaab are interrogated and likely tortured.
 

While starvation was claiming thousands of childrens' lives, Washington authorized a series of unilateral military strikes against Al Shabaab. Scahill documents two cases: a drone strike near the port city of Kismayo on June 23 and three more U.S. strikes at Al Shabaab training camps on July 6 (around the same time Al Shabaab leaders agreed to grant aid access). According to Scahill, this is all part of an “emerging US strategy” in Somalia, based largely on “unilateral strikes without the prior knowledge of the government,” and in violation of UNSC Resolutions.
 

These strikes may have been a factor in Al Shabaab's July 21 decision to retract its earlier decision and maintain its ban on Western aid agencies. On July 28, the Guardian reported,

The drought and famine have deepened discord among al-Shabaab leaders that has been apparent for some time. Some have supported a lifting of the ban on operations of international aid agencies, while others, such as its top commander, Ahmed Cabdi Godane, reportedly opposed the move on the grounds that NGOs might provide intelligence for [more] US drone air strikes.

The degree to which U.S. air strikes factored in the decision by Al Shabaab leaders remains unclear.

Turning to the Obama administration's decision, one can reasonably surmise that the illegal airstrikes' potential impact on the humanitarian crisis factored in little, at best. The administration's delayed and begrudged loosening of aid restrictions makes clear the ranking of humanitarian concerns, as well as its response to calls for addressing the Somalia crisis through peaceful means.
 

Calls for Dialogue Fall on Deaf Ears
 

One responsible proposal was put forth from Washington. The first week of August Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) sent a letter to the White House calling on it to pressure the “international community” to negotiate directly with Al Shabaab over the establishment of “corridors of tranquility,” where all sides agree to a temporary ceasefire and guarantee the safe passage of aid.[4] So far, there has been no indication that the administration has even acknolwedged the proposal, preferring instead to support the TFG/AMISOM offensive.

Others have recommended pursuing direct dialogue with Al Shabaab. Norway's Foreign Minister, Jonas Habr Store, told a Norwegian newspaper that “Up to now there's been a policy of no contact with the groups making up the Al-Shabaab militia . . . . I think it's time to re-evaluate that policy.” The German Development Minister, Dirk Niebel, echoed this sentiment when he asserted the “need to initiate conversations with those forces who are willing to talk,” noting that “Al-Shabab is not the same everywhere.”
 

We should bear in mind that the idea has been proposed before, even within establishment circles. For example, Bronwyn Bruton from the Council on Foreign Relations released a report in March 2010 where she proposed that the U.S., UN and other outside parties view the TFG “as a vehicle for dialgue, rather than as a threat to the existing distribution of territorial control. To achieve that end, international military support intended to increase the TFG's territory . . . must cease.”[5]
 

She went on to write,

If fundamentalist and radical actors are given the capacity to interact with the TFG and the international community directly and on an equal footing, the likelihood of a political settlement will increase, and the TFG may succeed in isolating transnational terrorists currently hiding within the Shabaab.
 

Key to Bruton's proposal was for the Obama administration to do two things: First, refrain from direct U.S. military operations on Somali soil in order to prevent further enflaming anti-Americanism—a phenomenon incited by the Bush administration's backing of Somali warlords and Ethiopia's illegal invasion and occupation. Second, restrain Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi regime, whose guiding policy towards Somalia is to install a weak and divided client government that can be managed from Addis Ababa. (A favorite strategy of the regime has been to undermine any peace process that threatens the power of its Somali clients through arming and backing client warlords and fomenting hostilities.)[6]

As a means of facilitating cooperation, Bruton also recommended that the U.S. remove specific individuals from its terrorist list, like Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who made the list for being suspected of having ties with terrorist suspects. Her recommendations evidently made no impression in Washington.

Other analysts have called for dialogue. Rashid Abdi and Ernst Jan Hogendoorn, Horn of Africa analysts with the International Crisis Group, argued in May 2010 that the TFG should reach out to the Al Shabaab militants who never supported the international orientation of the movement's small cohort of local and foreign leaders. According to Abdi and Hogendoorn, the TFG had failed to serve as a vehicle for peace, not only by its failure to develop a national reconciliation strategy but also by rebuffing insurgent leaders who reached out to transitional leaders.
 

The prospect for dialogue and a potential political settelment to the conflict became more distant following the July 11, 2010 terrorist bombings in Kampala, Uganda that killed an estimated 79 civilians. Al Shabaab's spokesman claimed the bombings were in retaliation for Uganda's participation in AMISOM. It should be noted however that taking credit for an act which Al Shabaab's leaders viewed as an accomplishment is not itself reliable proof of guilt.
 

From August through September 2010, Al Shabaab waged the “Ramadan Offensive” in Mogadishu. In retaliation for the Kampala bombings and to regain minor territorial losses, Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, ordered an AMISOM military offensive beginning in October. Mogadishu turned into a bloodbath. According to a UN Secretary General report, “From September to November, approximately 1,600 weapons-related casualties, including 127 children under 5, were reported in Mogadishu”[7], largely a consequence of AMISOM's indiscriminate shelling of civilian-populated areas in response to Al Shabaab mortar fire.
 

Human Rights Watch claims hat there has been another 4,000 civilian casualties in southern Somalia since late 2010.[8] These deaths are in addition to the thousands who have died in the past three months, with millions of more lives threatened. At this point, there is no indication that the TFG, AU, or UN are planning to pursue dialogue with any elements under the Al Shabaab umbrella.

 

Triumph of Power
 

For Somalia to move beyond its perpetual state of humanitarian crisis, a viable peace process must be undertaken alongside massive international assistance put towards rebuilding the country's fragile economy and demolished infrastructure (health, education, etc.). The situation in Somalia is entirely too precarious to gauge when the next opportunity for peace and nation-building will occur, the last one being the rise of the UIC, which was crushed from outside. Until another opportunity develops, Somalia will continue to swing from severe to catastrophic episodes of humanitarian crisis.
 

The recent explosion in the crisis should be understood as part of the aftermath of U.S./Ethiopian aggression. The administration has made a concerted effort to deny the central role of Washington in driving Somalia into its current state. Officials have advanced this propagandistic objective by attributing Somalia's predicament to mainly internal factors and lack of international engagement. As put by the Obama administration's senior Africa policymaker, Johnnie Carson, “Somalia has collapsed in on itself,” adding that if the country is to recover from its implosion it can no longer suffer the “benign neglect by the United States.”
 

Pointing to any one of the recent U.S. policies in Somalia (backing warlords, sponsoring foreign aggression, dismantling the country's system of humanitarian relief, or illegal airstrikes) is enough to reveal the profound contempt for Somali life present in the administration's position. But there are other bouts of “benign neglect” that should not be forgotten.
 

Somalis were some of the first victims of Bush II's “war on terror.” In early November 2001 the administration closed Al Barakaat, the largest remittance network operating in Somalia at the time. The closure came two weeks after the UN announced that 300,000 Somalis faced immediate starvation due to drought and food shortage. Shutting down Al Barakaat resulted in an immediate decline in remittances that delivered a serious blow to a country characterized by one UN official as “close to the precipice of complete and total economic failure.” The action was justified on grounds that Al Barakaat was financing Al Qaeda, a charge the Bush administration withdrew a year later for lack of evidence.
 

Turning to the “scourge of piracy” off Somalia's coast, its growth is partly a consequence of crimes against Somalis by external actors. Since the early 1990s, Somalia's shores have been used as a “dumping ground” for toxic and nuclear waste by European and Asian companies, while others have illegally exploited Somalia's unprotected fish resources. The “international community” has paid little attention to these crimes. Only crimes at sea committed by Somalis are worthy of a response since they impact the international trade that matters: commerce among powerful states.[9]
 

With this history of “benign neglect” in mind, to call the massive short- and long-term international assistance the Somalia crisis demands “aid” amounts to a triumph of power and its system of doctrinal support. As victims of aggression and other crimes, Somalis are entitled to massive reparations, and more. But given the cast of criminal states, Somalis will be lucky to receive assistance that amounts to pittances in comparison to the damages suffered, while being subject to the additional contempt of witnessing their destroyers simultaneously praise themselves for their benevolence and deny their responsibility. 

 

NOTES:

[1] “'You Don't Know Who to Blame': War Crimes in Somalia,” 20 and 29.

[2] Ibid, 1, 21, and 22.

[3] Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, January 21, 2010.

[4] See also “US lawmaker urges humanitarian corridors in Somalia,” AFP, Hiraan Online, August 5, 2011; and Newsmakers with Chris Smith, C-SPAN, August 5, 2011, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300911-1.

[5] “Somalia: A New Approach,” 24.

[6] Ibid. See also Afyare Abdi Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration (London: Pluto Press, 2010), 96.

[7] See UN Secretary General Report (S/2010/675), 5.

[8] “'You Don't Know Who to Blame',” 1.

[9] See “'Toxic waste' behind Somali piracy,” Al Jazeera, October 11, 2009; and Abdi Ismail Samatar, Mark Lindberg, and Basil Mahayni, “The Dialectics of Piracy in Somalia: the rich versus the poor,” Third World Quarterly, 31:8, 1377 – 1394.