The State Department took great pains to point out that this indirect assistance is being provided in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and does not represent any escalation of American involvement in the blood soaked sands of Somalia. Well, don't we all feel better knowing that the panjandrums of the "international community" will look kindly at this tid-bit of too-little-too-late assistance to a completely artificial government which does not fully control even a small enclave, a kind of "Green Zone" on the microscopic scale.
It has long been the Geek's view that the totality of the geographic expression called "Somalia" is not worth whatever might be today's American equivalent of Bismarck's famed "Pomeranian Grenadier." Somalia does not and never has had any organic reason to exist as a nation-state.
The entire concept of "Somalia" is a legacy of decisions made by long dead politicians in Europe. During the rush to de-colonization forty and more years ago, "Somalia" was cobbled together by the assorted artificers of Europe and the United Nations.
With flourishes of pens on pieces of parchment simulating paper, the rude assemblage of tribes and warlords was transformed to the dignity of nation-state status regardless of any structural or cultural realities. Without the slightest genuflection in the direction of the real world, the high minded of two generations ago crafted yet one more imitation country and stood back, quaffing champagne in commemoration of their broadminded nature and total disregard for the inevitable invocation of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
The concatenation of distant, high minded "statesmen" and local men of great ambition lurched along for a couple of decades before disintegrating in the aftermath of the US sanctioned removal of an obnoxious dictator, Said Barre, in 1991. Two years later in a remarkably poorly conceived and pathetically executed "humanitarian relief" operation, the US provided an object lesson in how quickly it could be defeated.
Al-Qaeda, which was already represented in Somalia, took quick notice of how the US could be forced to retreat by the high visibility deaths of a couple of dozen Special Forces personnel. The rapidity of the US bugout was, shall we say, an emboldening sight for Osama bin Laden, et al.
Over the next fifteen or so years the road in Somalia was all down hill. An increasingly bloody hill at that. For a brief while the slide to total chaos was arrested by the Ethiopian army, which undertook a "stability oriented operation" with US support. But, even the Ethiopians could be worn out by the willingness of the Islamist jihadists to both die and kill.
The "international community" stuck its well-meaning fingers back into the Somalian grinder with the Djibouti Agreement between the fiction they had created called the Transitional Federal Government and an anti-government entity, The Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia. At the end of the talk-shake-and-grin session, the assembled Deep Thinkers carpentered an agreement which placed a one time head of the Islamist jihadist group, Al-Shabab, one Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, as the Chief of State and Head of Government.
It was hoped that this one time "extremist" turned present day "moderate" would cut the political ground out from under Al-Shabab or, failing that, some of the other proliferating Islamist jihadist groups. Of course, as with all the other efforts to fabricate something from nothing, the Djibouti Agreement didn't work out as planned.
Al-Shabab has gone from victory to victory. As the refugees flee, the nauseating thugs of Islamism have gained control of most of the rump of Somalia. (The rump is that part of the initial Somalia less the purportedly semi-autonomous regions of Puntland and Somaliland.)
Al-Shabab is given to the most extreme and barbaric interpretations of Sharia as evidenced most recently by the lopping off of the right hands and left feet of four young men convicted according to the Islamist understanding of due process for the crime of theft. (The reports of the public maimings are silent as to whether an anesthetic was used or if the surgical instrument--a machete--wielded by the hooded executioners was sterilised. Oh, well, it is all in the hands and will of Allah.)
When not lopping off limbs or stoning girls who have the bad judgement as to be raped, the Warriors of the Prophet's Will extend hospitality to Al-Qaeda and others of that ilk. As life has become more exciting and shorter in Afghanistan and the FATA of Pakistan, there has been an increasing flow of Al-Qaeda trigger-pullers and wannabe suicide bombers into Somalia.
It is that last fact and that alone which gives any justification for any American involvement no matter how indirect and minimal in the Somalian blood stew. Arguably, the aid announced today is too late by months, if not years, and too little by orders of magnitude to have any positive impact on the situation in Somalia.
As the pirates of the Somalian coast have demonstrated with a clarity which cannot be denied by anyone, Somalia has strategic importance for the national interests of the United States and many other countries. The cruciality of Somalia is enhanced by the deterioration of stability in Yemen.
The control of Somalia and Yemen by Al-Qaeda or similar Islamist jihadist groups brings with it the realistic possibility that the turbaned thugs would be well sited to interdict entrance to the Red Sea. To state that free transit of the Gulf of Aden is critical to the economic stability of the West as well as large portions of the Mideast is to belabor the obvious.
If the Obama administration is serious about protecting the national and strategic interests of the US, it is necessary to prevent the Islamists from gaining uncontested control of Somalia--and Yemen. The same may be said of Her Majesty's Governments and the other governments within the European Union. Tentative measures such as that announced today by the State Department are of little, if any, utility if the policy goal is assuring al-Qaeda and other Islamist entities are not to be given an immense advantage.
The US may be involved in two distant and frustrating wars. Even if we can say with a straight face that we have done all we can do in Iraq, the same cannot be averred concerning Afghanistan. Afghanistan is at the tipping point. The next twelve to eighteen months will determine whether or not the US and its coalition partners achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not-losing." Next door in Pakistan the government may have achieved the initiative but it is a very long way from having bested Taliban in the struggle for authority.
It seems that the last thing the US needs is one more war. Certainly Somalia in and of itself is not worth a war. It is not worth a single American death. The idea of creating a functioning nation-state in Somalia is even more loonie tunes than the notion of Afghanistan as a liberal, pluralistic democracy.
The alternative to direct involvement by US and other Western forces in Somalia is the acceptance of an Islamist jihadist sanctuary on one of the most important sea lines of communication. The domination of Somalia by al-Shabab and its al-Qaeda "guests" will bring in its train an Islamist jihadist success in Yemen. Not only would the Gulf of Aden be held in jihadist jaws, the combination of Yemen and Somalia would give the Islamist jihadists a well positioned base for efforts directed against the totality of the Horn of Africa as well as the House of Sand (AKA Saudi Arabia.)
It may be that the Obama administration has awakened at long last to the threat presented by Islamist jihadists in the geographic expression called "Somalia." If that is the case, the response would be risable were it not so tragic in its potential consequences.
Mr Obama likes to see himself, present himself, as a conciliator, a (to use a cliche the Geek has seen too often in the past year or so) "builder of bridges." All of that is very nice, very comforting, very laudable. It is, unfortunately, quite out-to-lunch.
It is long past time for the Obama administration to do what the seemingly hyper-muscular Bush-Cheney administration never had the geopolitical good sense to do. It is time to take the war against Islamist jihadism back to the place where it started. Somalia.
Do it now. Or do it later. The brutal truth is that the Islamist jihadists must be confronted and killed wherever and whenever they appear. The longer the reality is ignored and the requirements of reality denied, the harder the task will be. The longer the US and the rest of the West wait, the higher the final butcher's bill will be.
It ain't pretty. But, the real world of passionate hates and fears never has been.
No comments:
Post a Comment