Sanctions! Once More With Feeling

In its nearly desperate effort to avoid the truth about the geographic expression known as Somalia, the Obama administration in the person of SecState Clinton has waved the big rhetorical stick of sanctions at Eritrea. The reason for the new threat is the administration's belief that Eritrea is providing assistance to al-Shabab. And, as we all know, al-Shabab is the latest Islamist jihadist bogeyman.

If al-Shabab wins in Somalia, the administration's logic holds, al-Qaeda will have a new safe haven from which to attack the West generally and the US in particular. The logic is correct. But, that is as far as it goes.

Eritrea is a wretched pimple on the collective anus of humanity. It is a miserable one party state which is best characterised by pervasive poverty, governmental repression, and a proclivity to be a troublemaker. After being forced into a merger with Ethiopia fifty-seven years ago, the Eritreans formed, what else? That's right, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) which waged a thirty year long nasty insurgency which finally culminated in de facto independence which became de jure in 1993.

The Eritrean constitution has never been implemented. The elections scheduled for 2001 were postponed indefinitely. The horrid little place lives under the regime of the Peoples Front For Democracy and Justice (PFDF.) Both democracy and justice are conspicuous in their absence.

In the past Eritrea has provided refuge for Somali political figures. These include Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed after he was ousted as a senior capo of the Islamic Courts Union by the Ethiopian army operating at American behest. Sheik Ahmed is now the "elected" head of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG.) Also gaining sanctuary in Eritrea for a while was Sheik Hassan Aweys whose Hizbul Islam insurgent group is, depending on the phase of the moon and other similarly arcane determinants, either fighting alongside or in opposition to al-Shabab.

Hopefully, the Obama administration including Ms Clinton can distinguish between giving sanctuary and providing material assistance. The amount of weapons, other equipment, and Islamist jihadists flowing from Eritrea to Somalia is difficult to ascertain in detail, but it is not sufficient to account for the success of al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam in the past few months.

To put it simply enough for even the Deep Thinkers of the Obama administration to understand, al-Shabab is winning because it is more dedicated, more resilient, more effective, more willing to both kill and be killed than the TFG forces including the "peace keepers" from the African Union. Sheik Ahmed has not yet shown himself capable of attracting and keeping the loyalty of tribal warlords hostile to al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam.

Regardless of the assorted brave statements emanating from assorted members of the TFG, the reality is that it is losing and al-Shabab is winning. Period. And, the ascending fortunes of al-Shabab owe little or nothing to the presumed assistance flowing from Eritrea.

It is difficult to see just how sanctions might coerce Eritrea into ceasing whatever assistance it may be providing to Somalia. The place is dead broke. Over eighty percent of its population is engaged in subsistence agriculture. International development schemes intended to exploit mineral resources are moribund. Its primary exports are agricultural and go, in the main, to Italy, China, and Sudan. Its imports come chiefly from Saudi Arabia, Italy, and China.

It might be noted that none of Eritrea's major trading partners have a splendid record in observing sanctions. That is not likely to change in the event the US is able to ramrod an embargo on Eritrea through the UN.

While the population of Eritrea is split among several religious confessions, Islam has the largest share. The PFDJ leadership has not shown a particularly robust orientation toward the Islamist agenda, but that is subject to change. The imposition of sanctions is likely to result in a sudden epiphany among the chieftains of the country. And, they are not at all likely to tilt toward, say, Roman Catholicism or Buddhism.

The first reaction of the Eritrean president, Isias Afewark, to SecState Clinton's threats was, to say the least, truculent. While undoubtedly exaggerating the degree of aid already provided to al-Shabab, the Eritrean strongman promised more would be along shortly. The Eritrean foreign ministry echoed the president's position while taking it a bit more over the edge of paranoia.

These early indicators point at Eritrea becoming more rather than less involved in Somalia should the US continue its pressure campaign. There are two reasons for this.

The first is simply Eritrea's total inability to put the war with Ethiopia behind it. There is a powerful reservoir of hatred which emerges far more from the 1998-2000 Ethiopian invasion than from the earlier thirty year's war. As a result, Eritrea sees the jihadist-TFG struggle as a proxy conflict between itself and Ethiopia.

The second reason is, quite unsurprisingly, religion. While, as mentioned earlier, the PFDJ command echelon is not overly Islamist in public, through much of the insurgency, ELF did hype its Islamic roots in distinction to the Christian and later Marxist orientation of Ethiopia. The totem of Islam has not lost its magic; if anything the magic has grown in recent years. The same dynamic has been visible off and on for years in Sudan. It is at work behind the scenes in Eritrea today.

The US, the AU, the UN, have all used Eritrea and its presumed critical aid to al-Shabab as a way to avoid facing reality. All these, most importantly the current American administration, need to get a grip on a very prickly, highly unpleasant, quite brutal truth. If Somalia is to be stabilized under a non-Islamist, non-jihadist government, military intervention is necessary.

If former general and current National Security Advisor Jones was speaking accurately the other day, the Obama administration is committed to fighting al-Qaeda and its associates whenever and wherever they arise. It is best to take the Islamist jihadists on before they have consolidated their hold on a country.

It is less painful, far less bloody, and far, far less costly in treasure to defeat the Islamist jihadists while they are still in the process of seizing power. This means in Somalia the time is now.

Right now al-Shabab has not won. Right now, there are significant sections of the Somali population which want peace and freedom from fear far more than they desire Shriah. Right now the outside world has its last best chance to stop Somalia from becoming the Afghanistan, the FATA of tomorrow.

Yes, this means Americans and others must fight a war none of us wants to fight. For the Obama administration and the Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus it means putting the much desired (by them) "Transformational Agenda" on long-term hold. For We the People it means more frustration with a distant war in an unlovely part of the world with people who will hate us no matter how the fracas ends.

It is a very bitter prospect to contemplate. It is far more tempting to turn our collective backs on Somalia and the Somalis. After all, just who are they to us and we to them?

On the other hand, temporizing, putting off, ignoring the threat was the way in which the Clinton administration played the game of nations a decade and more ago. That approach brought us not only 9/11 but all the very unpleasant matters which followed it. Do we want to go through that sort of thing again?

Forty-one years ago, Robert Kennedy liked to challenge We the People. He used to ask, "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

Indeed.