The High Minded and Lofty Thinking diplomats of the West created the fiction of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and then abandoned the field to the forces of the African Union. The AU is notoriously long on ambition and delusions of adequacy. It is equally short on competence, funding, able armed forces, and consistent political will.
When all the AU promises had been made, only Uganda and Burundi sent peacekeeping forces. Of these, the Ugandans have done the most freight hauling. Uganda has done this for several reasons, none of which are altruistic. In large measure the Ugandan government has kept its presence in Mogadishu as an emblem of its enlarging status on the continent.
With the discovery and proving of significant oil reserves, Uganda has been announcing its ambitions to be a major player in African affairs. New visions of prosperity and the status which such will bring in its wake have been accompanied by apparent success in finally defeating the long running sore caused by the Lords Resistance Army's insurgency. Muscle flexing in Somalia can be seen as a natural extension of these factors as well as a counter to the influx of refugees from Somalia.
The deadly triple bombing during the World Cup final game in Uganda's capital Kampala gives the country's government a stark choice: withdraw from Somalia or enlarge the effort. Neither option is good.
Al Shabaab is riven at present between two major competing factions. One wants to focus on the final elimination of the TFG and the installation of a shariah compliant Islamist regime. The other, the internationalist wing which is aligned with al-Qaeda and numbers hundreds of foreign fighters in its ranks, wants to export the war to other countries in the Horn of Africa including not only Uganda but Kenya as well. The Kampala attack hints that the internationalists are either winning the internecine struggle or are both willing and able to go it alone.
Either of these two alternatives indicates that the very dynamic the US feared when it employed the Ethiopian army as a proxy to eliminate the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) is coming to pass. The ICU was seen by the US as providing another safe haven for violent political Islamists of the al-Qaeda variety. The extirpation of this potential was seen as both necessary and high priority.
The failure of the US and other Western governments to look one day beyond that upon which the ICU was deposed guaranteed that the aftermath would be worse. As Somalia has never been other than a mere geographic expression in which all politics were local and clan based, the avenue of chaos was wide open to any group sufficiently motivated and willing to kill. Of the various groups so oriented, al-Shabaab was the most dedicated and most willing to pile up corpses.
With the exception of former British Somalia, which peeled itself away from the rest of the mess assembled by Western diplomats at the UN a half century earlier, Somalia rapidly fell under the shariah clad heel of al-Shabaab. Resistance to "The Kids" was just enough to ensure the group became more and more extreme, more willing to kill, more dedicated to winning--and more willing to call for outside support.
It was the political equivalent of a person taking just enough antibiotic to assure the weak bacteria were killed and the survivors made stronger, more resistant, and more deadly. Al-Shabaab is comprised of battle tested and slaughter hardened survivors.
These indigenous survivors have been reinforced in recent months by equally battle tested and slaughter hardened fighters from other theaters including Iraq and Afghanistan. They have also been joined by recruits from the twenty plus years of Somalian diaspora. Arabs, Afghans, Uzbeks, returning refugees or the children of refugees, all are united by the ideology of violent political Islam, by the vision of a global caliphate or, at the least, by a deep and abiding hatred of the infidels of the West and all the baggage those infidels carry.
The less than half-hearted measures taken to date by the US and other Western countries to bring, or, to err on the side of accuracy, impose, stability on Somalia have done absolutely nothing useful. All have been counterproductive. From the cut-and-run decision taken by President Clinton in the wake of the killing of nineteen special forces troops in an ill-conceived and worse executed attempt to "arrest" a Somalian warlord nearly twenty years ago to the present time, the actions of the US could not have been more carefully calculated to produce an Islamist victory and the dreaded new safe harbor for al-Qaeda.
The triple bombing in Kampala should serve as a wakeup call not simply for Uganda or the AU but for the US and the West generally. The hope that proxies would provide a low risk, low cost way of preventing an Islamist takeover of Somalia has been proven disastrously wrong. Al-Shabaab has shown a will and ability to engage in significant horizontal escalation of the war. It is no longer an internal matter, resident in Somalia alone.
With the Kampala attack "The Kids" have shown their threats to Kenya and elsewhere must be taken seriously. The Bad Boys Of The True Faith can and will make good on their threats. The proof is in the mangled bodies of those who died, shredded by al-Shabaab's bombs. "The Kids" own the initiative now. They can choose when, where, and how to strike. No country, certainly not Kenya, nor Yemen is safe.
It will not be sufficient to leave the task up to the AU. While the association may want that to be the case, the bitter ground truth is that the Union is not up to the job. Not even a massive influx of foreign money will change that. Only years of careful training backed by shipments of modern equipment can spin up the AU forces to a level of skill which would allow them to undertake either effective stability operations in Somalia or adequately guard against replays of the Kampala attack.
That leaves the usual fall back--the US and the West. Considering that the US is still neck deep in the Big Muddy of Afghanistan, it is not in the cards for Washington to send in the Marines or the airborne. Considering the West is locked in a losing contest of wills with Iran on the rather critical matter of the mullahs getting their Mahdi Bomb, it staggers the imagination to conclude that the European Union or any member state will decide to send troops to Somalia.
To go completely outside the box--how about Russia? That's a non-starter considering that the Kremlin cannot even deal effectively, "clarify and put to order" in the words of Vladimir Putin, the Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus--and that is conveniently close to Russia.
To keep on pushing the envelop of theoretical possibilities--what about China? Well, China always needs more oil and Uganda has oil. Perhaps China can form its version of Blackwater security and contract with Kampala. That would assure one country could be held harmless against "The Kids."
No. The Geek was being jocose. Even as a hedge against the loss of Iranian oil, China is quite pleased to sit back and watch--as it deals with its own homegrown Islamists.
In short, there will be no volunteers from anywhere willing and able to take on "The Kids." Any way the political-military cake is sliced, al-Shabaab looks to get the biggest piece. Worse, the auguries point to the better organized, more resolute, more ambitious internationalist faction winning out over the provincials so as to assure that Somalia will be both the long feared safe haven and a major exporter of both violence and political Islam.
Oh, well, as Allah wills.
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