Has Somalia reached bottom?
The big question in the U.S. these days is, When will our country’s economic recession ‘reach bottom’ and begin to turn around? I certainly can’t answer that question, but I have to believe that the fundamental richness of this country ensures that it’s not going to go bankrupt. There may be more hard times ahead as our economy readjusts fully to global realities, but with a brilliant new leadership team about to take office in Washington I’m hopeful we’ll begin to see signs of recovery before very long.
One might ask the same question about Somalia: After sixteen years on a bumpy and painful downward slide, is there a chance that the worst is over and that Somalia may be ready to bounce back?
There are at least a few clear signs of impending change: The Ethiopian occupation appears to be winding down. The hapless transitional government admits it has lost control of any significant part of the country and is on the verge of total collapse. The African Union’s peacekeeping mission seems to have thrown in the towel and is wanly hoping for relief by a more robust international force. And the United States government, along with its European allies, is too taken up with its own economic problems and its Middle East difficulties to think seriously about pursuing its War on Terror any further in Somalia’s deserts (chasing “pirates” off the coast is viewed as a preferable and less costly alternative with much more media appeal).
Granted that not all of these signs of change can be viewed as wholly positive. Indeed, some are likely to be cited as evidence that Somalia is plunging deeper into chaos. Certainly they do not offer any immediate hope for relieving the plight of the throngs of starving refugees that years of conflict have produced. Indeed, among those paying any attention at all these days to Somalia, there will be increasing concern over what to do to be helpful and how to go about doing it, in the face of such anarchy, and no easy answers spring to mind.
But some gloomy economists are predicting a deepening economic depression in America too, in the absence of costly government bail-outs.
I just don't buy that, either for Somalia or the U.S. Maybe it’s nothing but the intoxicating effect I’m feeling over the recent election outcome here, but I'd rather put a more positive spin on these developments and predict they bode well for Somalia’s future and our relations with that country. If the rest of us can find ways to be compassionate and supportive without being meddlesome and directive, perhaps Somalis themselves may at last have an opportunity—perhaps the right word is “obligation”—to take control of their country’s future. It just may be, as the poets say, that “the night is darkest just before dawn.”
Read more!
Friday, November 21, 2008
A glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel?
Saturday, April 12, 2008
"Washington's Disastrous Approach to Somalia"
In a brilliant piece of analysis, one of America's leading experts on Somalia, Professor Michael Weinstein of the University of Purdue, has spotlighted how clumsy the United States has been in conducting its "war on terror" in that country and how damaging it has been to Somalis' own efforts to patch their country back together. Far from achieving its goal of defeating "radical Islamists" by supporting Ethiopia's brutal invasion and occupation of the country, the U.S. has built a fire under radicalism, greatly complicated the task of political reconciliation, and produced a groundswell of anti-American feeling. Meanwhile, worthy U.S. attempts to help alleviate the awful humanitarian crisis gripping the country have been hamstrung by the political chaos and social fragmentation that the invasion and its consequences have caused. The chief losers, of course, are the million or so Somalis who have fled their homes in the face of the fighting and are now huddled hopelessly in refugee camps.
As Prof. Weinstein makes clear, Somalia's plight is one that the "world's only superpower" seems incapable of alleviating, and its meddling has only made matters worse. "Washington has placed itself in the role of a negligent [prison] warden depending on abusive guards," says Professor Weinstein, referring to the Ethiopian troops and the feeble Transitional Government they are propping up. "It is not a pretty picture and it will not change until Somalis are released from captivity."
Professor of Political Science, Purdue University
What is Washington's policy towards Somalia? That question is difficult to answer, because there might not be a policy at all, but an incoherent set of tendencies instead. Disaster is a harsh, if not extreme word; it is used here analytically and with regard for precision. What else do we call the results when an actor with significant influence over events ends up not only failing to achieve its objectives, but with an outcome that approximates its worst-case scenario?
Washington, of course, does have an official policy for Somalia. Stung by criticism that it was solely focussed on anti-terrorism, the U.S. State Department issued a "Fact Sheet" in mid-March — coincident with its placing of the al-Shabaab jihadists on its list of foreign terrorist organizations — in which Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer insisted that fighting terrorism was not Washington's sole priority, but was part of a "comprehensive strategy" to reverse radicalization, encourage dialogue between Somalia's contending political forces, and improve governance, rule of law, democracy, human rights, and the country's economy. An essential component of the strategy, she concluded, is to "isolate" those who "refuse dialogue and insist on violence."
If those are, indeed, Washington's aims, rather than anti-terrorism packaged in pious platitudes, there could be no greater distance between aspiration and reality. Radicalization is on the rise in Somalia, with the primarily Islamist armed opposition seizing towns throughout the country for the first time since the Ethiopian occupation began at the end of 2006. There is no "governance" on a national level; power has devolved to regions and localities that are often split by competing factions. There is no functioning court system and Somalia's high court is inoperative. There has been no progress toward democracy; the transitional parliament has not begun work on a constitution that is essential if, as projected, elections are to be held in 2009 — indeed, the parliament has not acted at all since it approved the cabinet list of Somalia's new prime minister, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, prompting its speaker, Adan Madobe, to threaten to resign. Human-rights organizations and journalists document human-rights abuses committed by Ethiopian and government forces on a regular basis.
Somalia's economy is declining, plagued by drought, hyper-inflation, internal displacement, continued impairment of commerce, and violent conflict. Dialogue between the transitional government and its political oppositions has failed to get off the ground, because the oppositions demand that Ethiopian occupation forces withdraw from Somalia before they enter negotiations, and the militant jihadis forswear discussions altogether. Far from being isolated, the militants of al-Shabaab collaborate with the other oppositions militarily against the occupiers, although they have not gained widespread support for their program of an Islamic state based on Shari'a law.
There are a number of possible reasons why such a yawning gap between rhetoric and reality has opened up. Perhaps Washington is serious about its professed goals and dedicated to achieving them, but the situation in Somalia is simply too intractable to allow for success. If so, far from being the world's only "super-power," the United States is powerless to begin to have its way, even in a poor and vulnerable country. Perhaps Washington could do more, but Somalia is low on its list of priorities and it is unwilling to expend the necessary resources. If so, then its goals are simply rhetorical and it has decided to live with its worst-case scenario. Perhaps Washington is cynical and has other goals than the ones that it proclaims officially. If so, what are those goals?
- Anti-terrorism stripped out of its comprehensive cocoon is surely one of them.
- Or is Washington also eager to protect the interests of its ally in Addis Ababa?
- Perhaps, finally, Washington is confused and ambivalent, and has no coherent policy, rendering its action and inaction ineffectual and self-defeating. If so, it is not a credible actor that can be trusted by the other players.
Except for the first possibility — that Washington is doing everything that it could do for Somalia (which was only posed to show its absurdity) — the others are in some measure compatible. Somalia is low on Washington's agenda, given a looming recession at home, panicky financial markets, entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, a reported resurgence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, nuclear issues with Iran and North Korea, the rise of left populism in Latin America and efforts to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Washington is also probably disingenuous about its "comprehensive" strategy, and is placing its major emphasis on anti-terrorism and is unwilling to discipline Ethiopia, which prefers a divided Somalia to a unified one that would not be its satellite.
Most of all, however, Washington is confused and ambivalent; it does not know what to do with a catastrophe that it has in great part created and for which it refuses to bear any responsibility.
The root of Washington's failure to act constructively in Somalia and, instead, to undermine its own proclaimed interests and the interests of the Somali people is a tension between a focus on anti-terrorism and a supposed commitment to nation building, which encapsulates its other official goals. Curbing terrorism and nurturing stable institutions are not, in principle, contradictory aims, but they have become increasingly so in the particular circumstances of contemporary Somalia.
From the moment that Washington gave its blessings to and assisted the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia in the name of anti-terrorism, it both excluded itself from being a partner in nation building and insured that it would create the very "terrorist" movement that it was pledged to prevent. That judgment is not made from hindsight, but was expressed by a host of political leaders, journalists, analysts and Somali intellectuals from the outset, including the present writer. It was obvious that using an occupation force from a rival state to prop up a weak and divided transitional government that lacked legitimacy would cause Somalia to fragment politically and would spawn a liberation movement with an Islamic revolutionary component — just as happened in Iraq after the United States invaded and occupied that country.
By backing Addis Ababa, Washington could not play the role of honest broker and has since then simply dithered, allowing a catastrophe to unfold under the watchful eyes of the surveillance aircraft that it constantly flies over Somalia, one of which crashed at the end of March, documenting the practice conclusively. (The plane went down in the Lower Shabelle region, where Ethiopian forces were conducting search operations for "terrorist bases" — they failed to find any.)
A grim scenario of ineptitude and confusion. A brief sketch of Washington's reported actions during March shows a scenario, which — were it not so grim — could pass for a comedy of blunders:
- At the beginning of March, U.S. forces fired a missile into a house in the town of Dhobley in the Lower Jubba region targeting one or more "terrorists." According to different reports, three women were killed and/or injured in the attack, along with livestock, but no terrorists were hit. U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, announced: "As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them." Opposition spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow replied: "Americans bombed the town and hit civilians thinking that they were Islamist hideouts." Even United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon, who normally follows Washington's lead, criticized the raid, saying that it might lead to an escalation of hostilities.
- In mid-March, Washington placed the national-liberation and Islamic revolutionary al-Shabaab movement on its list of foreign terrorist organizations, allowing the U.S. to freeze the assets of any individual or group supporting the jihadists. Analysts agreed that the designation would have no material effect, because al-Shabaab receives little, if any, backing from U.S. citizens; but that — as Steve Bloomfield of the British newspaper The Independent put it — it will "derail any hope of a negotiated solution." Robow responded to the terrorist listing by welcoming it and warned: "We were not terrorists. But now [that] we've been designated, we have been forced to speak out and unite with any Muslims on the list against the United States." Frazer was reduced to saying that many Somalis with a "nationalist agenda" are "not aware of how strong the al-Shabaab links with al-Qaeda are." Her remarks were nuanced by former diplomat and now professor, David Shinn, who characterized al- Shabaab to Voice of America as "the point of the spear," but not the whole insurgency, adding that some of its members have ties to al-Qaeda, but "certainly not all of them." Shinn concluded: "But there's just enough of a connection there ... that I think this was the element that caused the United States to put al-Shabaab on this list."
- Towards the end of March, Washington's ambassador to the U.N., Zalmy Khalilzad, announced that it was too early to contemplate sending a U.N. peacekeeping force into Somalia to replace the under-staffed and ill-equipped African Union mission, and to allow for an Ethiopian withdrawal. Rumors flew that Washington was negotiating on peace talks with the political opposition, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, in Nairobi. Rumors also flew that the State Department had sent a team to assess an airstrip in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland for possible military use, and that Frazer was working to persuade African states to recognize Somaliland's independence. Somaliland's president, Dahir Riyale Kahin, was quoted as saying: "If the U.S. wishes to have a presence in Somaliland, we will welcome them and accept them."
All of the events of March betoken ineptitude and confusion. Far from isolating the "terrorists," Washington succeeded in increasing their prestige and damaging its own credibility. If, indeed, Washington is making overtures to Somaliland, following earlier official diplomatic exchanges, it is undermining the transitional institutions, which are based on the principle of a unified post-colonial Somalia, and alienating Somali nationalists. Washington might also be giving false hope to Somaliland, but, then again, it might genuinely be changing its strategy. Without taking sides for or against Somaliland's international recognition, it is clear that Washington's current equivocations are a sign of a dangerous indecisiveness. As for negotiating with the opposition, Washington is unlikely to make any headway as long as it fails to come up with a commitment to Ethiopian withdrawal. A U.S. journalist who – for good reason – must remain anonymous, has told this writer that State Department officials complain that they talk to opposition leaders who make encouraging promises and then fail to follow through. That would only make sense in light of Washington's ambivalent disposition.
It becomes increasingly apparent that Washington's blunder was to bless the Ethiopian occupation and to fail to negotiate seriously with the Islamic Courts movement when it controlled most of south-central Somalia. Disaster in Somalia and for U.S. interests in stabilizing the Horn of Africa proceeds from continuing to back the occupation, which has been brutal and unpopular. If Washington is to salvage anything from this disaster, it must arrange for an Ethiopian withdrawal, whether or not Addis Ababa's forces are replaced by an adequate international security force, and it must stop its own meddling in Somalia's conflicts. Its concentration should be on helping in the provision of humanitarian aid, and it should give Somalis breathing space to work through their incredibly complex web of conflicts.
Are Washington and the Western powers that have fallen into following its lead capable of resolving those conflicts or are they inhibiting conflict resolution by their interference? Can they really contribute to solving the question of Somaliland's status? Do they have a coherent position on what is to become of Puntland? Are they willing to give Nur "Adde" the material and diplomatic support that he needs to achieve the "open reconciliation" that they have insisted that he pursue? Do they have a plan for what should happen if the transitional institutions fail to write a constitution, as will likely be the case, voiding the possibility of elections in 2009? Will they arrange yet another conference to create yet another transitional government? Do they have any power or will to aid in overcoming Somalia's severe regional and local fragmentation? Can they curb al-Shabaab by "isolating" it?
Simply to pose those questions shows how little power the external actors have as long as they treat Somalis as wards of the "international community." Washington has placed itself in the role of a negligent warden depending on abusive guards. It is not a pretty picture and it will not change until Somalis are released from captivity.
In mid-March, Shinn appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he remarked that in the absence of a "national unity" government in Somalia, an Ethiopian withdrawal "would result in even more chaos in Mogadishu than exists now." Can we be sure of that? How much more "chaos" can there be? If the jihadis are to be "isolated," might that not be more likely to happen if they cannot march under the banner of national liberation? How much worse could the humanitarian catastrophe become if a brutal occupation that has been instrumental in causing it is removed? Somalia has already returned to its pre-Courts condition of devolution, but now it is also under an occupation that has sparked an insurgency with an Islamic revolutionary component; would it really be more chaotic if the occupation was removed?
If Somalis were given some breathing space, they might at least find out the relative strength of the political forces in their fractured society and then they might be able to settle on the structure of a political community or several political communities. It is unlikely that al-Shabaab would come out on top in such a process.
It is also unlikely that external actors will give Somalis breathing space. They are addicted to trying to exert control half-heartedly; they are guilty of gross negligence, especially so the "world's only super-power," which plays the part of the proverbial "gang that can't shoot straight." Read more!
Monday, December 24, 2007
"Americans do not want to know the evil they have committed against the poorest nation on earth." -- Anon.
Please take the trouble to read the comment posted by "Anonymous" regarding my recent exchange with NYU graduate student Julie W. (carried in the four entries preceding this one). Although "Anonymous" is harshly critical of my government for supporting the Ethiopian invasion and financing Somali clan warlords, I believe his complaints are generally valid and certainly worth pondering.
I also recommend taking a look at the YouTube video"Anonymous" refers to near the end of his/her comment, which he says explains "why America invaded somalia." Although dated, it shows rare footage of Somalis at work in Mogadishu while it was under the control of the United Islamic Courts, with views I had not seen before.
Here's the beginning of "Anonymous's comments." Read the rest by clicking on "Read more!"
Any human being would be shocked to know what america has been up to this year in somalia.Read more!
Not only has the united states financed financially and politically the ethiopian invasion of somalia, they have also actively took part in the war.
In one point, they killed 200 nomadic somali's in the somali countryside with powerful AC130 gunships, all this in the name of fighting terror.
The ethiopians are a poorly trained army that are deeply disliked by the somali people.
The ethiopians have batted the capital city with their tanks thereby driving 1.5 million somalis out of the capital city.
Now we have a serious humanitarian crises in somalia, where 1.5 million somalis do not have access to clean water or food or even shelter.
If anyone would like to know what made america do all this, it is because the somali people drove out the hated evil warlords who were the same ones that killed 600, 000 somalis and 18 american marines.
When the somalis got rid of the warlords that setup a new government called the islamic courts union.
There was one problem, america did not like the idea of seeing somalia having an Islamic government even though the government brought 6 months of peace and stability to somalia and chased out the warlord gangsters.
My friend, that is why somalia is not in the media, and that is why the Americans do not want know one to know the evil they have committed against the poorest nation on earth.
But the rest of the world especially the middle east watch on their screens the daily violence that america has created in somalia even though the western media make no coverage of the disaster in somalia.
Here is a video that explains, everything, why America invaded somalia, its a good interesting video, enjoy.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=b7MbCj_iMgw&feature=related
Now in somalia we have a terrible situation, the warlords are back in power but this time there are ethiopians that are raping and killing somalis.
So the hell that the somali people were in has become a greater hell.
I just wish that george bush and key members of he's administration can be taken to court in the future for crimes against humanity if there is any justice in this world.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
"Why does Somalia receive less international attention than Darfur?"
Julie W., a graduate student in Global Affairs at NYU, e-mailed me a set of four thought-provoking questions about Somalia's future. With Julie's consent, I'm posting her questions and my replies in four successive posts. (To read the posts in their proper order, begin here.)
Here is Julie's fourth question: A UN representative recently said that the current situation in Somalia was the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa. Why do you believe that the humanitarian crisis in Somalia has received so much less international attention than the situation in Darfur?
. . . and my response:
Sad to say, ever since our humiliating retreat in 1993, most Americans have not wanted to hear about Somalia at all. Our purposes in "invading" Somalia in 1992 with a massive show of military strength were far more altruistic than were the Ethiopians' last year, and the results -- at least initially -- were far more positive and humane. But, as we know, after our efforts had saved tens of thousands of Somali lives, things went sour, largely because we Americans undertook to repair the "root causes" of Somalia's problems by force. When Gen. Aideed and others resisted our repair efforts, most Americans reacted -- not unreasonably -- as if we'd had our hands bitten while trying to feed people. Never mind that it was far more complex than that, the result has been that Americans have generally been unsympathetic to humanitarian crises afflicting Somalia ever since.
What's worse, since 9/11, Americans have been led to believe by their government that Somalia, in its perpetual state of anarchy and violence, was an ideal "breeding ground for radical Islam" if not a training camp for al Qaeda suicide bombers. Accordingly, they've registered little surprise that their government has not only condoned but encouraged and supported Ethiopia's invasion of its neighbor under the banner of the "war on terror."
Darfur, meanwhile, has been a poster child for humanitarian intervention, a place where hateful Arab rulers have tormented and brutalized virtuous and impoverished black farmers by unleashing horse-mounted killers called "janjaweed" (as evil-sounding a name as you could possibly think of!) to burn their villages and rape their women. How could good and evil be more clearly delineated? How could we not come to the rescue of the people of Darfur? (To my mind, what's been inexplicable about Darfur is how slow we've been to come to its rescue. Perhaps it's because we're afraid of having our hands bitten once again. . . .)
"When will Ethiopia withdraw its troops from Somalia?"
Julie W., a graduate student in Global Affairs at NYU, e-mailed me a set of four thought-provoking questions about Somalia's future. With Julie's consent, I'm posting her questions and my replies in four successive posts.
Here is Julie's third query:Ethiopian troops remain in Somalia and have been engaged in hostilities with insurgents in Mogadishu in recent weeks. One incident, in which Ethiopian troops were dragged through the streets by insurgents, was eerily similar to the “Blackhawk Down” scenario involving U.S. troops. Do you think that Ethiopia now faces the prospect of being drawn into a long-term occupation of Somalia? Do you foresee a scenario under which Ethiopia would withdraw its troops?
. . . and my response:
I'm not sure what you see as "eerily" similar about the two incidents involving barbaric treatment of captured foreign soldiers by angry Somalis. But certainly they share a common theme: a suitable response to similarly barbaric treatment at the hands of foreigners:
• The 1993 incident involving brutalization of U.S. troops in Mogadishu followed on the heels of an even more brutal U.S. gunship TOW-missle attack, aimed at disrupting a meeting of several dozen respected Somali elders who had gathered, we later learned, to discuss dumping the infamous General Mohammed Farah Aideed and suing for peace with the Americans. Scores of men, women, and children were killed in the incident. (See Mark Bowden's version of the attack on "Abdi's House," pp. 72-74 of "Black House Down"; sadly, this incident was omitted from the grossly one-sided movie version of Bowden's book.)
• The 2007 incident that involved dragging captured Ethiopian troops through the streets of Mogadishu likewise occurred in the wake of a callous military attack on unarmed civilians, in this instance indiscriminate bombardment of civilian neighborhoods of the city by the invading forces; and it similarly caused a very considerable death toll and an angry response by families and neighbors of the victims.
I also question whether, or perhaps how, Ethiopia has been "drawn into a long-term occupation" of Somalia. With U.S. encouragement and tactical support, and after extensive preparation, Ethiopia launched its armed invasion of Somalia exactly a year ago (December 20), declaring of course that it had no intention of remaining there longer than was necessary to eradicate the terrorist threat it perceived inside Somalia, i.e., the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).
Background (probably unneeded): The UIC had seized control of Mogadishu from clan warlords six months earlier, imposing its own shariah-based peace on the capital and winning a substantial popular following as a result. It had also defeated an attempt by those same ousted warlords, newly armed and supported by the United States, to regain control of Mogadishu. And it had subsequently expanded its political control outward from the capital into other areas under warlord control, finally threatening to capture the Transitional Government's provisional capital at Baidoa, located on the principal highway between Mogadishu and the Ethiopian border.
It was down that same highway (the very route Mussolini's army had taken to reach Addis and conquer Ethiopia seventy years earlier) that a major force of Ethiopian troops then poured into Somalia, easily routing the UIC militia, quickly seizing Mogadishu itself, and soon expanding to control most other towns in the area. Twice, its American friends sent helicopter gunships to attack throngs of Somalis fleeing the invaders, ostensibly to prevent "terrorists" from crossing the border into Kenya. Dozens of refugees and nomads were killed in the process.
A year later, a half-million Somalis have fled Mogadishu while the Ethiopian invaders find themselves in a quagmire not unlike ours in Iraq. I strongly doubt their government intends for them to remain in Mogadishu any longer than necessary to neutralize the radical Islamist threat it perceives from that quarter; and like ourselves in Baghdad, they have installed themselves as guarantors of very wobbly government and assumed the task of training and leading a new security force (largely composed of President Abdullahi Yusuf's own rag-tag tribal militia from the north) intended to suppress its opponents. But hundreds of young Somalis have meanwhile responded by organizing and arming a sort of maquis resistance to challenge the invaders and drive them out of the country.
As a consequence, as much as the Ethiopian troops might like to pack up and go home, they now have a tiger by the tail and cannot let loose without a serious loss of dignity. President Clinton swallowed a similar Somalia embarrassment in 1993 by simply declaring our job done, lowering our flag, and withdrawing our forces; that's the only scenario I can imagine under which the Ethiopians might withdraw now.
Read more!
"Will anything concrete result from the Reconciliation Congress?
Julie W., a graduate student in Global Affairs at NYU, e-mailed me a set of four thought-provoking questions about Somalia's future. With Julie's consent, I'm posting her questions and my replies in four successive posts.
Here is Julie's second question:A National Reconciliation Congress was held in Somalia this past August. The Congress produced some ambitious goals in their closing statement, including the drafting of a constitution and eventual free elections. However, a large opposition contingent did not participate in the Congress, and instead held a meeting in Eritrea under the banner of the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia (ALS). Given the absence of much of the opposition, do you believe that anything concrete will actually result from the National Reconciliation Congress?
. . . and my response:
It is very difficult to achieve "reconciliation," national or otherwise, when one of the parties to the dispute is absent or deliberately excluded. This is what happened very recently at the US-sponsored Arab-Israeli peace conference in Baltimore, where some fifty nations and groups joined in congratulating each other for their high-mindedness, but Hamas, the one group whose cooperation is essential to the peace process, was excluded. Why bother convening such a useless and costly event, unless its real purpose is merely to impress the U.S. President's domestic audience?
The National Reconciliation Congress in Somalia last August was no different. The only groups and parties invited to attend were those known for their sympathies toward the TFG, transitional president Abdullahi Yusuf, and his Ethiopian patrons, and they naturally found much cause for hopeful celebration and fulsome pledges of cooperation. Systematically excluded, however, were those who were not prepared to give tacit welcome the Ethiopian invaders and condone their violent repression of opposition to the TFG. Yet without the active participation of the latter, I see no chance that anything meaningful will result, any more than the Baltimore spectacle will move Israel and Palestine any closer to peace. Again, why bother, unless the event's real purpose is to persuade foreigners that it's safe to return to Somalia?
No, I don't believe anything concrete will actually result from this "congress" any more than has resulted from the previous fourteen (if my counting is correct) Somalia gatherings that outsiders have sponsored since 1991. One of these days, though, perhaps many years from now, the Somalis will get it together and organize their own reconciliation conference without outside tutoring and management. That's when we can look for some significant "concrete results."
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Two independent Somali journalists murdered; Mogadishu radio station shut down
| 11 August 2007 |
Two Somali broadcast journalists were killed just hours apart Saturday in Mogadishu.
Ali Iman Sharmarke, head of the HornAfrik media company, was killed by a roadside bomb as he was returning from the funeral of his employee, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, who had been shot to death earlier in the day.
Another journalist riding in Sharmarke's car was wounded in the bombing.
Elmi, who had a popular daily radio program, was often critical of the violence in Somalia. He was a manager of the Capital Voice radio station.
Somalia's transitional government temporarily shut down another radio station Friday. In an Internet posting, the station said it is closing after police arrested nine staff members, including the acting head of the station.
The radio station said the Ethiopian Embassy recently threatened to close the station.
Ethiopia has several thousand troops in Somalia to protect the fragile government.In a separate incident Friday night, four government officials were killed in the capital.
The Islamic Courts Union took control of the capital last year before Ethiopian troops helped government forces oust the Islamists.
The government has battled an insurgency in Mogadishu since January, shortly after it seized control of the city.
The chaos in Somalia started in 1991 when warlords overthrew dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. The U.N. helped form a government in 2004, but it has not been able to restore peace.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP. Read more!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I. M. Lewis: "TFG and Ethiopian war crimes no surprise."
"Much more surprising," says Professor Lewis, the distinguished Emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, "is that European ministers and officials who have supported them may also be implicated [in these crimes]." His insightful comments, backed by a lifetime's study of Somalia and deep affection for its people, deserve everyone's thoughtful attention.
Ethiopia's Invasion of Somalia
by I.M. Lewis
Monday, April 16, 2007
Reports that the forces of 'transitional president' Abdillahi Yusuf and his Ethiopian allies have committed war crimes against civilians in the course of trying to subdue the citizens of Mogadishu is no surprise. Much more surprising, and morally satisfying, is the news that the European ministers and officials, who have so vociferously and uncritically supported Abdillahi in his bid to represent himself as Somali President, may also be implicated in these charges.
Whatever the judicial position, the European Union is certainly morally guilty of doing its utmost to prop up the essentially otiose transitional federal government, whose only significant political action since its formation has been to get the Ethiopians to try to force their authority on Somalia. What is particularly astonishing, and in my view inexcusable, is the imperialistic behaviour of the European politicians and bureaucrats in completely ignoring Somali public opinion and its overwhelming rejection of Col. Abdillahi and his followers.
There are many causal strands in the present conflagration of violence in Mogadishu, but the most obvious and the most regrettable is the external recognition that Abdillahi has been given by people who clearly have closed their minds to his lack of support within Somalia. One could say that it is only ignorance, but I am afraid that it is worse than that, it is willful ignorance on the part of those whose democratic values seem not to be applied to the Horn of Africa.
There is certainly no lack of ignorance within Somalia on how Abdillahi was appointed transitional president with massive Ethiopian support and how, with Ethiopian prompting, he chose as prime minister their candidate, a connection of Prime Minister Meles himself. These links to Addis Ababa underlie the Ethiopian invasion. Another obvious link is, of course, the loosely organised Islamic Courts whose unwisely bellicose threats to Ethiopia, were provoked by Abdillahi's reliance on the Ethiopians.
Thus, in Somali ears the uninformed chorus of EU approval appeared to embrace the supporting role of the Ethiopians and to attack the Islamists. It only remained for the Americans (for whom the Ethiopians acted locally) to enter the fray, inevitably against the Islamic Courts, a tiny minority of whose leaders were actually extremists. . . .
The Americans, of course, are equally ignorant of the really amazing achievements of the Islamists' brief months in power in southern Somalia. The Courts, with their mostly humble and poorly educated local leaders, did more to restore order and social progress there than the US has done in Iraq in four years. Nevertheless, the suspected connexions of a minority of the Courts' leaders played into the hands of Abdillahi who, not for the first time, portrayed his enemies as Muslim terrorists.
[Abdillahi] still does this, of course, and fails to distinguish those who actually fit the description and those who are simply local citizens who consider that he has no legitimacy. As a former separatist guerrilla leader, like his Ethiopian friend Meles, he might be expected to easily recognise birds of the same feather. However, he protests suspiciously loudly and in his claims to be fighting Islamist terrorists includes in the same rubric non-Islamist tribal militias representing the ordinary citizens of Mogadishu. After the terrible atrocities which have been committed in his name these local people will never forgive him.
Abdillahi thus has no chance of ever ruling Mogadishu—except under the kind of dictatorial oppression that his ignominious predecessor General Mohamed Siyad Barre practised with American and Italian support. Is this what the European Union wants? God knows what the Americans might want: the obscene results of their imperialist adventures in other parts of the Islamic world give little cause for optimism
I.M. Lewis
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Friday, April 13, 2007
WashPost: North Koreans Armed Ethiopians for Invasion of Somalia; U.S. Assented
More week-old news but weighty in its consequences. Why is no one pressing the administration for an explanation of its on-again, off-again position on U.N. Security Council arms sanctions? Are those sanctions only to be enforced when they're convenient for Washington?
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, April 7 — Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.
The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.
American officials said that they were still encouraging Ethiopia to wean itself from its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment to supply its armed forces and that Ethiopian officials appeared receptive. But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration's commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program. . . .
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, as the administration has made counterterrorism its top foreign policy concern, the White House has sometimes shown a willingness to tolerate misconduct by allies that it might otherwise criticize, like human rights violations in Central Asia and antidemocratic crackdowns in a number of Arab nations.
It is also not the first time that the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with North Korea. In 2002, Spain intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, the United States asked that the freighter be released. Yemen said at the time that it was the last shipment from an earlier missile purchase and would not be repeated.
American officials from a number of agencies described details of the Ethiopian episode on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal Bush administration deliberations.
Several officials said they first learned that Ethiopia planned to receive a delivery of military cargo from North Korea when the country's government alerted the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, after the adoption on Oct. 14 of the United Nations Security Council measure imposing sanctions.
"The Ethiopians came back to us and said, 'Look, we know we need to transition to different customers, but we just can't do that overnight,' " said one American official, who added that the issue had been handled properly. "They pledged to work with us at the most senior levels."
American intelligence agencies in late January reported that an Ethiopian cargo ship that was probably carrying tank parts and other military equipment had left a North Korean port.
The value of the shipment is unclear, but Ethiopia purchased $20 million worth of arms from North Korea in 2001, according to American estimates, a pattern that officials said had continued. The United States gives Ethiopia millions of dollars of foreign aid and some nonlethal military equipment.
After a brief debate in Washington, the decision was made not to block the arms deal and to press Ethiopia not to make future purchases.
John R. Bolton, who helped to push the resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea through the Security Council in October, before stepping down as United Nations ambassador, said that the Ethiopians had long known that Washington was concerned about their arms purchases from North Korea and that the Bush administration should not have tolerated the January shipment.
"To make it clear to everyone how strongly we feel on this issue we should have gone to the Ethiopians and said they should send it back," said Mr. Bolton, who added that he had been unaware of the deal before being contacted for this article. "I know they have been helpful in Somalia, but there is a nuclear weapons program in North Korea that is unhelpful for everybody worldwide.
"Never underestimate the strength of 'clientitis' at the State Department," said Mr. Bolton, using Washington jargon for a situation in which State Department officials are deemed to be overly sympathetic to the countries they conduct diplomacy with.
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, declined to comment on the specifics of the arms shipment but said the United States was "deeply committed to upholding and enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions." Repeated efforts to contact the Ethiopian Embassy were unsuccessful.
In other cases, the United States has been strict in enforcing the Security Council resolution. For instance, late last year, American intelligence agencies tracked a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying illicit weapons and pressed several nations to refuse to allow the ship to dock. Myanmar, formerly Burma, allowed it to anchor and insisted that there was no violation.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, and the Security Council resolution, adopted less than a week later, was hailed by President Bush as "swift and tough," and a "clear message to the leader of North Korea regarding his weapons programs."
Among the biggest sticking points during the negotiations over the resolution were Chinese and Russian objections to language requiring inspections of ships leaving North Korea. The United States repeatedly pressed China and Russia to agree to the inspections, saying they were essential to enforcing the resolution's embargo on North Korea's sale of dangerous weapons, like ballistic missiles. In addition to the ban on the purchase of weapons from North Korea, the resolution also called for a ban on the sale of luxury goods to it and the freezing of its financial assets in banks worldwide.
The measure had special relevance for several African states that have long purchased low-cost military equipment from North Korea. Ethiopia has an arsenal of T-55 tanks that it acquired years ago from the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations. For years, it has turned to North Korea for tank parts and other equipment to keep its military running.
The Ethiopians bought the equipment at a bargain price; the North Koreans received some badly needed cash. In 2005, the Bush administration told Ethiopia and other African nations that it wanted them to phase out their purchases from North Korea. But the Security Council resolution put an international imprimatur on the earlier American request, and the administration sought to reinforce the message.
"They really are one of the larger conventional arms purchasers from North Korea, and we're pressing them hard and saying, 'Let's get you out of that business,' " said the American official.
Another American official, who is involved in Africa policy, said: "These are cash on the barrel transactions. The Ethiopians know that they can get the best deal in Pyongyang," a reference to North Korea's capital.
In late January, the Central Intelligence Agency reported that an Ethiopian-flagged vessel had left a North Korean port and that its cargo probably included "tank parts," among other military equipment.
American officials said that the ship, the Tekeze, a modern vessel bought from a company in Montenegro and named after an Ethiopian river, unloaded its cargo in Djibouti, a former French colony where the United States has based Special Operations troops and other military forces. From there, the cargo was transported overland to Ethiopia.
The Security Council resolution's list of prohibited items included spare parts. Because the cargo was never inspected, some administration officials say the United States cannot say for certain that the shipment violated the resolution.
It is not clear if the United States ever reported the arms shipment to the Security Council. But because the intelligence reports indicated that the cargo was likely to have included tank parts, some Pentagon officials described the shipment as an unambiguous Security Council violation.
American officials said that the Ethiopians acknowledged that the ship was en route and said they needed the military equipment to sustain their Soviet-era military. Ethiopia has a longstanding border dispute with Eritrea, but of more concern to Washington, Ethiopia was also focused on neighboring Somalia, where Islamic forces that had taken over Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, six months earlier were attacking Baidoa, the seat of a relatively powerless transitional government that was formed with the support of the United Nations.
The timing of the shipment was extremely awkward, as the Ethiopian military was preoccupied with Somalia and also quietly cooperating with the United States. Ethiopia began an offensive in Somalia to drive back the Islamic forces and install the transitional government in Mogadishu late last year. The United States was providing it with detailed intelligence about the positions of the Islamic forces and positioned Navy ships off Somalia's coast to capture fighters trying to escape the battlefield by sea.
On Jan. 7, American AC-130 gunships launched two strikes on terrorist targets from an airstrip inside Ethiopia, though it did not appear that the casualties included any of the few top Qaeda operatives American officials suspected were hiding in Somalia.
After some internal debate, the Bush administration decided not to make an issue of the cargo ship.
American officials insist that they are keeping up the pressure on Ethiopia. While Ethiopia has not provided an ironclad assurance that it will accept no more arms shipments from North Korea, it has told the United States that it will look for other weapons suppliers.
"There was a lot going on at that particular moment in time," said the senior American official. "They seem to have the readiness to do the right thing."
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Thursday, April 12, 2007
"Va. firm aids forces in Somalia"
This blows my mind! I guess it's old news, but it still shocks me to learn that the Department of State is responsible for out-sourcing a ten million dollar contract with a private U.S. firm to provide support for African Union "peacekeepers" in Somalia. Then again, hiring mercenaries to help suppress radical Islamist opposition to the Transitional Federal Government is consonant with our short-sighted War on Terror policy there.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
From Wire Reports
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
The State Department has hired a military contractor to help equip and support international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role without assigning combat forces.
Virginia-based DynCorp International, which also has U.S. contracts in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, will be paid $10 million to help the peacekeeping mission. It was not immediately clear if DynCorp employees would work inside Somalia under a contract signed three weeks ago.
It's a potentially dangerous assignment. When the first 1,500 Ugandan peacekeepers arrived in Somalia's capital Tuesday, they were greeted with a mortar attack and a major firefight. Yesterday, attackers ambushed the peacekeepers in Mogadishu, setting off another gunfight that wounded three civilians. . . .
Also yesterday, gunmen killed two police officers who were trying to search vehicles for weapons.
The support for the Ugandans is part of a larger goal to improve African forces across the continent and promote peace and stability in a region that's often lawless and a haven for terrorists, including some tied to al-Qaida. The U.S. has also begun to depend more on African nations for oil and minerals and wants to expand its influence.
The State Department has committed $14 million for the African Union peacekeeping mission to Somalia.
DynCorp had been contracted until April to provide assistance that includes supplying tents, vehicles and generators, said DynCorp spokesman Greg Lagana.
Somalia has seen little more than anarchy for more than a decade. The government, backed by Ethiopian troops, only months ago toppled an Islamic militia that controlled Mogadishu.
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Friday, April 6, 2007
NYT: "Somali Battles Bring Charges of War Crimes"
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: April 6, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya, April 5 — European diplomats said Thursday that they were investigating whether Ethiopian and Somali government forces committed war crimes last week during heavy fighting in Somalia’s capital that killed more than 300 civilians.
Relatives buried a family member in Mogadishu on Thursday, days after fighting killed more than 300 civilians and prompted charges of war crimes against Ethiopian troops and forces of the interim government.
The fighting, some of the bloodiest in Somalia in the past 15 years, pitted Ethiopian and Somali forces against bands of insurgents. It reduced blocks of buildings in Mogadishu, the capital, to smoldering rubble. Many residents have complained to human rights groups, saying the government used excessive force and indiscriminately shelled their neighborhoods.
Eric van der Linden, the chief of the European Commission’s delegation to Kenya, said he had appointed a team to look into several war crime allegations stemming from the civilian casualties. “These are hefty accusations,” Mr. van der Linden said. “We are examining them very prudently.” . . . .
In an e-mail message to Mr. van der Linden marked urgent, a security adviser to the commission wrote that there were “strong grounds” to believe that Ethiopian and Somali troops had intentionally attacked civilian areas and that Ugandan peacekeepers, who arrived in the country last month, were complicit for standing by. The message was provided by someone who thought that the issue should become public; its authenticity was confirmed by commission officials.
Ethiopian, Somali and Ugandan officials denied that their soldiers had done anything wrong.
A war crimes case is about the last thing Somalia’s transitional government needs. Ever since it took control of Mogadishu in late December, the transitional government has struggled to pacify the city and win popular support.
Many Western diplomats have expressed hope that this transitional government, Somalia’s 14th, will end the seemingly interminable chaos that has enveloped the country since the central government collapsed in 1991.
But so far, the government has failed to deliver the same level of stability that an Islamist administration brought during its brief reign last year. It was overthrown by Ethiopian-led forces, with covert American help.
Mogadishu has become so dangerous — again — that many residents say they are now doubting whether the government will be able to hold a major reconciliation conference scheduled for mid-April. The Ethiopian military struck a truce with insurgents on Sunday, though, and the past three days have been quiet, giving beleaguered residents a chance to bury their dead.
The European Commission has no authority to prosecute war crimes and would have to refer any findings to the International Criminal Court. But commission officials said they were investigating the accusations because the commission has provided money and technical assistance to the transitional government and the peacekeeping mission there.
A Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic considerations predicted that even if there was compelling evidence of war crimes, the case would probably never get to court.
Another Western official, speaking anonymously for similar reasons, said, “At the end of the day, no one is going to want to further undermine the transitional government.”
Diplomats and analysts from Somali and international organizations predicted that the American government would resist the European effort because Ethiopia is a close American ally, valued as bulwark against Islamic militants in the Horn of Africa.
In the past week, human rights groups have been urging someone to look into the issue of civilian casualties. The Somali Diaspora Network, an American-based advocacy group, accused the transitional government and Ethiopian forces of “collective punishment” and genocide.
The Somali Disapora Network said Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the transitional president, warned in a recent radio interview that “any place from which a bullet is fired, we will bombard it, regardless of whoever is there.”
Several of the analysts said they believed that Ethiopian forces overreacted in the fighting last week. One analyst who works closely on Somali issues said Ethiopian soldiers might have panicked after they were surrounded by insurgents in Mogadishu’s main stadium and commanders responded by carpet-bombing the entire neighborhood.
Ethiopian officials denied that.
“Our forces have been praised for not attacking civilians and nothing in recent days has changed,” said Zemedkun Tekle, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government.
Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for Somalia’s transitional president, did not deny that many civilians had been killed. “Unfortunately, this is what happens when you fight in a city,” he said.
But, he said, the government was simply trying to defend itself.
“For a good two months, these insurgents have been attacking our government compounds, planting land mines in the road, assassinating people,” he said. “Our job is to protect the people, not kill them.”
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Monday, April 2, 2007
Bashir: "Ethnic cleansing dressed up as a war on terror"
My friend Bashir brought to my attention an article from the Times (UK) online that underscores how much innocent Somalis are suffering in the aftermath of the U.S.-supported invasion of their country by Ethiopian troops (see below). By way of comment, Bashir asks "Where are all those human rights groups who go on about Mugabe now?"
Meanwhile, dramatizing its full commitment to the war on terror, the Ethiopian-supported interim Somali Government claimed that al-Qaeda had named an Islamist commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, as its leader in Mogadishu (read today's Times UK report).
War-scarred Mogadishu plunges back into the abyss
Jonathan Clayton, Africa Correspondent
"They are firing heavy artillery into residential areas . . . innocent people who have nothing to do with these insurgents, let alone Islamists, are being slaughtered. Where are all those human rights groups who go on about Mugabe now; this is ethnic cleansing dressed up as a war on terror," he told The Times.
Estimates of the number of people killed vary widely. Some now put the death toll as high as 150, but with most of the Indian Ocean port city a "no-go" area it is impossible to verify. Hospitals across the city are overflowing with wounded. Residents say that they represent only a fraction of the casualties.
Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the Ali Kamin neighbourhood, a rabbit warren of narrow alleyways, and the area around the main stadium in south Mogadishu, for years a stronghold of Somali gunmen.
Witnesses said yesterday that they saw at least six bodies of civilians lying in the street, unable to be retrieved by relatives because of heavy crossfire.
"There are tanks everywhere. Shells are landing everywhere and this is very scary," Hussein Ali, a resident said. "I cannot confirm the exact casualties, but a lot of people have been killed and others wounded." . . . .
Witnesses also reported the charred bodies of Ethiopian soldiers, near a burnt out army truck, and said that tanks had taken up position on main crossroads. All access to the areas of the heaviest fighting have been prevented by road-blocks manned by a joint force of Ethiopian and Somali government forces.
In another ominous development, a Ugandan peacekeeper – part of an African Union (AU) force supposed to maintain order after an Ethiopian Army pull-out – was killed on Saturday and five others wounded after mortars fired by the insurgents slammed into their base at the Presidential Palace. "We are not surprised by what took place, we expect those people [insurgents] to do more of such things. We are not in any fear at all," Major Fe-lix Kulayigye told journalists in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Regional experts, however, said that the AU force, which controls the airport from where the Ethiopians had launched helicopter raids against suspected insurgent positions, was no longer seen as a neutral force.
The US, which has supported the Ethiopian incursion, says that the Islamists have links to al-Qaeda. Somali experts say there are some links, but the imposition of a President from the Darod clan of southern Somalia has united rivals in the Hawiye sub-clans of central Somalia against a common foe.
"This is clan-based civil war now, the Islamists are fighting on the side of some of the Mogadishu clans but they are not leading this insurgency. It is very dangerous for the AU forces," said a Somali expert. He cannot be identified for fear of reprisals in neighbouring Kenya to where many Somalis have fled.
The Ethiopians drove the Islamists from power in December, ending the only period of calm the city has seen since 1991, when Mohammed Siad Barre, the former Cold War dictator, was overthrown.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Somali Diaspora Network issues urgent appeal
Attached in pdf format (click here to download and read) is a media release just published by the Somali Diaspora Network, a cross-ethnic group of young Somalis in the U.S. concerned by the unfolding tragedy in Somalia that I know you're familiar with. The members of this group are especially concerned that news coverage of recent events has given an inaccurate picture of the serious harm done to the Somali people by Ethiopia's massive and unprovoked invasion of their country, an intervention encouraged by the U.S. government ostensibly for purposes of capturing dangerous Islamist "radicals." Hundreds of innocent Somalis have died, many more have been wounded or displaced, and efforts by Somalis to bring long-sought peace and stability to their country have been seriously undermined as a consequence of Ethiopia's actions
It happens that a number of the network's leaders and members are good friends of mine, and many are U.S. citizens. As a former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, I highly regard their integrity and applaud their effort to shed light objectively on recent events in their homeland, irrespective of their own clan affiliations. I sincerely hope you will take a close look at their release and give it the thoughtful consideration it deserves.
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Friday, March 23, 2007
Repeating Our Mistakes in Somalia
I had occasion three days ago to deliver a lecture on Somalia to faculty and students at a small Christian college in North Carolina. The timing couldn't have been better, since recent ugly events in the news served to make my points very clear: (1) the U.S. is making the same mistakes it made in Somalia twelve years ago, when our attempt to be helpful ended in tragedy and humiliation; (2) our efforts this time around have already set back what progress the Somalis themselves had made in overcoming clan enmities and patching their nation back together since we bugged out in 1994; and (3) if we continue to blunder as we have since the first of the year, treating Somalia as a battlefront in our so-called War on Terror, we may well find ourselves sucked back into a problem we can't and don't know how to solve.
In posting my overly long text here, I invite you to browse through it but to pay particular attention to the latter third or so. I hate to claim satisfaction from any supposed "insights," but I believe I've pinpointed some of the reasons why things have turned ugly — and unfriendly toward the U.S. — all over again.
Campbell University — Buies Creek, North Carolina
March 20. 2007
I’m pleased to have the opportunity to talk with you this evening about America’s relations with Somalia, a country that’s managed to find its way back into the news headlines recently. Just two weeks ago today, after fifteen years of virtual anarchy, a wobbly “transitional” government was finally installed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Curiously, it was put in place by Ethiopian military forces backed by the United States, both countries claiming that Somalia was in danger of falling into the hands of Islamic radicals. And indeed, the Ethiopian invaders had ousted a band of Islamic clerics as they marched into Mogadishu. Shortly afterward, the first elements of an eventual 8,000-man African Union peacekeeping force began arriving from Uganda, empowered by the U.N. Security Council to replace the Ethiopians, train a new national security force, and keep the lid on until the government gets its feet securely planted.
Sounds auspicious, doesn’t it? Some good news at last from Somalia. But whether these latest efforts to resurrect the Somali nation-state will succeed is, to say the very least, uncertain. And what the U.S. should do — or should not do — to move this process along is even more problematic. Personally, I believe we’ve set out on a dangerous path, forgetting lessons we should have learned when our Black Hawk helicopters went down in Mogadishu fourteen years ago. As you’ll see, I think we made matters worse rather than better when we tried to be helpful in Somalia last time, and I’m worried that we’re repeating our mistakes — even compounding them — this time. . . .
As you may be aware, I spent three years in Somalia just before retiring from the foreign service in 1990. Those were fascinating times — challenging, sometimes harrowing, but very satisfying overall, both professionally and personally. But Somalia was no bed of roses. It’s a harsh country, mostly hot, dry, windy and rocky—a lot like the Arizona desert where I grew up. Its people can be harsh too, but you always knew where you stood with them. They’re bold, handsome, proudly independent — and egalitarian, even to a fault. When I traveled around the country — which by the way, I was able to do then, without bodyguards or armed escorts — and stopped to talk to local officials or clan elders, my Somali driver Shariff thought nothing of walking in uninvited, sitting down, and joining in my conversations, often making interesting comments of his own.
If you saw the movie “Black Hawk Down,” you’re likely to have a very different impression of Somalis from mine. But almost all Somalis I met deeply admired America and Americans. Here’s one of my favorite recollections:
• It’s the 4th of July, during our last year in Somalia. Several hundred guests — Somalis from all walks of life, and practically every member of the government — have come to the American embassy to join us celebrating the inauguration of a beautiful new chancery building. The highlight of the ceremony is, believe it or not, a lengthy poem — Somalis take great pride in their rich tradition of oral literature, passed along in the style of Homer from one generation to another. This, however, was to be a brand-new poem, composed for us by one of the country’s rock-star calibre woman poets. It was almost shamefully flattering of America and Americans. It even compared our new hi-tech building, with its bright lights, sparkling windows, shining floors, and blinking electronic systems, to our Apollo moon-landing achievements.
• Picture the scene with me: a clear, star-filled sky in the embassy courtyard, a soft wind blowing off the Indian Ocean, this beautiful young poet, dressed in a flowing red gown that fluttered in the breeze, reciting her extraordinary poem from memory . . . and the crowd roaring its approval at the end of every verse.
So you can imagine how heartbreaking it was for me to see on television, less than three years later, how this very same embassy courtyard had become a scene of devastation and deadly conflict between American soldiers and angry Somali mobs. Shouldn’t my staff and I have seen this coming? Shouldn’t we have prevented it somehow? Well, in fact we did see it coming, and we tried to prevent it. But we were unsuccessful, and I believe I know why.
First, though, let’s recall what happened to turn our relations so bitter:
Just eighteen months after our beautiful embassy ceremony, Somali’s aging dictator, General Mohamed Siad Barre, lost his grip on power and was overthrown, literally dragged from his presidential palace by his own fleeing supporters, after running the country with an iron fist for almost twenty-five years,. The U.S. had been remarkably close to General Siad and his army during the 1980s. My embassy had been in charge of the largest U.S. military aid program in Africa. And in exchange, our armed forces were able to make use of Somali military bases and ports that were important to us for Cold War strategic reasons.
By 1990, however, we could see that Siad Barre’s days were numbered. His government had lost almost all popular support and was steadily rotting from the inside out. His army was unable to suppress the insurgent movements popping up around the country. His brutal treatment of opponents became an embarrassment. We fully expected his regime to collapse, and we had already closed our aid pipeline and sharply reduced our embassy staff. To be brutally frank, with the end of the Cold War, we no longer needed the dictator’s cooperation or access to Somali military facilities. So it made sense to Washington that we distance ourselves from him and hope we could work with his successor, whoever that might be.
And mind you, while these moves President Siad unhappy, they were very popular with the Somali people, who seemed unanimously hopeful that without our support he would fall. What we didn’t anticipate, however, nor I suspect did the Somalis, was how violent and bloody the struggle for power would be when the dictator fell. To be sure, it was a struggle that Siad Barre had largely brought upon himself by playing one clan family against another, but it soon grew into a full-fledged civil war that was not so different from our own. Mogadishu itself was practically destroyed, as rival clan militia sought to take control. Thousands were killed in the crossfire. Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed and medical supplies were soon exhausted. Fighting ravaged the countryside as well, destroying food stocks and decimating herds of livestock. Hundreds of thousands soon faced starvation.
With American encouragement, the U.N. Security Council took steps to curb the fighting, and blue-helmeted peacekeeping forces were flown in, but they were far too few in number to cope with the jealousies and hatreds that had erupted. Before long, television screens in this country became filled with ghastly images of suffering and deprivation.
God bless Americans — those images touched our hearts, and cries arose for our government to “do something” to rescue the starving Somalis. Evidently, the scenes of tragedy even touched the broken heart of poor George Bush—George H. W. Bush, that is—who had just suffered a stinging rebuff by the American people in the 1992 elections. Before leaving office, President Bush launched “Operation Restore Hope”, an unprecedented mercy mission into Somalia led by 30,000 combined U.S. military forces that pushed aside the warring clan militias, broke open the roadblocks they had put up, and cleared the way for relief agency trucks to deliver food, medicine and other supplies to the civil war’s innocent victims.
I had retired and left the government by then, but I was able to return to Mogadishu on the eve of our forces’ arrival, as a consultant to ABC’s “Nightline” news, and to witness their spectacular landing and deployment. Throngs of grateful Somalis danced in the city’s streets and crowded the airport runways to welcome the amazed soldiers. The crowds were so thick, in fact, that crowd control became the troops’ first military challenge. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
MISTAKE ONE: Trying to “fix” problems we don’t understand
During the next four months, our troops restored a great deal of hope in Somalia. Thousands of weapons were confiscated from fighters. Hundreds of miles of roads were reopened, cleared of mines, and bridges rebuilt by Army engineers. With relief organizations now able to operate in most of the country, medical facilities were reopened and mass starvation was averted. A safe guess is that over a half-million Somali lives were saved. Logically, it was now time for our troops to hand over responsibilities to someone else and come home.
Unfortunately, no one had given much thought to just how or with whom this hand-over would be arranged, in a country with no government at all. The bitter clan rivalries that were at the heart of the civil war had been momentarily swept aside to make way for the relief convoys, but they had certainly not been resolved. Most of us assumed that the U.N. would now take charge, perhaps with a token U.S. military force remaining to back up a refortified U.N. peacekeeping contingent.
However, the new Clinton administration, just then taking office in Washington, rightly suspected it was being handed a hot potato. In its view, Operation Restore Hope amounted to little more than a “band-aid.” Nothing had been done to correct what it perceived to be the “root problems” of clan mistrust and jealousies. With U.S. troops removed, they asked, what was to prevent the conflict from breaking out all over again, with yet another round of misery in its wake?
MISTAKE TWO: Trying to “rescue” Somalia with made-in-USA solutions
After intense behind-the-scenes negotiations, the new Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, and U.N. Secretary General Boutros Ghali agreed on a plan to return responsibility to the U.N., but also give the United States a major voice in the operation. Instead of merely turning back the clock, the new UN peacekeeping force would be significantly larger, more “robust,” and authorized to use force as needed to impose order. Its commander would be a military officer on loan from the U.S. Navy, Admiral Jonathan Howe; his staff would include military and civilian specialists, mainly from the U.S., whose job would be to coax and prod the Somalis into forming a new democratic national governmental; and his resources would include an American rapid reaction force that would be posted just over the horizon, to be deployed in case matters got out of hand.
MISTAKE THREE: Taking sides in someone else’s dogfight
In fact, matters got out of hand rather quickly after the hand-over, when Pakistani members of the new UN force were sent to take possession of a major weapons cache controlled by General Mohamed Farah Aidiid, the most powerful of the clan warlords in Mogadishu. Gen. Aidiid’s forces objected strenuously, fierce fighting ensued, and some two dozen Pakistani troops (plus an unknown number of Aidiid loyalists) were killed. Admiral Howe was furious, as was Washington, and American troops responded by attacking sites controlled by Aidiid’s followers. One of these was a two-story residence where General Aidiid was believed to be meeting with his lieutenants. U.S. helicopter gunships virtually tore the house apart in two successive waves, the first killing scores of Somali men, and the second, numbers of women and children who had rushed to the scene. Aidiid, however, was not among them. In fact, intelligence later revealed that those present at the meeting were elders of Aidiid’s clan who, ironically, had gathered to discuss ways of restraining their warlord and making peace with the Americans.
MISTAKE FOUR: Applying force when conciliation was needed
Now it was the Somalis who were furious. Admiral Howe placed a sizeable bounty on Aidiid’s head, but it was never collected. Instead, crowds grew increasingly hostile toward foreigners, and incidents involving U.S. troops grew more frequent and intense, culminating in the now-famous “Black Hawk Down” incident that cost the lives of 18 American soldiers and left seventy-three wounded. Upwards of one thousand Somalis were killed in that same battle.
Americans were again horrified by TV images from Somalia, but this time it was by video footage of angry Somali mobs dragging bodies of American soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu. Upset that matters had gotten out of hand and might grow worse, President Clinton immediately ordered a halt to all U.S. military operations against Aidiid and promised to remove all U.S. troops quickly. Five months later, all were gone.
Three lessons we should have learned
Our disastrous experience in Somalia sixteen years ago had serious reverberations on U.S. foreign policy through the rest of the Clinton administration, causing the president to shy away from engaging U.S. troops in Third World conflicts anywhere. Most notably, it discouraged our leadership from becoming involved in the Rwandan genocide that was unfolding just as our troops were returning home from Somalia.
But there were more mundane lessons that we should have drawn from our Somalia experience, lessons that might have prepared us to deal more effectively with future “failed state” crises—lessons that might even have helped if, God forbid, we found ourselves back in Somalia again. Here is my own personal short list:
In 2002, the Pentagon became so concerned about Somalia’s potential that it quietly established a small military base in neighboring Djibouti to serve as headquarters for a new Horn of African anti-terror task force. Some 1,500 U.S. civilian and military intelligence personnel are now assigned there, and a new five-year lease just signed will permit expanding the operation to six times its present size.
Among the activities that our personnel in Djibouti conduct “downrange,” as they say, is one that involves helicoptering into Somali villages and offering cash rewards for information on anyone suspected of harboring terrorists or preaching a “radical” brand of Islam. Just imagine the damaging effect this “finger-thy-neighbor” campaign has had on efforts of Somalis themselves to overcome the deep-set suspicions they have of each other — the very “root problem” that was blamed twelve years ago for the country’s civil war. One outstanding Somali peacemaker, a former colleague and friend of mine, was coldly murdered by masked gunmen in front of his wife and family eighteen months ago as a consequence of this project.
Another, even more flagrant example of ignoring the lessons of our past mistakes cropped up in the news just a few months ago:
• A group of determined Islamic clerics in Mogadishu had organized a militia that successfully trounced and ousted the clan warlords who’d been robbing and terrorizing the city’s inhabitants for a decade. Somalis at home and abroad were cautiously applauding these audacious clerics for bringing law and order to the capital city. Then it was learned that the very same ousted warlords had formed a so-called “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism” and had secured backing from the U.S. Defense department and C.I.A. to retake the city and drive out the clerics’ militia. This unbelievable “alliance” failed in its mission, and the warlords were again sent packing, while the Islamic clerics not only maintained their hold on Mogadishu but began to expand their sphere of influence beyond the capital.
How, I asked myself, could the Pentagon—burned so badly before by taking sides in Somali clan disputes—have repeated their mistake by backing the very warlords who had burned them before? And how had the CIA been conned into joining such a foolish enterprise?
I was still puzzling over this behind-the-scenes foolishness when, just before Christmas, an even bigger bombshell dropped and brought Somalia the front-page news attention I spoke of at the beginning of my talk:
• Somalia’s next-door neighbor and age-old enemy, Ethiopia—with explicit and very public United States approval and support — sent a major combat force across the border into Somalia for the purpose of rescuing a fragile new government that had lately set itself up in the town of Baidoa, close to the Ethiopian border. With the support of U.S. C-130 gunships launched from inside Ethiopia, it took the invading force only three days to blast its way across the country to Mogadishu, chase away the Islamic clerics once again, and plant the new government’s prime minister and his cabinet in their places.
“Wow!” I thought to myself. “Organizing a comic-opera coalition of warlords to track down a few terrorists was one thing; organizing a full-fledged, heavily armed, and distinctly Christian invading force to save Somalia from Muslim radicals was quite another!” Trust me, it immediately brought to mind our disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
(Now before I conclude and invite your questions, let me say a brief word about this “transitional” Federal Government that the Ethiopians have just propped up in Mogadishu with our help, because its beginning was hopeful and, if all goes well, it may yet turn out to be a good thing. It was formed two years ago in Nairobi, Kenya by a large congregation of rival Somali warlords, political leaders, and clan elders, after many months of acrimonious bargaining and occasional fist fights. Sponsored by the U.N. and generously supported by the Kenyan government, the birthing process was nothing if not democratic. But the outcome was flawed because those elected to office couldn’t agree on where and how to set up shop in Somalia’s dangerous environment. So it sat for over a year, stymied and powerless, in far-away Nairobi. The U.S. has never recognized this “transitional” government and it appeared to take interest in it only with the rise of the Islamic clerics’ movement in Mogadishu six months ago.)
Which brings us back to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in December, which the U.S. supported:
• Once again, the justification was our worldwide “War on Terror” and the supposed threat to American interests posed by the movement’s Islamist “radicals.” This time, however, the devastating firepower of our airborne gunships was aimed directly at Somalis — remnants of the clerics’ rag-tag army that had been outgunned and overwhelmed by the Ethiopian invaders and were overtaken by the C-130 gunships as they fled toward the Kenyan border. Those lucky enough to escape our airborne assault were intercepted and interrogated by Kenyan border police—with the encouragement of officials in our embassy in Nairobi. Most have since been forced back across the border, and many — in violation of international laws protecting refugees — have been turned over to the new government’s police. At least one, as it turns out, a U.S. citizen named Amir Mohamed Meshan, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia.
Not all the clerics’ militant supporters fled, however. During the past four weeks, the newly installed government has faced a storm of opposition from armed insurgents inside Mogadishu itself that even its Ethiopian sponsors have been unable to suppress. And already, the African Union’s peacekeeping forces that are now arriving to replace the Ethiopians have run into armed assaults from followers of the defeated Islamic clerics. Far from pacified by either invaders or peacekeepers, Mogadishu itself—after six months of tranquility under the Islamic clerics—has once again become a battlefield.
What remains to be seen is how invested the United States really is in the outcome of this contest. Enough to send in troops of our own if need be? Is it possible that a growing Iraq-style insurgency — and perhaps another “Black Hawk Down” — could force the international peacekeepers to retreat again from Somalia, just as happened thirteen years ago?
Have we indeed learned any lessons at all from our earlier experience in Somalia? Or has the Nine-eleven tragedy simply erased those lessons from our memory? Right now, I’m not optimistic. But I hope I’m wrong.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
McClatchy: "U.S. isn't trying to free American jailed in Ethiopia"
In another valuable follow-up article today on the disturbing case of Amir Meshal, the American citizen now jailed in Ethiopia on suspicion of terrorism activity, McClatchy Newspapers journalists Shashank Bengali and Jonathan S. Landay reported that Meshal could face the death penalty if found guilty of violating Ethiopia's anti-terrorism laws.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - The U.S. government will let Ethiopian authorities decide the fate of a 24-year-old American who was held here incommunicado for more than five weeks, the State Department said Thursday.Read more!
The Ethiopians haven't told American officials what charges, if any, they plan to bring against Amir Mohamed Meshal of Tinton Falls, N.J., at a hearing to determine whether he can be held as a prisoner of war - or when the hearing will occur.
The FBI has determined that Meshal wasn't a combatant in the recent war in Somalia and broke no U.S. laws. However, he could face life in prison or the death penalty if he's convicted of violating Ethiopia's anti-terrorism laws or taking up arms against Ethiopian forces, . . . . according to Ethiopian lawyers familiar with such cases.
The State Department made clear Wednesday evening that it would allow the Ethiopian legal process to take its course.
"We have asked that his case be handled in a timely and a fair manner in accordance with local laws and procedures," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman in Washington.
U.S. officials in Addis Ababa had refused to answer a McClatchy Newspapers reporter's questions for several days, but they indicated considerable frustration when they received permission from Washington Thursday evening to describe their dealings with the Ethiopian authorities. U.S. officials gained access to Meshal on Wednesday after three weeks of "trying very hard," a U.S. official said in the Ethiopian capital. "We are still trying to understand the nature of his being held." The official and others spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
Mohamed Meshal, the young man's father, charged the U.S. government with being "very deceitful and untruthful."
"I felt all along that the State Department and the FBI have known my son's whereabouts from day one, and they know he was not accused of any crimes, but handed him over to a third country. He has nothing to do with Ethiopia, and this happened under their supervision," he told McClatchy Newspapers.
Meshal's case has been shrouded in secrecy since he was arrested while fleeing hostilities in Somalia in late January. He's been held incommunicado in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
Meshal told Kenyan human rights monitors that he was twice driven to a local hotel to be interviewed by the FBI. According to Meshal's father, when the FBI determined that there wasn't sufficient cause to charge Meshal, the State Department told him that Meshal would be sent home. But for reasons that remain unclear, the Kenyan government then deported Meshal and about 80 other people who had sought refuge in Kenya back to war-torn Somalia, from which he and others were then flown to Ethiopia.
State Department, FBI and CIA officials appear to disagree on who was to blame for Meshal's secret deportation. Some U.S. officials blame the CIA for not using its influence to prevent the deportation, which the State Department said it had formally protested. The FBI has disclaimed any responsibility, saying it wanted to continue questioning Meshal in Kenya. Officials in other agencies are pointing the finger at the Justice Department, which directs the FBI.
Meshal has an attorney, a U.S. official in Addis Ababa said, but it's not clear what charges he could face. Ethiopian authorities have said they're holding an unspecified number of prisoners from foreign countries in connection with December's conflict in Somalia, when Ethiopian troops with U.S. support ousted Islamist militias that U.S. officials had linked to al-Qaida.
Meshal was among at least 150 people arrested in Kenya and questioned about possible links to the Islamic Courts movement, which briefly ruled Somalia until it was toppled by the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army. Another American, Daniel Joseph Maldonado, was taken into U.S. custody and charged last month in federal court in Houston with training in al Qaida camps in Somalia.
The embassy official in Ethiopia said of Meshal: "We try to do everything we can to make sure he's OK while in custody, make sure he's in contact with family and has a lawyer."
The difficulty the embassy faced in gaining access to Meshal suggested that Ethiopian authorities were taking his case seriously.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's regime has cracked down in recent years on dissidents and rebel groups along its restive eastern border with Somalia and are holding incommunicado Ethiopian rebels who are believed to have fought alongside Somalia's Islamists. The U.S. State Department, in its 2006 human rights report, said prisoners in Ethiopia were at risk of torture and other abuses.
"The government is very tough on matters affecting the security of the state," said Tameru Agegnehu, a longtime judge and now president of the Ethiopian Bar Association. "I don't think they will be lenient on this matter."
Landay reported from Washington.
McClatchy: "American's rendition may have broken laws"
Reporters for the McClatchy Newspaper chain are probing the arrest of an American citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshan (shown at left), by Kenyan authorities during the US-supported Ethiopian intervention in Somalia and his eventual deportation to Ethiopia and incarceration in Addis Abeba. Meshan was first mentioned in their report published yesterday and posted below. A second report, published today, supplies a photograph of Meshan supplied by his family, along with assurances by unnamed U.S. officials that Meshan was "in good health."
But the latter report also indicated that Meshal might be detained in Ethiopia as a prisoner of war, and it cited the opinion of "several [American] legal experts" that the U.S. may have violated U.S. law as well as international conventions banning torture and protecting refugees who escape to a neighboring country.
To read the entire report click on the headline at the beginning of the post. To read excerpts from today's McClatchy Newspaper report, click on "Read more!" below.
NAIROBI, Kenya - American diplomats on Wednesday paid their first visit to an American who was detained five weeks ago by Ethiopian authorities after a middle-of-the-night secret transfer from Kenya and said he was in good health.Read more!
But U.S. officials couldn't secure the release of Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, of Tinton, Falls, N.J., who was arrested at the Somali-Kenyan border after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled the Islamist government in Somalia.
Instead, Meshal will appear at an Ethiopian hearing to determine whether he can be detained as a prisoner of war, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
In Nairobi, U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger praised the deportations of Meshal and some 80 other detainees who were arrested on the Kenyan-Somali border, saying Kenyan officials had complied with their own laws.
Kenyan officials have said the prisoners - including several Kenyans who were living in Somalia - entered Kenya illegally because the border was closed. They said national immigration laws allow for the detainees to be returned to the country they came from.
"The Kenyans have carried out security operations based on their own security interests," Ranneberger said at a news conference. "It's my understanding that the Kenyans have dealt with all of those people in a way consistent with Kenyan law." He refused to say whether Meshal, whose deportation the State Department said it had tried to block, was among those expelled.
But several U.S. legal experts said American officials who questioned Meshal while he was in Kenya may have violated U.S. law as well as international conventions that ban torture and protect refugees who escape to a neighboring country.
"It's a very serious concern," said Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Hafetz is providing legal assistance to Meshal's family in New Jersey.
FBI agents who interviewed Meshal in Nairobi in early February believed he was a "jihadist" who'd trained in al-Qaida camps in Somalia, according to an internal U.S. government e-mail that was read to McClatchy Newspapers by officials at two different U.S. agencies.
But the agents didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime if he returned to the United States. They left him in the custody of Kenyan authorities, who secretly deported him to Somalia on Feb. 10.
He was then turned over to Ethiopian forces, which had launched a U.S.-backed offensive to crush the Council of Islamic Courts, a coalition of Somali militias that the Bush administration has accused of being an al-Qaida front.
Hafetz and other international legal experts said that the deportations of Meshal and other detainees to Somalia appear to have broken the Convention Against Torture. The FBI also may have violated Meshal's U.S. constitutional rights, they said.
The Convention Against Torture bars the deportation of people to countries where there are "substantial grounds" to believe they'd be in danger of being tortured or abused.
Ethiopia also has a bleak human rights record; the State Department and human rights organizations have accused the nation of abusing and torturing detainees.
Paul Williams, a former State Department lawyer, said the FBI may have violated Meshal's constitutional right to due process by returning him to Kenyan authorities after twice taking him out of prison and interrogating him at a hotel.
"You can make an argument that . . . he had the right to due process when he was in the physical custody of the FBI," said Williams, who heads the Public International Law and Policy Group, which provides free legal aid to developing nations involved in conflicts. "Your constitutional right to due process travels with you and your citizenship. The moment he was in FBI custody, he had ( U.S.) legal rights and the FBI acted illegally by passing him back to the Kenyans."
Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman, denied that the FBI ever had custody of Meshal.
"Mr. Meshal was not in FBI custody when interviewed in Kenya, nor are there any outstanding U.S. charges against him," Kolko said. "As such, his situation is in the hands of the foreign government."
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, reiterated an earlier statement that Meshal's deportation took U.S. officials by surprise and was contrary to their request that he be released to return home. He said a formal protest was lodged with the Nairobi government.
Another American, Daniel Joseph Maldonado, also was arrested crossing into Kenya from Somalia, but the FBI said he had admitted to being trained at an al-Qaida camp in Somalia, and he was released to U.S. custody, flown back to Texas and accused under U.S. anti-terrorism laws.
Meshal told Kenyan human rights activists who interviewed him in custody and other detainees who since have been freed that the FBI agents threatened to send him back to Somalia if he didn't admit that he was associated with al-Qaida.
Edwin Williams, an attorney in New York who represented detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said that such a threat - if it was made - could be considered a form of torture.
