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February 2007

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The War on Terror Comes to Africa

By Nick Dearden
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February 2007
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E thiopia’s attack on Somalia, backed by a nod from George W. Bush, is a clear sign that the region is high on the U.S. agenda in its “war on terror.” But Ethiopia and Somalia aren’t new to global power politics. For decades brutal dictators have received massive support to play the pawns of the U.S., and previously also the Soviet Union. 

Throughout the Cold War Ethiopia and Somalia were used as proxies, receiving billions of dollars worth of weapons while famines and wars raged throughout the region. U.S. support of Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia from World War II until 1974, ensured U.S. access to the vital spy base at Kagnew, while next door the Soviets backed Siad Barre’s “Marxist” regime in Somalia.  

On the back of U.S. aid, Ethiopia developed one of the largest armies in Africa, which it used to combat an independence movement in Eritrea and to attempt to control the region. Selassie’s policies became increasingly unpopular, however, especially when he ignored the famine of the early 1970s. (As 100,000 peasants were known to have died, one of Selassie’s ministers is quoted as saying, “If we could save the peasants only by confessing our failure to the world, it is better that they die.”) In 1974 the army overthrew Selassie’s rule and Major Mengistu took control of the ruling military committee, known as the Derg. 

Ultimately, Mengistu preferred a relationship with the Soviets, which was more in line with his proclaimed ideology and, he thought, more likely to provide the weapons he needed to keep himself in power. Seeing Ethiopia as a far more important prize than Somalia, the Soviet Union did indeed outbid the U.S., sending $9 billion in military hardware before Mengistu was ousted in 1991. Soviet aid allowed Mengistu to unleash terror on political opponents, as well as many ordinary civilians, and increased the war drive against the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, massacring thousands of civilians in Eritrea. Despite some embarrassment, Soviet support continued throughout the famine of the mid-1980s, which killed at least 1 million people, even as Mengistu spent $55 million celebrating the anniversary of his revolution. 

To add to the murky politics, Mengistu also received a little help from Israel, which bribed him to allow the deportation of Ethiopian Jews needed to bolster the Jewish population of Israel. Shortly after the deal, Israeli-made cluster bombs started falling on Eritrean towns. While condemning Soviet aid to Mengistu, the U.S., needless to say, didn’t mention Israeli aid. 

Across the border, the U.S. now supported Barre’s Somalia, albeit with less fanfare, not wanting to upset a potential future relationship with Ethiopia. As early as 1977, the U.S. promised to find allies who would be able to supply Somalia the military assistance that it would need to attack Ethiopia’s Ogaden region. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan all rushed in with the required aid. 

In 1980 the U.S. signed an arms deal which allowed it access to Somali bases. Under Reagan, the U.S. supplied more than $680 million to Siad Barre, at least $195 million of which was intended for military use (the figure increases dramatically when related aid is counted), despite Congressional obstacles. Barre spent around one-fifth of his country’s income on arms while he faced the lowest literacy rate in the world (12 percent). 

Of course the U.S. claimed its relationship had a moderating impact on Somalia. Human Rights Watch disagreed, claiming that 50,000 civilians were killed and half a million displaced in the late 1980s. Other organizations detailed Barre’s carpet bombing of urban areas and the fact that in the month before he was ousted in 1991, 20,000 people were killed. When asked to justify the continued supply of arms to Somalia during this period, one Defense Department official said, “What is the sense of having this program if we’re not going to give them the military support when it counts most?” 

While the Cold War wound down, and as Barre was ousted from power, the U.S. initiated a “humanitarian intervention” to clean up the mess left in Somalia (with no mention of the role of U.S. support in creating this situation), which included a raging famine and rampant warlordism. The result of the 1992/1993 UN-backed “Operation Restore Hope” was disastrous. It is estimated that between 6,000 and 10,000 Somalis died before President Clinton terminated the operation after 18 U.S. soldiers were killed. But few questioned the motives of Bush I’s administration in sending the troops in the first place. 

One of those who did was Stephen Shalom. Writing in the early 1990s, he detailed how the U.S. military establishment was desperately searching for a post-Cold War justification for its continued budget levels and the central position the military played in U.S. policy-making. Military power was vital to the U.S.’s continued position in the world, but how to justify it? The “war on drugs” was tried in Latin America, “sovereignty and justice” in Iraq/ Kuwait, and “humanitarian intervention” in Somalia. 

These justifications served for the down times, but ultimately the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 solved the problem. The “war on terror” had begun. 

Like the Cold War, the war on terror is an all-encompassing template for world affairs—if a situation looks similar, incorporate it into the bigger game. That’s why the Ethiopian government has referred to the Somali Islamic Courts—the group that has until recently been de facto ruling Somalia—as a “terrorist group.” In a December interview with the Washington Post , Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister and former head of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, said, “It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them.” 

Meles puts up with no nonsense at home either. When opposition groups protested at his re-election in November 2005, government forces opened fire—197 people were killed and thousands were arrested, including 100 opposition leaders, journalists, and relief workers. 

All of this plays extraordinarily well in Washington. The Bush administration has stated that the Islamic Courts group is “controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals.” To this end the U.S. funded the very warlords that threw its troops out of Somalia a decade earlier during Operation Restore Hope. In January 2006, an International Crisis Group expert reported that between $100,000 and $150,000 was being funneled by the U.S. to warlord proxies in Kenya every month, effectively breaching the UN embargo on arms to Somalia.  

T he real tragedy is that the situation in Somalia, as in so many other places, is actually more complex than the U.S. and its Ethiopian proxy would like to admit. Since 1991 there has been no stable government. In 2004 Kenya, worried about the impact that a politicized brand of Islam in Somalia would have on its own Muslim minority, helped get agreement from various warlords to establish a Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The TFG, made up of some very unsavory characters, initially pretended to run Somalia from Kenya and until very recently actually controlled almost none of the country. Nonetheless, it has received international backing, as it contains so many warring factions and tribes. 

The Islamic Courts does not have international recognition, but does have popular support and, until recently, controlled most of the country. Opinions of the Islamic Courts differ markedly within Somalia. Many praise the stability that it has brought after so many years of chaos and violence and believe that religious forms of justice are widely seen as the only way to rise above warlord violence. However, the International Crisis Group wrote in 2005 that “Islamist extremism has failed to take a broader hold in Somalia because of Somali resistance—not foreign counterterrorism efforts.” 

It was in this context that Ethiopia secretly stationed at least 8,000 troops in Somalia from the TFG capital in Baidoa. In October 2006 the Islamic Courts issued a threat to Ethiopia to leave Somalia. In December Ethiopia, with backing from the U.S., decided it was time to invade properly, conducting air raids and entering the capital Mogidishu as the Islamic Courts withdrew. The Ethiopian government made its intentions clear, “We are going to use any appropriate means to destabilize the anti-Ethiopian forces in Somalia.” 

Ethiopia appears to have won, for now, with the warlords in the TFG installed as Somalia’s de facto, as well as de jure, government. Ethiopia claims 1,000-2,000 have been killed with 4,000-5,000 wounded—while tens of thousands risk being displaced. Martial law has been declared in an attempt to rein in the chaos that has returned to the streets of Mogadishu. Even more worrying is what this means for the future of the region, where the war on terror is now firmly implanted, with all the international repercussions that entails. 

Somalia’s TFG is highly unstable, unpopular, and broke, while the Islamic Courts is likely to re-start an insurgency. Countries throughout the Horn of Africa have also been affected. Eritrea (which gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991) supports the Islamic Courts while Kenya supports the TFG—both are religiously mixed countries; religious and ethnic divisions in Sudan are well known. Both “sides” have been radicalized and are calling on international support. The Guardian newspaper describes the dangerous situation aptly: “Washington has viewed Somalia’s domestic complexities and their intertwined regional repercussions through the distorting prism of the ‘war on terror’…the stage is set for a wider, partly proxy conflict, in which a fully fledged Somali war joins the daily horrors from Iraq and Afghanistan.”   

Nick Dearden is an independent activist based in London. 
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