Although the situation in Somalia does not need to be worsened, the US is doing just that by shipping arms and military advisers to the embattled Somalia Transitional Government. Faced with inevitable defeat by a loose coalition of forces dubbed with the sobriquet of ‘Muslim militants,’ and the reluctance of regional nations to get involved militarily in what so easily could become a Somali quagmire, the government- such as it is- has thrown out the usual bogeys about ‘al-Qaeda and militant Islam threatening world security’ to attract support for its losing cause.

 

US military test landing in Djibouti  Photo:Courtesy

The US, naturally, with its missionary zeal to intervene in any conflict it perceives as threatening its image and strategy of international hegemony, cannot walk away from this challenge. As George Bush revealed when he said: ‘militant Islam must be confronted wherever it raises its head,’  the US under the ostensibly different Barack Obama, is confronting ‘militant Islam’ by doing the very thing guaranteed to worsen the situation- shipping arms and advisers to a losing government. No talks of mediation, no attempts to encourage a regional solution to a problem which could have been fixed since 2006. Instead, oil has been thrown on the fire to quench it.

 

In 2006 the Union of Islamic Courts, a loose grouping of moderate and radical Somali nationalists, primarily concerned with getting their nation back on its feet met and formed the Union after Somalis defeated the US backed gangs of warlords attempting by proxy to impose US writ on the country. For six months the nation had peace, commerce began to trickle back and a whiff of hope was in the air. However, like a destroyer of worlds the US determined that al-Qaeda was establishing a base and pushed its regional satrap Ethiopia to invade and topple the growing ‘Muslim’ threat.

 

The US, thanks to the French who have a Foreign Legion base in  neighbouring Djibouti [the Djiboutis have no say in this] set up shop in Djibouti and sent in SEAL teams to assassinate and disrupt al-Qaeda ‘cells.’ It is amazing that eight years after 9/11, we still being fed this nonsense about the ubiquity of al-Qaeda. The US has successfully milked the al-Qaeda propaganda cow for all it is worth. Nevertheless the US backed invasion by Ethiopia did not work and after three years of inconclusive and bloody combat, the Ethiopians were forced to withdraw from Somalia early this year.

 

Somali nationalists, misnamed Islamic militants in the strident Western press once again have control of the high ground. The US instead of seeing the error of its interventionist ways chooses to inflame the conflict in order to control it by shipping arms and advisers to the Transitional Government. This unfortunately contradicts the much-trumpeted Obama doctrine of ‘engaging’ perceived US enemies. Instead of working with regional leaders to end the conflict the US is in a partisan manner providing arms to one side, guaranteed to exacerbate the conflict into a regional conflagration, for as the past has shown the Somalis will not down their arms and go gently into that good night.

 

The US seems to have developed an irrational blind spot when it comes to Muslim populations. The so-called Africa Command, led by the black general Ward has troops in the Sahel and all along West Africa where there are large Muslim populations, provoking conflict where none existed before. The US general Boykin famously declared to a Somali: ‘My God is greater than your God.’ The Honduran military recently arrested its democratically- elected President Manuel Zelaya and shipped him into exile [just as US troops did with Jean-Bertrand Aristide three years previously] and the US will issue lame generic denunciations about respecting democracy while at the time excoriating Iran for its handling of an internal electoral crisis.

 

Why the obsession with Islamic countries? There are some who still believe that President Barack Obama can change American foreign policy. Some think that he will favourably engage with the Muslim world in a new and pragmatic way but as pointed out in  a previous pre-election article, Barack Obama functions in a political and military infrastructure that seem impervious to change. Surely there are Americans on the foreign policy desk that know that intervening in the Somali conflict by sending arms to a weak and distrusted government risks only widening the conflict in a way that will negatively impact US influence in the region and the Continent.

 

The errors seem set in stone. What can Africans do? The AU must reject foreign militarization of the Continent, urge the closing of all foreign bases and let the Somalis sort their problems by themselves, helping them only in arbitration and facilitation of internal dialogue. Foreign arms and foreign advisers will only prolong the Somali agony and drag Africa into a new era of destabilizing conflict.  The AU needs to act decisively in Africa’s interests instead of debating endlessly around procedures and legalities.