What do they say about this in the chocolate-making countries? You know, the kind of people who tried to advise us against our latest land war in Asia.
As the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to dominate headlines, a new front in the war on terrorism has opened in Somalia. At a brutal cost to Mogadishu's civilian population, once-discredited warlords have reinvented themselves as "counter-terrorists", seeking and apparently gaining US support by characterizing their Islamist opponents as agents of al-Qaida. The warlords have grouped together as the Anti-Terrorism Alliance (ATA) and insist they are dedicated to expelling foreign al-Qaida members they allege are sheltered by the Islamic Court Union (ICU). Although nearly all the ATA warlords are cabinet ministers in the new Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) located in Baidoa, they have abandoned the TFG to pursue an unauthorized war against their Islamist rivals in Mogadishu. Allegations of US funding for the unpopular ATA leaders are undermining US efforts to stabilize the region.
Thus far, the efforts of the ATA have not been met with success. No "terrorists" have been detained, and ATA forces have not fared well in combat against the Islamists who continue to control most of Mogadishu...
Former CIA Director Porter Goss is alleged to have visited Kenya in February to coordinate a campaign against al-Qaida with Somali warlords (the US embassy in Nairobi simply states that it has "no information" about such a visit). According to the TFG and Kenyan security sources, this visit was followed by a CIA mission to Mogadishu that distributed as much as US$2 million in funding to ATA warlords (Daily Nation, Nairobi, 11 May). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer stated that she did not know if the ATA warlords were receiving US assistance, but made clear that "We will work with those elements that will help us to root out al-Qaida and to prevent Somalia becoming a safe haven for terrorists, and we are doing it in the interests of protecting America" (Reuters, 13 May).
TFG frustration with the United States is growing...
Indeed:
WASHINGTON, June 7 — A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize.
The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords' hold on the capital, Mogadishu.
The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding there.
Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American troops...
Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report...
Don't you love it when a CIA effort that's "covert" in Pravda on June 7th is openly discussed in a Swiss e-zine on June 1st?
At TomPaine.com Jim Lobe take's a little different view than Bu$hCo's. Let's call this the Maddy Albright wing of the Company's perspective:
...The takeover of Mogadishu this week by Islamic militias marks a major defeat for the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which had secretly backed a coalition of warlords that has reportedly been routed from the Somali capital.
While the victors, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), sought to assure the international community that they have no intention of setting up a Taliban-style fundamentalist state, U.S. officials have expressed strong concerns about their possible ties to al Qaeda associates believed to be in Mogadishu, including at least one individual who allegedly helped organize the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
"We do have real concerns about the presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia and that informs an important aspect of our policy with regard to Somalia," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormick on Monday. U.S. officials say their biggest fear is that the UIC will offer safe haven to al Qaeda and other radical Islamists as the Taliban did after it took control of Afghanistan.
Some independent analysts, on the other hand, said the outcome could actually contribute to Somalia's stabilization after 15 years of rule by rival warlords, and even make way for the transitional national government that has been based in Baidoa since its formation in 2004 as part of a national reconciliation process to set up shop in Mogadishu.
"The so-called Islamists provided a sense of stability in Somalia, education and other social services, while the warlords maimed and killed innocent civilians," Ted Dagne, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, told The New York Times. He said radical Islamists within the UIC were unlikely to wrest control from more-moderate factions...
The warlords, who since the outset of the U.S. "global war on terror" have reportedly been paid by the U.S. to monitor and help "snatch" suspected terrorists in Somalia, began receiving more cash—100,000-150,000 dollars a month, according to the International Crisis Group—to challenge the UIC's militias that were expanding their control over the capital earlier this spring, just as the transitional government in Baidoa was to convene parliament for the first time.
While the operation was reportedly organized by the CIA, the cash reportedly was funneled through the Pentagon's Joint Combined Task Force (JCTF), a 1,800-troop force based in neighbouring Djibouti since shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Defence Department. The JCTF is apparently charged with carrying out surveillance, "snatch", and related operations against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and the Horn.
"Support for the warlords came at a really bad time and made a lot of people, particularly the Europeans who were trying to support the government, very angry," noted the diplomat, who asked not to be identified. "Convening the parliament was a big objective for everyone, but then it's overshadowed by the fighting in Mogadishu that followed the injection of money for the warlords."
The U.S. move also provoked some controversy within the U.S. government, although at relatively low levels that did not gain the attention of senior policy-makers.
In one case, a Kenya-based U.S. diplomat, Michael Zorick, reportedly submitted a dissent paper to both his State Department bosses and the Pentagon in which he complained that support for the warlords was counter-productive to U.S. aims in Somalia. He was subsequently transferred to the U.S. embassy in Chad.
Indeed, State Department officials and independent analysts have long argued that Washington's single-minded focus on catching suspected terrorists in Somalia, combined with its failure to support efforts to rebuild state institutions and, most recently, to provide real support to the transitional government, would prove self-defeating. But they were overruled by hawks in the White House and the Pentagon.
"The U.S. now has nothing to show for three years of investing in these warlords as the sole element of their counterterrorism strategy in Somalia," noted John Prendergast, a Horn expert at the International Crisis Group here. "It's a travesty that this has been the only strategy Washington has followed after 15 years of no government, no state, in Somalia."
"There simply hasn't been a U.S. comprehensive policy on Somalia; just a counterterrorism policy that takes no account of the political context," noted the foreign diplomat. "Do you give priority to snatching individuals by any means necessary, including backing warlords, at the expense of a wider political process? That's essentially what the U.S. has done. One would hope that this could get them to broaden their thinking, but I think that may be a naïve."
The broad mind might wonder if the real policy might be chaos for Somalia and others in the Empire's real playbook.
[Thanks to jomama for the link.]
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