Of course, this plays no role in the rise in conflict in Somalia since 2007. And neither does the UN’s proxy war through the “African Union” play any role in the ongoing conflict. In a country with a GDP of $800 million (the GDP of New York City is about 2000x larger), the fact that the US and other Western countries are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the UN’s effort also has nothing to do with the ongoing conflict. No, it’s the stupid Somalis themselves who are to blame for not having yet instituted a taxing monopolist of law and force. Of course, we’re not racists so we would never hint, suggest or imply that the fact that Somalis are black has something to do with their persistent stupidity in this regard*.
Clayton -
*For those too dense to recognize satire when they see it, this is satire.
Clayton, if the US government gave you millions of dollars to do highly unethical and dangerous activities, would you necessarilly do it? And if you indeed do it, would the blame go to anyone other than yourself?
Aggravating an existing conflict is not the same thing as causing it. I am afraid the lion’s share of responsibility for problems in Somalia lies with those who choose to commit violence there. What are we to believe - that these ethnic tensions would subside if foreign money was put into the place? They can still use knives and machetes, and never resort to modern weapons.
All the same, yes I agree it is wrong for Western powers to put money into a civil-war-torn region, because they don’t know where that money goes or whom it empowers.
Well, yes, it would also go to the US government. The crime boss cannot wipe his hands of any guilt and say “I never pulled the trigger, I just paid the guys who did.” But the CIA isn’t just handing out suitcases of cash in Somalia, they have boots on the ground (and drones in the air, I’m sure) there. Mark my words, the US will enter Somalia again. The CIA operations folks along with Delta and other black ops types are the shock troops that foreshadow imminent US invasion with conventional forces.
What existing conflict? Somalia was doing just fine between 1993 when the US withdrew from Somalia in the aftermath of Black Hawk Down and 2007 when the AU resumed the UN’s attempts to impose a government on Somalia. During this interim, Ethiopia got frisky and tried invading (at the prodding of the UN/AU) but eventually ran with its tail between its legs. However, all-in-all, Somalia, even southern Somalia surrounding Mogadishu, was comparatively peaceful and prosperity (relative to its prior conditions under the Barre regime) began to rise by many indicators (see Ben Powell’s lecture on the subject). Somaliland and Puntland - far from Mogadishu where the AU/UN is attempting to establish a government - remain relatively peaceful to this day.
You mean CIA/black-ops who fly in to do violence and pay others to do violence and AU/UN troops who are trying to invade Mogadishu block-by-block and impose taxes? The idea that Somalia is an inherently war-torn country that is just being inflamed by Western meddling is just absurd and smacks of the blame-the-victim mentality characteristic of Western colonialism.
What ethnic tensions?? Somalia is a clan-based culture, it is not comprised of ethnically homogeneous tribes. This is part of the reason that European colonialist SOP (divide same ethnicities into separate political groups and force separate ethnicities into the same political groups) has failed in Somalia. Somalia’s clan structure and clan-based law (Xeer) has proved to be unusually resilient.
Somalia became relatively peaceful post-1993 - all the RPGs, AK-47s and technicals didn’t evaporate into thin air. In other words, the truism “arming leads to conflict” simply doesn’t hold in Somalia, at least, not at that simplistic level.
Somalia wasn’t “civil-war torn” after the US left in 1993 and was relatively peaceful until the UN resumed its attempts to impose a government on Somalia - this time through the auspices of the AU though last time it was Ethiopia (an obvious blunder).
I really think that it is the lack of government goodness in Somalia has the other countries of the world that hold monopolies of violence and use violence in their little territories really really scared. They really worry that a light bulb will go off in several hundred thousands of folks heads that says, he if Somalia can run without a central murderous authority, well why can we?
I told my sister who was claiming that you can look to Somalia to see what anarchy would bring. I replied that you need to give the Somalis 10 years without intervention. If at the end of that time Somalia has not developed more than all the other nations in Africa, I would admit that anarchy is a failure. Of course she had no argument against this again because of the fear that I am right.
I’m becoming more and more inclined to believe that this is the true motivation behind all these imperial wars led by the US and NATO. Sure, they’re also pursuing material objectives like oil but these are real backwater countries with tiny, dinky little GDPs, they are not even a gnat on the arm of the West’s power, wealth and security. The idea that such places contain “real threats” to our safety is hyperbolic in the extreme. There’s no material gain to invading them. There’s no real security purpose in invading them. So why are we invading them? The answer is actually pretty obvious: global hegemony and insuring there are not “pockets of anarchy” where people might be able to live and thrive to a modern standard of living sans the State, thus demonstrably putting the lie to all the State’s propaganda about how society would fall apart the moment we stopped having a universal bully waving a club over our heads day and night and taking the majority of the product of our labor so they can go bomb some more goatherders on the slopes of Podunkistan.
Also remember Bogart that we’re dealing with counterfactuals. Would Somalia be better off in a state of anarchy or in a state of statism? That is the major question, and we can already see measurable improvements in Somali standards of living without the Barre regime.
Somalia is the “last frontier”. A poor country with a largely Islamic population, a failed State by all means… in the heads of armchair generals like Hilary Clinton this screams “War on Terror” and “Nation Building” at every turn. So what do you do about it? Obviously you start an assasination campaign and send in mercenaries to support a government so pathetic it didn’t even have the money to pay for the Nairobi hotel where they were housed. Yes, ordinary people in Somalia will definetely support us and fly the Old Glory.
But I think the main reason is the usual bully syndrome. Armchair generals always pick country which cannot defend themselves. After all the saber rattling about Iran and North Korea they are picking a dirt poor country with no military. How brave is that? Is like a school bully beating up a first grader, with added bonus of no consequences. While it pretty much obvious the US military could defeat Iran or North Korea in a conventional shooting war, the big problem is both countries are not going down without a fight. As decrepit as their militaries are the still possess, warplanes, tanks, artillery etc. Better pass and pick up somebody who cannot shoot back.
This is assuming there is only the carrot, and no stick.
What ethnic tensions? Somalia is ethnically homogenous. Besides even if it were not, what of it? Ethnically heterogenous places have politics same as other places. If an American drops agent orange on a Vietnamese is that ethnic tension, or is it politics? It is a very condensending attitude to have. Just because you don’t know what other people’s wars are about does not mean they are about people at each other’s throats on general principles.
And yes, if you took outsiders out of the equation there would be no war in Somalia. That could not be clearer.
Take a look at the map. You see a lot of green, but not much blue. TFG is craven and unpopular. Without its foreign backing it would be dealt with in an afternoon. They are cleptocrats that were already kicked out of Somalia in 1991, but came back to bring war to their country and seek support with its enemies.
It is outsiders who sustain the war and escalate it. The ICU (riding a wave of popular support) was inches away from ending the war in 2009 by dispersing the warlords and the TGF, but the US demanded of Ethiopians to come over and invade Somalia to prevent the ICU triumph. Every day of war after that is on the foreigners.
For all intents and purposes the war in Somalia pits Somalis on one side against the outsiders (AU, UN, US, Ethiopia, the exiles) on the other. It is no true civil war, but a war of liberation.
As said above that isn’t the case at all. The US is one of the belligerents in that war. It is not some stumbling fool, making things worse only on accident. Its initial motives - trying to install its puppets over the desires of the population - are evil to begin with.
Marko: Awesome post. Thanks for the image with up-to-date info on the Somali situation… it’s really tough to get meaningful news about Somalia, most of what I find on the interwebs tends to be devoid of anything other than a transparent expression of the journalist’s ill-conceived notions of Somalia as a tribal, ethnic battleground.
Clayton, out of general principle, I am inclined to throw out the “It’s mostly local” line, because I find that in too many other cases, local despots blame foreign interests for regional problems, such as IMF being blamed for economic problems caused by the Suharto clan in Indonesia. Of course, I shouldn’t have particularized a generalization to Somalia.
And now there’s a famine in Somalia. Somebody flipped the switch and now there’s all this hubbub about a famine in Somalia. This started literally days after the story on the CIA’s prisons in Somalia broke. What a bunch of bullshit. I don’t doubt that the constant warring since 2009 brought on by the UN’s attempts to impose a government in Somalia has contributed to famine. I just find the timing to be… fortuitous. The next piece of spin is going to be that if, if there were CIA/black-ops people in Somalia (and we’re not admitting it, of course, because it’s a black program), they were just handing out candy to starving children.
Can you imagine if they can get some seals or some other honorable US soliders killed or taken hostage there? They wouldn’t need another war. They could milk that for about a year. Especially if they could get a group of soldiers taken hostage…maybe have one killed every month or so often and finally after a year of milking it, free the remaining ones. That could be headline news for a year. I can see bumper stickers, I can see colored ribbons. I can see channel one really turning something like that into something really special.
Aristippus: Good catch. Looks like this is the second prong of the strategy to impose government in Somalia. First prong was to militarily seize control of a large enough section of Mogadishu that the UN puppet government could claim to “control the capitol”. The second prong is to then cry “Famine!” and now any opposition to the UN puppet’s attempts to bring in international aid (which will, of course, have to be guarded by the puppet governments thugs) will play in the international media and can be used to drum up support in Western countries for direct Western military intervention against al-Shabab or anyone else that gets in their way.
Meanwhile, innocent Somalis have their homes shelled by the people claiming to be their protectors and saviors.
You can see in this article that a very direct narrative is being constructed. “There’s a famine in Somalia and people are going to starve because there’s no government in Somalia to swoop in and fix the famine problem.”