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Somalia, if I
recalled
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
December 28, 2006
As the world awaits the outcome
on Iraq, perhaps, it will be best to look at
what is not happening in Somalia today.
Somalia’s self-immolation started
during the late 1980s. President Said Barre had
seized power in 1969 and had ruled with an iron
fist. In 1977, he started a war with Ethiopia
and lost.
That event and the decision to do
so was to cause him the vital support of the
Soviet Union.
In 1991, Said Barre was
overthrown by a coalition force of Somalia clans
led by Mohammed Farah Aidid.
But the
coalition was thrown into disarray, as each of
the three major clans went on separate ways to
rampage for power, leading to the current civil
war and famine.
The war between the coalition
members worsened the socio-economic
conditions in Somalia, which led the UN to send
a humanitarian mission in 1992 to provide relief
under Resolution 794.
The US was brought in to protect
the UN mission. Bush the elder was the president
of the U.S. then.
Before Bush senior left office
after 1992, he had sent 25,000 US troops to
Somalia. But as soon as Clinton came to the
presidency in 1993, he had a different goal in
mind.
Then came the firefight in
Mogadishu in October 1993, called “Black Hawk
Down,” in which US Rangers tried to capture
Aidid and failed, And the US as a consequence
suffered numerous casualties.
Clinton had a change of heart
after the tragedy of “Black Hawk Down” and
started drawing down the US total troops’
strength.
But a few weeks later, Clinton
had another change of heart.
He then ordered more troops to
Somalia.
He said at the press conference held for
the occasion that the mission was "to protect
our troops and to complete our mission," as
reported by the Los Angeles Times on October 8,
1993.
Clinton’s objective, the Los
Angeles Times reported, for “the new deployment
was to give the Somalis a reasonable prospect of
survival in conditions of near-anarchy and
factional warfare.”
Regardless, within six months
Clinton had what he called “exit strategy” for
Somalia; as opposed to what is seen as Bush
(junior) has no “exit strategy for Iraq because
he had no plan before the invasion,” according
to the press.
Historians will have to decide
whether this call for "six months" withdrawal
was a classic case of “cut and run” or not;
coming after the “Black Hawk Down” debacle.
Whether Clinton, by his exit
strategy, gave Somalia “a reasonable” chance for
survival with his “six months” short time can be
debated. But the clear fact is that Somalia has
continued to this day as a completely failed
state after the American troops left Somalia.
Somalia has been in a constant
state of war with itself since the pullout; a
fact which is completely at odds with Clinton’s
promise for Somalia.
So, some 14 years after the
initial US and UN combined intervention, the
damage in Somalia continues. Islamic warlords
who recently pushed the interim government of
Somalia out of the capital of Mogadishu have
also been driven out.
Now Ethiopia, a neighbor to the
West, is caught in the fray in an attempt to
help loosen the Islamic stranglehold on Somalia.
Even the AU, which is usually
timid when it comes to internal affairs of
member countries, has been forced to support
openly Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia; thus,
raising the possibility that the whole region,
impoverished as it is already, may suffer
further misery through a wider war.
Back in 1993, Clinton’s stance on
America’s involvement in any conflict was to
reject all calls for America to "cut and run,"
as he described it.
"Do we leave when the job gets
tough or when the job is well done?” Clinton
asked rhetorically in emphasis to his commitment
to conflicts overseas; same as President Bush is
doing on Iraq today.
“Do we invite the return of mass
suffering or do we leave in a way that gives the
Somalis a decent chance to survive?"
Substitute Somalia for Iraq in
this statement and you would hear the same “stay
the course” promise that Bush was to make about
Iraq.
Yet, for Clinton and for all the
bluster, the pullout from Somalia was quick but
not the consequence.
The war did not end and the
conflict continued because there was no
controlling authority in the country, a country
that could have survived with massive credible
support from the world, if not from the US.
However, the lesson that was not
learned in Somalia has been repeated in Iraq.
Who to blame?
Not the General Assembly of the UN, nor
its then Secretary-General Mr. Kofi Annan.
Blame the Security Council with its veto power
that often cripples the world’s resolve.
In the case of Iraq, indeed, the
mission “was accomplished” as Bush said. Saddam
was removed from power.
But the “Mission accomplished”
was derided by Bush’s detractors. They wanted
Bush’s failure in Iraq more so than his success;
all in the interest of their hidden agendas.
Their attitude colors the ongoing
mission in Iraq and is the major reason that the
effort to establish peace in Iraq has become a
drawn-out fiasco in that war-torn country.
Nine years after “Black Hawk
Down,” a US ranger who saw action in Somalia was
to write about his experience in the Wall Street
Journal:
“I will always regret how, with
the enemy on the run and at such terrible cost,
we were prevented from re-arming, kitting up,
and finishing the task.”
Another writer, however, was not
so charitable. Mark Bowden, the author of “Black
Hawk Down” wrote that Clinton “lacked the kind
of moral personal force that it took to persuade
Congress and the American people that even
though this (war) is not popular, we have to do
it.”
The character of the personality
in the presidential office always determines the
political outcome of these foreign
interventions.
Whether the president will allow others,
set in their quest for power, override his
considered objective for a particular outcome is
the question.
It has been some 13 years since
“the cut and run” policy was tried in Somalia.
So, what is in store for Iraq now?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, December
28, 2006, Washington, DC.
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