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Proxy War in Africa’s Horn

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  • Proxy War in Africa’s Horn

    Proxy War in Africa’s Horn

    Somalia's transitional government troops are supported by Ethiopia. (AP/Jerome Delay)
    December 14, 2006
    Prepared by:
    Stephanie Hanson

    In the disputed border area between Ethiopia and Eritrea, tensions have been high all year but neither side appears willing to break the stalemate. Instead, both countries have been amassing troops in neighboring Somalia in what appears to be a proxy war. The build-up threatens to tip the entire Horn of Africa into a regional war (CSMonitor). Such a conflict appears increasingly imminent: this week Somalia’s Islamists threatened they’ll attack (BBC) if Ethiopian troops don’t leave within seven days.

    Ethiopia—a Christian nation with a significant Muslim population—sent troops into Somalia in support of the country’s weak, but internationally recognized, transitional government. Since the Islamists’ seizure of Mogadishu in June and the expansion of their area of control, Addis Ababa has been concerned their influence could inflame Ethiopia’s Muslims. Eager to support the enemy of its enemy, Eritrea has provided arms and troops to support the Somali Islamists, as well as other anti-Ethiopian forces in Somalia.

    The proxy war in Somalia marks a substantial escalation of the longtime conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia refuses to recognize and implement border demarcations brokered in the 2000 Algiers Agreement, which ended a bloody and futile two-year war between them. Eritrea continues to send troops into the disputed area—patrolled by UN troops—and threaten war. An International Crisis Group report warned in December 2005 that peace between the two countries was “fraying dangerously,” and since then the situation has only become more precarious.

    If war breaks out in Somalia, Eritrea will benefit from Ethiopia’s preoccupation with the Somali front, which might tempt it to adopt a more aggressive posture on the border region. War would also allow Somalia’s Islamists to drum up Somali nationalism as well as attract further external support. While the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute and Somalia’s internal power struggle are linked, the United States should work to resolve them separately, says a new Council Special Report. If it doesn’t, the report says, Ethiopia “may drag Washington into a conflict that will be framed in many parts of the Muslim world as another U.S.-sponsored attack on Islam.”

    A U.S.-backed Security Council resolution passed on December 6 strengthens the link between Washington and Addis Ababa. The United States said the resolution—which authorizes the deployment of an African peacekeeping force to support the transitional government—aims to halt the expansion of Islamist influence and prevent full-scale war. Yet war is exactly what the Islamists promised (VOA) if the resolution passed. Instead of promoting African peacekeeping troops in Somalia, Washington should push for peace talks between the Islamists and the transitional government, a strengthened arms embargo, and the withdrawal of foreign forces, says the Council Special Report.

    “Washington’s new Somalia policy is not just self-defeating: it is inflammatory,” writes Somalia expert Matt Bryden in the CSIS Online Africa Policy Forum. “The apparent determination of the United States to approach Somalia as a new front in the Global War on Terror is well along the path to becoming a self-fulfilling policy.” A November report from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia suggests the Islamists already receive help from various African and Middle Eastern nations. Experts believe only two terrorist groups—including a small al-Qaeda cell—currently operate in Somalia, but as this Backgrounder notes, conditions are ripe for the country to become a significant terrorist haven.

    http://www.cfr.org/publication/12225...icas_horn.html
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

  • #2
    Washington -- The United States has no intention of sending military forces to Somalia to remove al-Qaida-backed militants from power, a senior U.S. diplomat told reporters December 14.

    Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, called on Somalia’s competing factions to open talks aimed at achieving a stable government. She also urged international follow-through on a December 6 U.N. Security Council resolution that authorizes an African peacekeeping force to protect Somalia's Transitional Federal Government. (See related article.)

    “That’s not a plan that we have on the table, for the U.S. government and our U.S. military to deploy to Mogadishu [Somalia],” Frazer told reporters at the State Department. “That’s not really something that we’re saying to our Congress and our public that we want as part of our strategy.”

    Somalia has lacked an effective national government since early 1991. The Transitional Federal Government was formed with international cooperation in 2004 and currently is based in Baidoa, Somalia. The main city of Mogadishu and the majority of other population centers are controlled by the Union of Islamic Courts, also known as the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC), which is a group of regional courts that emerged after the chaos of the 1990s to restore local order by administering Islamic law, or Shariah. However, in recent months, the courts increasingly have been led by East African al-Qaida militants, including terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

    Frazer said the United States does not seek the overthrow of the Islamic Courts. However, the United States does want to foster moderate leadership within them. The United States also wants the court group to stop its military expansion and to open talks with the transitional government, which has a five-year international mandate to develop a stable, permanent government for all of Somalia, she said.

    “The problem is that the CIC is led by extreme radicals right now, not the moderates that we all hoped would emerge,” Frazer said. One leading group within the courts, the al-Shaaba, “are radical youth killers,” Frazer said. “That’s what they are. They’re killing nuns, they’ve killed children and they’re calling for jihad.”

    Radicals within the courts have introduced extreme versions of Islamic law that are at odds with Somalia’s history and traditions, Frazer said. “Frankly, public executions, killing people for watching soccer matches, is not consistent with the Somali culture and traditions,” she said.

    U.S. GOALS

    The first U.S. goal for Somalia is to work within the Transitional Federal Charter, which is recognized by the United Nations as the framework for restoring governance to Somalia, Frazer said. The United States wants civil-society groups to join with clans and sub-clans to establish a nationwide system of government for the first time in more than 15 years. “That’s our ultimate aim,” Frazer said.

    The Transitional Federal Government, she stressed “is transitional. That’s the key point. At the end of five years, the Somali people will have to decide how to govern themselves.” So the goal of the transitional government is “not in fact to get rid of the CIC.”

    The second U.S. goal for Somalia “is to have these terrorists turned over, particularly the ones who attacked our embassies,” Frazer said. Terrorists associated with the 1998 bombings either are part of Islamic courts groups or have been sheltered and assisted by them, she said.

    “The analysis is that there are many more in the courts that are moderate and are just going along,” Frazer said, “and we would hope that, eventually, the conditions will be such that they can break off and join with governing Somalia in the traditions of Somalia.”

    U.S. ambassadors are in talks throughout Africa seeking countries willing to be part of the regional peacekeeping force that would assist the Transitional Federal Government in asserting control and entering into constructive dialogue with the Islamic Courts, Frazer said.

    The U.N. Security Council expects the African force to deploy within 30 days, Frazer said.

    (USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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