By Katrina Manson in Nairobi and Peter Salisbury in London
Somalia once represented a foreign policy humiliation for the US. So many Somalis were surprised that the US campaign against Islamist extremists in their country had been touted by President Barack Obama as a model for Iraq and Syria.
Since the horror of 1993, when enemy clan leaders shot down US helicopters and dragged American corpses through the streets of Mogadishu, Washington has adapted its efforts at ridding the country of extremists, resulting in what Mr Obama described this week as a “successfully pursued” strategy, combining air strikes and support for “partner forces on the ground”.
Yet, just as 20 years ago, Somalia is still at war and remains a broken state. More recently, it has also been overwhelmed by al-Shabaab, Islamist jihadis allied to al-Qaeda, who are fast spreading throughout the east African region, mounting deadly attacks in Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti as well as within Somalia.
For many, even the thought of comparing a military approach in Iraq with that pursued in Somalia is depressing. “This is going to be a long war if Somalia is what [Mr Obama] has in mind,” said Abdi Aynte, director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a Mogadishu-based think-tank.
Mr Obama’s citing of Yemen as another example of how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – the transnational group known as Isis – can be contained in Iraq and Syria, has also raised eyebrows in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.
Washington has long viewed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the jihadi group based in Yemen, as one of the greatest threats to domestic security. AQAP was responsible for one of the last significant attempts to stage an attack on US soil, when a young Nigerian man attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear while aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
But although US “targeted” drone strikes in Yemen have killed a number of high-level operatives, support for al-Qaeda has grown exponentially, and the group has launched increasingly devastating attacks on the Yemeni military.
“If this is what success looks like then I think the bar might be a bit too low,” said Jack Serle, who has researched drone attacks in Yemen at the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “[AQAP] don’t control vast swathes of land like they did in 2012, and they haven’t carried out a transnational attack since 2009, but they are still there.”
In Somalia, US support for more than 21,000 African Union troops was critical in forcing al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu in 2011, while US special forces have also quietly based themselves in the country for several years. Air strikes have killed and displaced some of the group’s senior leaders over the past decade – including a successful operation last week that hit Ahmed Godane, the ruthless Shabaab leader who centralised control and turned his attention to global jihad.
Mr Obama was quick to underline recent success in his address to the nation when he said the US had “eliminated the top commander of [al-Qaeda’s] affiliate in Somalia”.
However, regional experts say the air strike is the latest in a series of US interventions that could risk making the situation in Somalia worse rather than better. Matt Bryden, director of the Nairobi-based Sahan Research think-tank, believes that the elimination of Godane may have “accelerated” the push from some Shabaab factions that are now actively considering breaking from al-Qaeda and joining the more radical Isis.
If correct, this could be part of a long history of US missteps in Somalia. Not only was the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident a disaster for Washington, but its backing of an Ethiopian proxy force in 2006 radicalised the population and helped to spawn al-Shabaab. The US now supports a Mogadishu government whose members include old Islamists it first ousted in the late 2000s.
“The US is supporting a government that is weak, corrupt, making the wrong decisions and not clear on strategy – that’s what’s been confounding them all the way through,” said a Somalia expert who did not want to be named.
Despite the air strikes, Shabaab members regularly cross from Somalia into Kenya with money and weapons, and have claimed responsibility for several deadly raids along Kenya’s coast over the summer. The group was also able to plan a Nairobi shopping-mall massacre last year, sending an elite team that included “new skins” – agents not previously monitored by intelligence agencies.
“Air strikes make sense to keep the leadership under constant threat; it weakens their operational ability to co-ordinate major operations,” said a senior regional diplomat. “But it only works to a point.”
Source: FT