Thirteen years after the Clinton Administration pulled U.S. troops out of Somalia, the price of our political cowardice is clear. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today:

Somalia is a failed state, carved into dozens of fiefdoms by competing warlords. It has no police force, no government schools or hospitals; its coastal waters teem with pirates who routinely attack passing ships. Two corners of the 1,000-mile-long country, Somaliland and Puntland, have declared themselves independent. In the rest of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu, gunmen fight pitched battles over grazing land and spheres of influence, setting up checkpoints on dusty roads that they use to extort money from travelers. Civilians are routinely caught in the crossfire resulting from tit-for-tat killings. U.S. officials and Western analysts are fearful that Somalia has become a haven for international terrorists.

The violence and instability have greatly complicated efforts to bring aid to Somalia, where about 1.5 million of the nation's 9 or so million people are suffering from the worst drought to hit East Africa in decades....Getting food into the country is almost impossible because of regular attacks on ships and at checkpoints, according to aid officials. Two of the World Food Programme's ships carrying food have been hijacked in recent months....

....A failed relief effort by the United Nations during the last major drought, in 1993, was followed by "Operation Restore Hope," the disastrous U.S. military attempt to secure the environment for the delivery of aid. That collapsed when Somali fighters shot two U.S. helicopters out of the sky with rocket-propelled grenades. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed, and one body was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Hundreds of Somalis died and many more were wounded. When the Clinton administration withdrew U.S. forces several months later, so, too, did most international relief agencies, and few have returned.

Political security cannot even be conceived in Somalia until the pirates and warlords blocking current starvation relief efforts are neutralized. With the government an empty husk, it is necessary to approach the warlords, as a start. Which is what the U.S. has been doing. However, in this L.A. Times article, one member of the country's parliament in exile criticizes the United States for not instead working more closely with Somali office-holders.

"The United States, in particular, has drawn scorn from Somalian leaders. Members of parliament complain that U.S. counter-terrorist campaigns are undermining the government's legitimacy by forging relationships with warlords to gather intelligence and pursue suspects inside Somalia. "Everyone here is talking about the double standards of America," said Mohammed Ali Shiriye, a member of parliament. "They are still giving support to the warlords in Mogadishu. But now the U.S. must respect this country. It must go through the government."

But the top officials of Somalia's government (such as it is) come from a long line of thugs and kleptocrats, and have been exiled to irrelevance abroad. They are making no headway at all against the clans and warlords, as compared to the new government in Iraq, which while still bedeviled by freelance jihadists and delusional Sunni diehards, has adopted a new constitution; elected a parliament which has not fled the country; and is now trying Saddam for genocide in a trial that for all the defendant's fulsome theatrics, will engender the rule of law and fair governance.

In Somalia, right now, a robust international relief effort with a stronger military component must be mounted. Then a a five-state decentralization plan - which has been discussed before - must receive serious consideration by warring factions. Against all odds, such African statesmen as exist, and the United Nations - both prodded by the U.S. - must help engineer a way out of the darkness for the truly "failed state" that is Somalia today.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SOMALIA, DROUGHT, WARLORDS, PIRATES, STARVATION, UNITED STATES

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 7, 2006 04:50 PM

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