September 8, 2008: US counter-terrorism policies and support for the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia have helped create an increasingly desperate humanitarian and security situation in the horn of Africa nation, whose population has become increasingly radicalised and anti-US.

This is according to a new report by a major US  human rights group.The report, authored by Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson College professor who is regarded as one of the foremost US experts on the Horn of Africa, calls for a thorough re-assessment of US policy, including its support for the TFG and the primacy it has given to its “war on terrorism” in Somalia.

The report, entitled Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Foreign Policy Nightmare, says that “US counterterrorism policies have not only compromised other international agendas in Somalia, they have generated a high level of anti-Americanism and are contributing to radicalisation of the population.”

It concludes that “defence and intelligence operations intended to make the United States more secure from the threat of terrorism may be increasing the threat of jihadist attacks on American interests.”

The 17-page report, released by ENOUGH, a group launched last year by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Washington-based Centre for American Progress (CAP), was released amid continuing violence in Somalia that has forced some one million people to flee their homes since December 2006, when US backed Ethiopian and TFG forces swept the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) out of the capital, Mogadishu, and other major cities and towns.

Security situation

The UN recently estimated that, barring substantial improvement in the security situation, some 3.5 million Somalis will be dependent on humanitarian aid by the end of this year.

Chris Albin-Lackey, a Horn of Africa specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW), who appeared with Menkhaus at the report’s release at a conference sponsored by at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars says “the (current) crisis is fundamentally different and fundamentally worse than the situation of the last decade and a half.”

Albin-Lackey, who has conducted some 80 interviews of Somali refugees in East Africa in the past month, said ongoing violence, including almost daily artillery bombardments by Ethiopian army and TFG forces on the one hand and opposition militias, including the Islamist Shabaab on the other, as well as assassinations carried out by both sides, have added to the insecurity.

Menkhaus described last month’s signing by the TCG and the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) of the “Djibouti Agreement” negotiated between moderate leaders of both sides with the help of UN Special Representative Ahmadou Ould-Abdulla last June as an “important step” toward reconciliation but warned that hard-liners in both camps could derail it.

The agreement, which has been rejected by the Shabaab and was only agreed to by the hawkish TFG president, Adullahi Yusuf, under heavy pressure from Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, calls for a cessation of hostilities, deployment of a UN peacekeeping force, and the subsequent withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.

But the implementation of the agreement faces “steep challenges”, warned Menkhaus, not least because “the moderates (who negotiated the accord) don’t control any of the armed groups.”

While the Shabaab have already denounced the ARS leaders as “apostates”, he noted, hard-liners in the TFG know that they can stay in power “if and only if the Ethiopians stay.”

Only by reinforcing the moderates can the international community, including the US, enhance the chances for the agreement’s successful implementation and, with it, the chances for reconciliation, according to Menkhaus.

But that will require major changes in US and western policies, which have “actually worked to strengthen and embolden hardliners” over the past two years.
 
In that respect, the US emphasis on counter-terrorism has been particularly destructive, not only in supporting the Ethiopian offensive in December 2006, but, more recently, in placing the Shabaab on its list of designated terrorist groups last March.

Written by Jim Lobe   Nation Media Group