"Alas! Poor Somalia: So far from God; so close to Ethiopia."
-Said Samatar, Somali Scholar
That's Said Samatar's revision of the famous Mexican adage: "Alas! Poor Mexico: so far from God; so close to America." For Somalia, on top of being close to Ethiopia, it is more tragic that it is a member of the Arab League, a member of the League of Muslim nations. Its northern half was a British colony and its southern half Italian. It borders the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. And as if that is not enough, Isaias Afwerki has identified it as a perfect theater to wage a proxy war against Ethiopia.
Like many Eritreans, we have a special affinity for Somalis. When Italy was pretending to be a colonial power, it took its share of Africa: Libya, Somalia and Eritrea. And when it lost in World War II, there was a period when the new guardians of the new world order were deciding what to do with the foster children--and Somalia and Eritrea's fate were in a state of suspense for a while. We wonder if Somalis see themselves the way we Eritreans see them. We may be romanticizing them, but we see a fearless, proud, loyal, energetic, entrepreneurial people who excel at everything—excepting that of governing themselves.
The formation of the Somali state is not dissimilar to the formation of all African states: without consulting the local people, colonial powers drew their territories. Then, when many of these patched states could not find a workable formula for sustained statehood, the same powers diagnosed them as failed states that have to be partitioned. On the other side, there are powers who are so afraid of precedents, they insist on holding on to the wholeness of a state even as its people are clearly expressing that they do not want to be one state. When they talk about "sanctity of colonial borders" and "territorial integrity and sovereignty", their concern is not the nation involved but the precedent that will be set for other nations.
The question is: what do Somalis want? And who is preventing them from freely and independently exercising their wishes? Who is to blame? If the latest report from the arms embargo monitoring group is to be believed, there is much blame to go around.
The Embargo
The UN weapons embargo on Somalia was authorized in a January 1992 UNSC resolution and has been stubbornly ignored ever since. Over the years, there have been many spoilers breaking the embargo, and one conclusion that can be reached from the recent report of the UN Monitoring Group is that none has broken this embargo more brazenly than the regime of Isaias Afwerki.
In its December 06 report, the Monitoring Group had given a report itemizing the roles of ten embargo violators who are contributing to the instability of Somalia. Unfortunately, that report included a couple of citations of dubious nature—that Eritrea had contributed 2000 soldiers to support the UIC; that the UIC had fought alongside Hezbollah in its war against Israel—which may have undermined the quality of that entire report. That would be a shame because the rest of the Monitoring Group's report is well-documented.
This new report picks up where the last one left off. Many of the nations that were cited in the first report as violators— Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Djibouti, and Uganda are barely mentioned in this report. In April-May 2007, the Monitoring Group says it met with representatives of these nations in New York City: they all denied their role and the Monitoring Group "stands by its findings."
This takes us to the role of two of the ten violators—Ethiopia and Eritrea—and the latest addition, the United States. We begin with the role of an entity that is not named in the UN Monitoring Group report—the UN itself.
The UN
The UN uses Chapter VII of its charter to take action against "threats to the peace and breaches of the peace." To be effective, Chapter VII measures (including arms embargos) rely on international compliance. But international compliance to a UN resolution can be successful only if the resolution (a) is considered legitimate in the view of the member states and (b) is uniformly enforced. In other words, it relies on the credibility of the UN. This is the UN's greatest failure.
In early December, just weeks before Ethiopia launched its offensive (or pre-emptive defense, in the parlance of our times) against Somalia, the UN Security Council had passed a resolution (1726) which, among other actions,
Endorses the specification in the IGAD Deployment Plan that those States that border Somalia would not deploy troops to Somalia;
Despite this specific call, Ethiopia deployed its troops to Somalia within days of the passage of the resolution. The UN had two choices: to withdraw its endorsement of the IGAD Deployment Plan or to stand by its resolution. It chose neither. Instead it chose to welcome the short-lived Ethiopian redeployment in February 2007, without commenting on the December deployment. This kind of inconsistent enforcement of UN resolution only helps to tatter the UNSC's reputation.
This gives justification to those who believe "might makes right"—exactly the opposite view of the one held by the UN charter.
Bush's USA
A standard complaint against the Ethiopian government is that it is a client state of the United States—that it has no foreign policy; it only does what it is directed to do by the State Department. We think another complaint is more valid: the United States has no Horn of Africa policy and it relies entirely on Ethiopia (and, most likely, Israel) to formulate its East African policy.
This has resulted in a series of blunders. It started with an ill-advised attempt to dress up the warlords as secular alternatives against Islamists (UIC.) In this recasting, the warlords were presented as secular nationalists and the Islamists became part of an international jihad movement. This essentially told the Somalis, "we don't care that you are governed by bullies and extortionist as long as they are not Islamists." When the warlords were defeated, the conflict became terrorists vs legitimate government (TFG.) The US now encouraged reconciliation between the UIC and the TFG. But if the UIC were so beyond the pale that they had to be defeated by the warlords, how are they now acceptable enough to be partners in a Somali government? It turns out there were moderate and extremist versions of the UIC.
This is not to minimize the complexity of the situation in Somalia. It is to say that US Foreign policy has not arisen to the task at hand and this is most likely due to the fact that US' East African policy is not a well studied one. If the US is viewed as an uncritical ally of Ethiopia; then those Somalis who view Ethiopia as a foe will be gearing up for a confrontation—thereby contributing to making "Somalia awash in arms."
Meles's Ethiopia
Following Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, the UN modified the arms embargo to allow use of weapons to the extent that these weapons are for the exclusive use of strengthening the TFG. The implementation of this waiver was envisioned to be within the context of an African peacekeeping force but that is unlikely to happen now because a perfect catch 22 has been engineered: Ethiopia cannot withdraw until the peacekeepers come; the peacekeepers cannot come until the situation in Somalia is stabilized; the situation in Somalia will not be stabilized unless, according to the insurgents, Ethiopia withdraws.
Ethiopia and the TFG are using a dual approach: to negotiate and reconcile with "moderate" UIC members while militarily crushing the "extremists" UIC members. In theory, this is a good strategy. But the line between the moderates and the extremists is always blurred in war time and, in any event, the measure should be in empowering people who are accepted by Somalis as opposed to people who are acceptable to Ethiopia. The Ethiopians are failing at both tasks: they have not crushed the "extremists" and they are hosting yet another incomplete reconciliation process because two entities (the UIC and the Hawiya clan) have made the withdrawal of Ethiopia as a pre-requisite to their attendance of a reconciliation meeting.
The danger is that with every passing day, the logic of war will take hold and Ethiopia, even as it denies it, will be stuck in a hopeless quagmire. In instances like that, there will be pressure to use overwhelming force to defeat the insurgents—including, as has already happened in two occasions so far, the use of white phosphorous according to reports. The killing of innocent civilians will inflame a population and motivate them to be armed and to fight.
Isaias's Eritrea
The UN, the US and Ethiopia believe that Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) provides the best option for lasting peace and reconciliation in Somalia. There are a number of countries who believe otherwise. Some believe that strengthening the TFG in Somalia strengthens Ethiopia's dominance in the Horn; some believe that the TFG cannot deliver peace and stability; some believe that the Islamists, the UIC, are a truer representation of the aspirations of Somalis. To all these nations which do not want to be in direct confrontation with the US, the UN and Ethiopia, Isaias' Eritrea has offered its services as a clearinghouse.
Isaias is running a double-proxy war in Somalia. Not only is he committing Eritrea's blood and money in Somalia to pursue a conflict with Ethiopia, he is also acting as proxy for other states and individuals—Islamists and regional states—who have a problem with Ethiopia, UN and the US but are unwilling to confront them directly. He is using Eritrea's meager resources by promising to achieve what many actors and nations (and Somalis themselves) have failed to do for the last 15 years: bring about a united and stable Somalia. That is his excuse to pursue his conflict with Ethiopia inside Somalia. The problem is that the man's toolkit has nothing but weapons (RPGs, mortars, AK-47s) and an inexhaustible capacity to lie.
Many Somalis already know that Isaias Afwerki allows neither reconciliation nor power-sharing in his own country. They know there is neither a constitution, nor institutions, nor rights, nor the right to travel, nor the right to speak, nor the right to worship in Eritrea. They must know that the man who now speaks about the danger of calling all Islamists terrorists was only too willing to do it in the 1990s when he volunteered Eritrea as a "front line state." They should know that this man who is now critical about America's heavy footprint in the "war against terror", volunteered Eritrea to be used as East Africa's military base. Do they know that this man who is now very critical of US military efforts in Iraq was critical of the Bush administration for not declaring the war sooner and that he was among the first to jump to the “Coalition of the Willing” wagon? Somalis should know that if Isaias reconciles with Ethiopia or the US, he will abandon them in an instant.
A Way Forward
If the UN's resolutions are to be believed, they have to be enforced.
States that border Somalia should not be allowed to have troops in Somalia and Ethiopia's withdrawal from Somalia should be expedited. The calculus that its absence will create a power vacuum has to be seen in light of its presence which inflames passions.
The United States probably no longer has much credibility on Somalia and it should delegate its role to European nations that have better credibility on the issue.
The Somali problem is one that will require bargaining, negotiation, and reconciliation and an honest discussion on whether they want to remain one country or not. These are qualities that the Isaias regime simply does not possess. A more likely candidate for the role would most likely be countries such as Yemen.
Frustrated by the lack of peace and stability in their nation, some Somalis may welcome a predator on the belief that it takes one predator to destroy another. But this is an ill-advised approach that they will come to regret.
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