02/13/14 – Francis Nesbitt – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, first guest today is Francis Nesbitt.
And he is at the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.
And let's see.
He's got book chapters and articles in, well, foreign policy and focus and 10 other journals around the world as well.
Welcome back to the show, Francis.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for inviting me.
Well, thank you very much for joining us today.
There are very few people who can speak well on America's intervention, Western intervention in Somalia, you know, over the last few years.
And I was very impressed by what you had to say when we spoke before.
So I really appreciate you being available for us today.
I guess the recent word is that Ethiopia has now, is it re-re-invaded Somalia?
And then is that at the behest of the United States again?
Yes, Ethiopia has, its troops have been integrated into AMISOM, which is a African Union mission in Somalia, which is funded by the United States and other Western nations.
And so in a way, yes, they are working at the behest of the United States foreign policy.
So yes, so since the 2006 invasion, the first invasion at the behest of the Bush administration was in 2006.
They were forced to leave in 2009.
Now, but since then, the main point is that they have been unofficially within Somalia.
So what they've done is just made it official.
You know, they say 4,300 and some troops are going to be integrated into the AMISOM force.
Well, we know that there have been more than 4,000 troops from Ethiopia inside Somalia over the last few years.
So they have had many incursions into Somalia territory.
So what they've done now is just made it official.
I see.
So it's not really a re-re-invasion.
This is still the re-invasion because they did leave right after 2008.
And then they came back, what, two or three years ago, correct?
Or they really have been there all along?
Yes, exactly.
They've been there all along.
They've been operating there.
The United States is operating a drone base within Somalia, within Ethiopia, sorry, that, you know, that's where the drone attacks come from.
And so they've been involved for a long time.
In fact, even the troop numbers that have been given by the United Nations of 4,395 seem a little low.
So they have been there for a while.
And so what is happening now is that by being integrated into AMISOM, they're following the example of Kenya, you know, it's Kenya which invaded Somalia.
And then a year later, in 2011, was integrated into AMISOM.
And that means that they will have funding.
That is, instead of them funding the, that is Ethiopia or Kenya, funding the operations within Somalia, it is now funded by the United Nations.
All right, now, I guess, well, let's talk about the most important thing really first is, I guess, the weather and the state of the crops and the famine there.
How over is it?
Well, it's famine time again, and there's a lot of difficulty.
And there seems to be some problems in Al-Shabaab controlled areas within Somalia, where, you know, as you know, recently they expelled various international NGOs.
And so this is, this is, as we talked about, I think, was it last year we talked about, when the same similar thing happened?
This is the serious problem here in the sense that aid operations are not able to work.
First of all, there's a drought.
So people are not able to, this is the time when they plow the land in order to seed it.
And if they're not able to do that, there'll be a disaster within three months or so.
So it's unfortunate that the conflict is going on right now, which is hindering humanitarian operations.
So this is going to have a major impact if the international community doesn't take action now.
Yeah, well, I guess it was last spring or early last summer that FUSENET, which is, I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's an American and British sponsored so-called NGO type organization that monitors famines around the world.
And they said that approximately, their measure was 260,000 Somalis had died in the famine.
And then the majority of those were children under the age of five, they said.
Yes, there's, there have been these reports over the years.
It's, you know, the farmers have to be able to plow the land at a particular time in anticipation of the rain.
And if conflict blocks that, that operation, it becomes, you know, it's a disaster.
But it is a disaster that is predictable.
Right.
Right.
So, so the part of the support for Ethiopia and for AMISOM comes from some of these organizations that think that if they could stabilize the situation in time, then it might be possible to avert another major disaster that has occurred last year.
Well, it's certainly true that the war, I mean, I guess, you know, in 2010 and 11, the whole horn of Africa was hit with the bad weather.
But the famine hit Somalia the hardest because, as you said, the instability, the inability for, you know, farmers to just go out and, you know, sow their crops and, and then for that matter, their ability to get them to market or anybody at the market to buy what they have to sell.
I mean, the whole division of labor is completely destroyed in the war there.
And certainly that's why it hit them so hard.
So now, I guess you sound like you're saying that the situation is so bad that really probably the best bet for staving off another renewed famine of those kinds of numbers of dead would be for the outside interventionists, the Americans and African Union to win, basically, to get it together enough that they can really conquer the whole country, eliminate al-Shabaab and any of the conflict, you know, peace in total victory, and then maybe they'll be able to deliver some food aid.
Is that really right?
Is that really right?
I mean, I would think that if we're the ones who made it this bad, maybe we should just knock it off.
No, no, it's not.
The thing is that if it gets to the point, what I'm saying is, if, let's say, the farmers are not able to go and sow their crops this year, then it'll get to a situation where the international community will be forced to intervene because there'll be mass starvation, right?
So, I mean, as we've discussed before, the issue in Somalia is how to develop a stable Somali state that can secure itself and take care of these kinds of issues.
That's the ultimate goal, to have the Somali military built up and the state built up where they can actually take control of their territory.
Is the government in Mogadishu, are they willing to try to negotiate with the al-Shabaab insurgency?
Or their policy is just win or lose, keep fighting forever?
No, the Somali state has negotiated with factions of al-Shabaab.
You know, al-Shabaab is a non-monolithic entity.
They have negotiated with factions.
One of the leaders, Hassan al-Weiz, last year, actually defected from al-Shabaab, too.
And he has a strong militia to the Somali government and is cooperating with the Somali government currently.
So, yes, they are willing to negotiate with certain factions.
And as you know, al-Shabaab itself has been weakened and fragmented since the Kenyan incursion into Kismayo.
They lost their main source of funding, which is the port of Kismayo, where they ran smuggling operations.
So what has happened is that al-Shabaab has fractured, so that they are the internationalists under Modane, who is the current de facto leader of al-Shabaab.
And then there are others who are nationalists, who would like to take over the Somali government.
So this is the situation.
There are certain factions which are willing to negotiate with the Somali government, and those talks are ongoing.
There are other factions that are, for instance, internationalists, who might not be interested in negotiations with the government.
Because their goals are different.
So, yes, it's a fluid situation, politically.
Well, now, when you talk about the internationalized, you mentioned last time that we spoke, that when the Kenyans took the port town of Mogadishu, their income was the charcoal business and all of that.
And so they had to turn to outside donors to survive.
But that came with changing their position about who exactly their enemy was.
And that was what kind of internationalism...
So then, do I read you right, that that means Saudis?
Yes, certain Saudi-based groups, the Salafists and so on, not just in Saudi, but all over the Middle East and the world.
There are groups that are willing to fund attacks on Westerners in East Africa.
So they are appealing to those groups by attacking, for instance, Westgate Mall in Kenya.
That is a fundraising exercise that is seeking support from these international organizations that are calling them internationalists.
Whereas the traditional Islamists in Somalia were funded by local businessmen, and, of course, the smuggling operations at Kismayo.
Not Mogadishu, by the way, it's Kismayo, the port that Kenyans took over.
So there are various factions within Al-Shabaab.
The internationalist one is the one that conducted the attacks on Kenya, and it seems to be ascendant, at least, even within Somalia.
At least that's where the funding is coming from.
Whereas the nationalists have really lost the battle in Somalia.
Now we've got to hold it right here and go out to this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Francis Nesbitt from the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.
And yeah, I'm sorry if I said Mogadishu when I meant Kismayo.
I get that wrong.
One time I said World War II ended in 1845, and I didn't even notice until the next day.
We'll be right back after this.
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All right.
We're in the middle of talking with Francis Nesbitt.
He's a professor there in San Diego and an expert on the war still raging after all these years, or I don't know how raging it is, but it's still going on in Somalia there.
And where we left off, we were talking about the split between the internationalists and the nationalists.
But, you know, I'm curious.
Back, it would have been 2010 or 11, I think, there was an attack on a Ugandan, I guess, a restaurant where people were gathered around watching the soccer game on TV.
And at the time, at least, my best understanding of that wasn't so much that Al-Shabaab had become an internationalized movement as much as this was direct revenge for the Ugandans shelling a soccer field outside of Mogadishu and killing a bunch of children just a few weeks before.
And they said, OK, well, we're going to bomb you back.
And it was just a strict matter of blowback.
But then I hear you cite the attack on the mall in Kenya as a real change in direction.
So it must be more than just the act that makes you say that that's more than just revenge for what Kenya is doing in Somalia right now, but that it marks a real change in their strategy, their plans for the future, that kind of thing.
Yes, absolutely.
Since the Ugandan bombing, Al-Shabaab has changed in character.
The Ahmed Godane, who was a leader within Al-Shabaab earlier, has taken power.
And Ahmed Godane is known to be an internationalist rather than a nationalist.
That is, he eliminated his rivals within Al-Shabaab and has consolidated his power over the organization.
So at the same time, there's the other factor, which is the fact that they lost Kismayo and they lost their major source of funding by losing Kismayo and a couple of other ports to the Kenyan forces.
And so Al-Shabaab, at least the official arm, has been forced to seek funding elsewhere.
And the internationalist faction includes, by our reports, at least 100 international jihadists who are not particularly interested in taking over the Somali state, but are more interested in attacking Western targets in the region.
They are internationalists and they are the ones now who are bringing in the funding.
Terrorism thrives on funding.
So these are the ones that funded the Westgate mall attack.
And this faction seems to be more ascendant even within Somalia itself.
So there is this split.
And we saw that, as I mentioned earlier, with the defection of Hassan Nawaz to the Somali government.
He gave himself up last year to the Somali government.
He was a member of Al-Shabaab.
He is a leader of a major clan militia.
And so you can see this process where the pressure that has been put on Al-Shabaab has led to this internationalist faction being the dominant faction.
Right.
Okay, now this is sort of a two-parter about Somali public opinion.
And I guess we're excluding Somaliland and Puntland from this and we're just talking about, I guess, the rest of Somalia is really what's in question, right?
So the question is, is public opinion in favor of what Al-Shabaab is doing at all?
Or it could be related, but it could also sort of be a separate question of whether they support the so-called government in Somalia that the internationals have come in and put in place there for them.
Yeah, it's a fluid situation.
Al-Shabaab has made a bad name for itself by imposing extreme Sharia at the behest of their international donors, of course, the Wahhabis and so on.
Beheading people and stoning and amputations, banning music, banning movies and so on.
And so there is that discontent with Al-Shabaab, especially in areas where they are not the clan leaders in those particular areas.
At the same time, there is a discontent with the government of Somalia, which also has its problems.
It's unable to secure the country and it's unable to provide any forms of services to its constituents.
So it's a fluid situation and this situation could change.
And that's why this problem with the current incursion of Ethiopian troops into Somalia, its integration into AMISOM, could change the situation, could change people's minds because Ethiopia is a traditional enemy.
It's considered a Christian state.
They've had the war, the Ogaden War in 1976-77, the 2006 invasion, and it's a traditional enemy in the region.
So this situation could lead to, in some areas, particularly the Ogaden area and in the Ogaden clan, to further support for Al-Shabaab because of the presence of Ethiopian troops within Somalia.
Right.
Yeah, it's just another chapter in the same thing, the intervention making it all worse, creating this problem in the first place.
I think if I'm hearing you right, what you're saying is, just like we've seen in Iraq and just like we've seen in Syria, these Sunni-based insurgents or Al-Qaeda-type guys, they wear out their welcome among the local population real quick when, you know, they're nothing but an insurgency and they act like they're already the dictatorship and they just, you know, turn people against them.
They marginalize themselves, but then here comes the cavalry to come and give people a reason to support them again in the form of Ethiopia's renewed invasion.
I mean, this is how Al-Shabaab grew up from nobody to somebody in the first place, was in the fight against the Ethiopians back in 2006 through 2008, right?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, Al-Shabaab emerged after the Ethiopian troops crushed the Islamic Courts Union and then the militarized faction of the Islamic Courts Union was Al-Shabaab and this is its origin, that resentment of Ethiopian invasion and, of course, it was a horrible mistake in 2006, the 2006 invasion which was supported by the United States and the joint Bush administration because they destroyed the only credible structure that existed at the time in Mogadishu.
That is a political structure and then it led to further radicalization of Al-Shabaab and the emergence of Al-Shabaab.
So, this kind of cycle is, as you've just pointed out, quite prevalent around the world.
You know, you invade, occupy a country, leads to resentment and the terrorist groups count on that.
You know, for instance, the Westgate mall attack was designed to get the United Kenyan government and its allies in the US and the West, so on, to overreact to this act and crack down on Somalis and other Muslims in Kenya which leads to resentment and leads to possibly an insurgency within Kenya.
You know, this is what is, this is the strategy used by some of these groups that, especially the internationalist groups, you know, they want to create resentment of Muslims for these countries like Kenya and so on and Ethiopia which would lead to more support for their cause.
So, that's the danger with the current Ethiopian integration into Parmesan.
At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it's balanced by this other issue which is that the continued intransigence of Al-Shabaab in many parts of southern Somalia is likely to lead to another famine.
And, therefore, it seems to me that AMISOM and the African Union leaders have made this Faustian bargain.
You know, they are caught within a rock and a hard place and the decision was to integrate Ethiopia.
But, like I said earlier, this has been going on for a while.
You know, Ethiopian troops, more than 4,000 troops have been inside, have made incursions inside Somalia several times, especially in that western region.
And, they are simply formalizing it.
Well, you know, it sounds like the, well, I guess it's just proven again that the biggest threat to regular people is being caught between the terrorists and the government because if, as you say, which I think you're right, most terrorist acts are meant toward provoking an overreaction.
99 times out of 100 or more, probably, any government in question, you know, ex-government would love the opportunity to overreact no matter what the excuse is in order to expand their power.
So, these guys can just go back and forth, you know, ultimately until the empire is completely bankrupt and all falls apart, you know, and the rest of us, the Somalis will starve to death, the Americans, we don't have it quite that bad, but we have to suffer, well, I guess some Americans are starving over it.
We have to suffer a lot of consequences ourselves, but our government is really, you know, we always argue about whether it's stupidity or the plan.
All of our government's terrible policies seem to benefit them, if not the national interest, incidentally.
So, you know, I think they, maybe they're stupid, but they're stupid in their own special ways that benefit themselves a lot of the time.
Of course, they make these decisions that benefit their donors, you know.
I mean, war is business.
At the end of the day, war is a great business.
Some people are making great money, you know, and we're not just talking about the American corporations here that make the weapons and the guns and the bombs and the jet fighters and so on, but also locally, you know, in Iraq, in Somalia, and elsewhere, there are people who are laughing all the way to the back.
Yep, afraid so.
All right, and I'm also afraid that I blew this break and we're way over time here, but thank you so much for your time on the show today, Francis.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right, everybody, that is Francis Nesbitt.
He is a professor in San Diego at San Diego State University, Department of Africana Studies there.
Sorry, here's the news.
We'll be right back.
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