03/31/10 – Leslie Lefkow – The Scott Horton Show

Welcome back to the show.
It's Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio.
I'm happy to welcome my next guest, Leslie Lefkow, back to the show.
She's a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch's Africa Division and has specialized expertise on Sudan, a country I can't pronounce, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Welcome back to the show, Leslie.
How are you?
Thanks very much for having me on the show.
And what's that country I can't pronounce there?
Cote something?
Cote d'Ivoire.
Ivory Coast.
Oh, the Ivory Coast.
Yes, of course.
Yeah, that's what ignorant Texans like me call it.
All right, good.
Well, thanks again very much for joining us on the show today.
Can you tell us about what is going on in Somalia?
Give us the broad strokes and then I'll try to come up with some good questions too.
Yeah, well, I mean, Somalia is a place obviously that has been in conflict for years now and we're almost heading up to the two-decade mark.
But what we've seen in the last three years is a real shift in the type of conflict on the ground.
And what we have right now is a government called the Transitional Federal Government that is really under siege by a number of different armed opposition groups, including a group called Al-Shabaab, which means the youth in Arabic, which is quite a militant Islamist group that's trying to topple this weak government, which controls very little territory.
The government actually controls only a sliver of territory in Mogadishu, the capital.
And Al-Shabaab and its allies actually control a lot more of southern Somalia, where most of the population lives.
Now, I guess, can you take us back to, say, the summer 2006 and sort of explain how the United States of America got caught up in this current crisis?
Well, what you've had over the last decade is Somalia, because there's been no government, it's been, you know, it's widely known as sort of the world's number one failed state, where there's been no central government for for almost two decades.
So what you had in the last 10 years, is a number of individuals who are on US terrorist lists.
For example, people who are believed to have been responsible for the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
These individuals actually fled into Somalia, some of them, a few of them.
And this is one of the reasons why the US has continued to have an interest in Somalia, because it's, of course, been very keen to get its hands on these individuals.
And what we saw in 2006, was that for a variety of reasons, a kind of a coalition of groups called the Islamic Courts began to gain more popular support in Mogadishu in particular.
And this group, the Union of Islamic Courts, you know, they were worrying for the US and for some of the Western powers, because they did have a more militant approach to their interpretation of Islam.
On the other hand, for many, many Somalis in Mogadishu, they actually brought a degree of stability to Mogadishu, which, you know, the population hadn't seen for years, because there'd been so many warlords who controlled different areas of the city.
And there was ongoing conflict and crime.
And, you know, it was almost impossible for, for example, for Somali women to walk in the streets of Mogadishu before this group took control.
So it certainly had strong positives and strong negatives.
And what happened in later in 2006, as this coalition of Islamic Courts to control the Ethiopians who neighbor Somalia, the Ethiopian military went into Somalia, backed to some extent by the United States, at least politically, to get rid of this coalition of Islamic Courts, which they did very quickly by the end of 2006.
But that then initiated sort of a new wave of conflict with the Ethiopians, the transitional government fighting on one side against al-Shabaab and other, you know, anti-government, anti-Ethiopian actors on the other side, and with the US kind of playing a somewhat distant role, sometimes launching some missile attacks to try to get these particular individuals that they were after, but not taking a very direct, you know, role in terms of boots on the ground in the conflict.
Now, during the initial, I guess, full scale Ethiopian invasion, Christmas 2006, which I'm not exactly positive of the details, but seems like was green-lighted by the United States.
They used C-130 gunships and sent in the CIA, were renditioning people.
Anybody who ran to the border of Kenya must be running for a reason other than being shot at randomly.
And so they were then renditioned to Ethiopia, things like this, right?
There were a large number of people who were picked up in Kenya and then renditioned to Ethiopia.
I mean, I think one has to be very cautious about characterizing who these people were.
I mean, among this group, for example, there were more than a dozen women and children.
There were infants as young as nine months old who were locked up in jails in Kenya and then in Ethiopia for months.
So, you know, it's wrong to sort of paint this group as a suspicious group in entirety.
Of course, there may have been individuals among them who were responsible for crimes or for alleged terrorism.
Well, there were even American citizens, right?
There were even American citizens.
Renditioned by the CIA to Ethiopia.
Well, they were renditioned technically by the Kenyans.
They were sent on flights from Kenya to Ethiopia, but they were interrogated by U.S. intelligence both in Nairobi and in Addis Ababa after they arrived in Ethiopia.
So this is one of the most confusing parts to me, and I cannot keep track of the names and things like this, but please help, you know, correct me, set me straight and make sure that the audience understands correctly.
But what I think is going on here is that the Ethiopian slash American war through this Islamic courts union out of power and attempted to install this government in exile, this transitional federal government thing there.
And then basically what happened was I think sometime around the late summer, fall 2008, something like that.
Condoleezza Rice made a deal with the Islamic courts union that the war had been launched to dislodge from power that they could in fact be the government of Somalia if they were the government of Somalia within the shell, the form of this transitional government that the U.S. and Ethiopia had attempted to create.
And so now the so-called government of Somalia, which it's really not, but the one that's attempting to be the government of Somalia is the Islamic courts union that we overthrew.
And now their enemies are the Al Shabaab group that didn't exist until they grew up to fight as the Islamic courts unions ally against the Ethiopian army.
I think that's, you know, that's not a bad summary.
I think there's a couple of points I would make.
One is that, you know, what the government that the U.S. is supporting now, the transitional government is led by, the president is actually, was a former member of the Islamic courts union.
That's true.
He was, he's considered to have been one of the more moderate elements and Al Shabaab did exist before this Ethiopian, you know, intervention in Somalia, but they have certainly gotten stronger.
So, I mean, yes, some, they are not, they weren't in power before.
They're not the ones that we originally invaded to overthrow.
They were not, they were, they were a wing of the Islamic courts.
So yes, I mean, I think you're absolutely right.
And when you, when you look at sort of the history over the last few years, in a sense, we've seen a, you know, kind of coming back to square one without much progress either for U.S. interests, perhaps, but also for, and most importantly for the Somali people who've been subjected to, you know, three years of an incredibly brutal conflict on all sides.
And I think the bigger question is, you know, looking forward, where is this policy going?
You have a very weak Somali government that doesn't control much of the country.
You do have Al Shabaab that is no doubt stronger now than three years ago when many of these events started.
And I think there's a sense in my mind often that there's not a clear strategy of how to deal with Somalia.
It's always very much a short-term response.
It's picking out who seems to be the good guy today, but who may have been a warlord in the past, or who may be a warlord in the future.
And it's a very opportunistic approach to a very complex situation.
It must be, you know, it must be acknowledged.
It's a, I think there's really two layers of conflict taking place in Somalia.
I mean, one is the Somali crisis, which Somalis are going to have to resolve at the end of the day.
But then you also have intervention or meddling, if you like, you know, by a whole host of international and regional actors.
So there's, in fact, sometimes very little opportunity for Somalis to maybe deal with their own crisis, because you have all of this intervention by a whole range of actors trying to influence the situation for their own interest.
All right, now I'd like to spend some time talking about what you mentioned there, the consequences for the people of Somalia.
After all, we're not just talking about a piece of land somewhere.
This is where a bunch of people live.
And I want to know all what they've been through.
I want to give you an opportunity to explain what the situation is to the audience in full.
And we still have plenty of time, I think.
But first, one more question so far on the politics.
And that is, I've seen reports where the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has threatened to attack Eritrea if they continue to be responsible for America's problems in Somalia.
Is the government of Eritrea responsible for America's problems in Somalia?
Eritrea, you know, when I said that Somalia, one of the problems is this meddling by all these different actors, Eritrea is certainly one of them.
The problem with the focus on Eritrea is that Eritrea is not the only one.
You know, all of the regional actors, all of the regional governments are involved.
The U.S. is involved.
Yemen is involved, you know, directly or indirectly.
So Eritrea is being singled out because there is evidence that it has supported al-Shabaab and other opposition groups.
And it's also very, it's also got its own internal crisis in Eritrea.
It's got a terrible human rights situation.
But it's being singled out in a way which I think is a problem because it doesn't reflect a balanced approach to the region.
And the U.S. really should be taking a lead in terms of trying to look at the regional problems.
And a lot of the regional problem comes down to the relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia, you know, where you have each of these countries in a way supporting a proxy war in Somalia.
They each, you know, support different sides because they have historically now a terrible relationship between the two countries.
So this, you know, solving this issue, trying to find a resolution of the relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia is critical for trying to deal with Somalia.
And until that is done, it's very difficult to see how progress can be made on Somalia.
And singling out Eritrea is not necessarily going to, I think, move the regional picture in the right direction.
Yeah.
The enemy of my friend is my enemy.
Someone in the chat room is over here asking, whoever heard of Eritrea?
That sounds like something made up in a Orwell novel.
How could this be an enemy that America has to do something about?
Only because we've already intervened in their next door neighbor country.
That's why.
And in fact, let me ask you more about the motivation here before we get to the humanitarian crisis, which is really the most important part.
But, you know, you talk about basically, you know, CIA hunting al Qaeda or what they think is al Qaeda or the bombers from 1998 or whatever.
But I can't help but notice where Somalia is, the pointy part of East Africa there, right there by the Red Sea, right there by the Gulf of Aden, I guess they call it.
Is this about one day building a giant Navy base?
The U.S. certainly has strategic interests in that region.
I mean, you know, the Gulf of Aden is an important route, you know, as you see with the piracy that's been taking place off the coast of Somalia.
You know, it's an important area.
The U.S. has a base in Djibouti, next door to Somalia.
Djibouti is a very small country right on the tip of the horn there.
They actually have a presence there.
So there are strategic interests.
There's no question about it because of the location, because of the geography.
I don't think that those are the only reasons, but there's certainly, you know, there's certainly very, very important reasons for the U.S. interest in the region.
And now, is there a new offensive going on?
There was a report in the New York Times, I guess, a couple of weeks ago that said that they were planning on doing a brand new offensive with support from the United States and so forth.
There's been talk of this for up to about six months now that there was preparation underway for a major new offensive by the government backed by, you know, a variety of its partners.
And that includes troops that have been trained in Uganda, troops that have been trained in Djibouti, troops that have been trained in Kenya.
There seems to be, have been a lot of recent delays in this.
I mean, we first heard that this was supposed to happen months ago.
It hasn't happened.
You know, on the one hand, this is a conflict that's been raging now for the last three years and a lot of sort of ebb and flow of military lines and control by the different groups.
Would this offensive be the end of the game in terms of Somalia's conflict?
You know, who knows?
I think it's doubtful, but it certainly seems something seems to be in the cards and everybody's been talking about it for some time.
Yeah, well, just means more fighting, not necessarily any resolution to anything.
Tell us about what it's like to be a Somali these days.
Well, I think to be a Somali civilian in Somalia these days has to be one of the the most difficult places to try to survive in the world today.
I mean, there is a kind of split situation in Somalia, which maybe I can describe for a moment.
I mean, what you have today is an intense conflict that continues to rage in Mogadishu, in the capital.
And over the course of the last three years, we've seen similar patterns by the different, you know, warring parties in Mogadishu.
And a lot of this has been indiscriminate bombardment.
So each side using mortars, in some cases using other kinds of weaponry, and sort of just blasting neighborhoods of Mogadishu to ruins.
And the civilians have really been trapped by in between both sides.
The Shabab and other of the opposition groups have sometimes often used their neighborhoods, you know, so they'll come up, they'll set up a shop in a house next door to where you're living, for example, in a neighborhood of Mogadishu.
And then they'll fire a few mortars off at the presidential palace where the government is based, or the African Union troops in the airport.
And then those militants will pack up their stuff and they'll flee.
And then you're still sitting there in your house as a civilian next door to where this happened, when, you know, the government or the African Union sends mortars back in the direction where they were attacked from.
And then, you know, and this has been a story that has just been repeated so many times in so many parts of Mogadishu.
I mean, almost everybody we've spoken to who has fled Mogadishu in the last few years has had a story about a family member being killed by the shrapnel from these mortar attacks, or people being, you know, shot by snipers in the streets, or blasted apart by suicide bombing.
It's just, I think, a horrendous environment for people to live in.
And many, many people living in Mogadishu have fled over the last few years and have been sitting in huge IDP, displaced person camps outside of Mogadishu, or have fled into Kenya, into Ethiopia, into Yemen, you know, into all the sort of neighboring countries, because life was just untenable in Somalia.
Now, over the last year or so, I would say we've had another situation emerging in other areas of southern Somalia, not Mogadishu, but in other, you know, sort of the countryside.
And these are areas that al-Shabaab now controls.
And in these areas, we have a kind of a stability where there's not necessarily outright conflict, but the Shabaab has been decreeing a very harsh interpretation of Islamic law in the areas it controls.
So, for example, it's put out very rigid decrees about the fact that women need to wear what's called the abaya, the entire covering, you know, gown, whenever they leave their house.
It's put out very harsh punishments for theft, you know, like amputation of hands or, you know, flogging of men or women for a whole range of crimes.
So even people who are now benefiting from the kind of relative stability of living in these al-Shabaab controlled areas are now fleeing because of the harshness of the Shabaab rule in many of these areas.
And because the Somali communities are so poor, many of them because of the effects of this 20 years of war, you know, for example, you have to think about what is the effect when you demand that every woman has to wear this long abaya?
When people are so poor, they actually can't afford to buy them.
So you may have one family where one abaya, one of these gowns, is being shared by all the women, which means that only one woman can even leave the house at any one given moment, which means that women can't, you know, they can't do their work.
They can't go to the market.
You know, it really cuts down on freedom of movement.
So this is just, you know, these are just some examples, I think, of even wherever you live as a Somali, you are being subject to very harsh restrictions on your freedoms and sometimes even, you know, on your life in Mogadishu.
Well, now the Islamic Courts Union in, say, I don't know, the fall of 2006, when I believe they were at their peak of power, I heard that they shut down some movie theaters and things like that.
Were they forcing women into these abayas and cutting people's hands off and so forth?
There were incidents, but I think what we're seeing now by the Al-Shabaab is much more severe.
I mean, you know, I think that the Islamic courts, when they were in power in 2006, there were worrying signs, there's no doubt, there were worrying signs that they could move into this kind of, you know, sort of radical interpretation of Sharia law, Islamic law, but not, you know, for one thing, they didn't really have the time to get this far.
The Shabaab has moved things quite rapidly in a very strict interpretation.
Now, Somalia is an Islamic country, but I guess I'm under the impression that this kind of thing is actually very alien to their society.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, 99% of Somalis are Muslims.
In many parts of Somalia, it is a conservative Islam that's practiced, but it's nothing.
This is absolutely foreign to traditional Somali practices and understanding and practice of Islam.
All right.
Now, can you share some numbers with us, ballpark estimates, the number of killed since, say, you know, Dick Cheney's involvement, Christmas 2006, the number of people displaced from their homes, the number of people going hungry, the number of wounded?
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to have really good numbers because, you know, access, just trying to get into Southern Somalia is very, very difficult.
I mean, a lot of the research we've been doing recently, for example, has been with refugees in Kenya because we, you know, simply too dangerous to get into parts of Southern Somalia.
But having said that, I think, you know, we can make an educated assessment.
And certainly there are Somali human rights groups who continue to work on the ground, who've been trying to come up with good numbers.
And I think, you know, a ballpark estimate of those who've been killed since, say, 2006, we're talking thousands, possibly tens of thousands.
In terms of the people who've been displaced from their homes, it's in the millions.
I mean, we're talking at least two million people who've been not just displaced once, but sometimes displaced numerous times over the last few years from Mogadishu alone, not to mention other areas of Somalia.
And there are also, you know, millions of people who are in need of humanitarian assistance, you know, food and shelter and medical care.
Is that the same as saying that there are millions of people going hungry today?
There are a lot of people going hungry in Somalia.
Yeah.
And then, of course, that's another issue, is the whole difficulty that humanitarian organizations face in terms of delivering food.
This is a real problem that's been highlighted lately also by the UN, because there's been a number of problems with getting food aid to those who need it.
All right, everybody, that's Leslie Lefkow.
She is the senior researcher for Africa at Human Rights Watch.
That's HRW.org.
Thank you so much for your time on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
My pleasure.