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All right, you guys introducing Bronwyn Bruton.
She, uh, is at the Atlantic council.
However, she seems really good on everything.
Uh, best I can tell.
Welcome back to the show, Bronwyn.
How are you?
Great.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me again.
Uh, very happy to have you here.
So I think the most important story in the world that nobody cares about is America's war in Somalia.
I mean, AKA all of our satellites war in Somalia, but you know, um, and, and the consequences of that for the civilians of that country.
And it just kind of gets no coverage whatsoever.
Unless maybe there's a drone strike here or an insertion of special operations troops there.
Otherwise we don't really get to hear very much about what's going on in Somalia.
And the last I heard actually was, geez, I don't know, six weeks ago or something.
They said, well, Donald Trump has decided to relax the rules of engagement and treat Somalia as a full fledged war zone, legally speaking, uh, like Afghanistan or Western Iraq is.
And, um, and so they're stepping up the war there, but I don't know exactly in what context or I don't even have any idea really how strong the Al Shabaab group in Somalia even is at this point anymore or any kind of thing.
So I was hoping you could kind of catch us up and give us sort of an overall view of, you know, what is the situation in Somalia now?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd be happy to.
Um, yeah, it's, you know, for your listeners who've heard me talk before, they'll remember that.
I, um, believe very strongly that, you know, Somalia is a country that's been catastrophically misunderstood by the United States over the years.
Um, most particularly back in 2006 when there was a grassroots governance movement that sort of rose up and took control of a lot of the country and was mischaracterized as an Al Qaeda linked group.
Um, there were individuals in the group that had some loose links with Al Qaeda, but for the most part, it was a really big tent organization with a lot of different clan and religious actors in it.
And, um, the U S response to that was to green light an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which destroyed the union of Islamic courts and all the moderate elements in the union of Islamic courts and cleared the way for all of the radicals that had been hiding to, to come up and create this group called Al Shabaab.
And so in Somalia, I think it's important to understand that we're dealing with a crisis that would not exist, but for heavy handed Western intervention.
And to be fair, you know, it wasn't only the United States, Europe was on board with this and you, the United States allies in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, um, were on board with this, um, this misconceived invasion.
The U S has been playing cleanup ever since then essentially.
And, um, in particular, they've been fighting, um, a lot of foreign, um, jihadi tourists who, who rushed into Somalia when they realized that the U S is making a big mess there.
Um, and then more recently, uh, homegrown, that is to say Somali radicals who have been indoctrinated and radicalized over the years.
Um, the situation keeps getting worse.
Although you'll hear people in Washington and people in the United Nations talking about all the progress that's being made in Somalia.
Um, the, the reality is, um, very, um, alarming.
In fact, Al Shabaab has lost a lot of territory over the years.
Um, they used to control well over half of Somalia's land.
Um, but it remains a potent force.
Um, they melt into villages, they, they reappear, they, um, launch suicide attacks, they use IEDs, they plant bombs, uh, and they show no sign of disappearing.
Um, the main reason being that there's a political crisis in Somalia that the international community has completely failed to deal with.
Um, and the effort by the United States in particular, but supported by the, you know, the usual cast of international actors, um, that, that government has just completely failed to gain any legitimacy or functionality.
And so 10 years later, at the cost of about a billion dollars a year, the U S is still supporting a government and, and bankrolling peacekeepers to protect the government, uh, that will frankly blow away like dust the minute the peacekeepers leave.
So we're, we're pretty much back at square zero where we were before.
Um, and, and with really no hope inside of improving the situation, as far as I can tell.
Oh man.
All right.
So, uh, at this point, which all foreign governments or foreign armies are occupying Somalia under the auspices of the African union?
Well, it's a peacekeeping mission.
Um, it's, it's not described as a counter-terror mission, even though frankly that's what it is.
And the primary contributors to this mission have been pretty consistent.
Um, you've got Burundi, which as you know, has massive human rights problems at home, Kenya, um, which is facing a very challenging election.
Um, and it's likely to see human rights abuses as a result of that Ethiopia, which has massive human rights abuses at home and is, uh, in the midst of a state of emergency that's, um, lasted over a year and seen close to 20,000 Ethiopians locked up, uh, for peaceful protests inside their country.
So, you know, uh, and then of course you have Uganda, which has been ruled by the same person for around 30 years.
So not a, not a great cast of characters really that the U S is using.
Um, but you know, to be fair, these are countries that have, have put their citizens in harm's way to pursue what is, is really an American mission, frankly.
Um, I, I don't, and they're all benefiting.
I mean, all of these nations that are contributing troops received weapons and they receive money and they received extensive military training.
Um, and so one of the, the very important effects of this, this conflict in Somalia is that a whole lot of other very weakly democratic or not democratic nations around Africa have been bolstered with military support by the West.
Is it true that the Kenyans are basically annexing parts of Southern Somalia and extending their border further now?
Kenya's in a rough spot.
Um, you know, Kenya has, has a really profound economic ambitions that are being undermined by Somalia's instability.
They would like to create a massive port, a world-class port at Lamu, and they are unable to do so because of its proximity to Somalia.
And so you, you have to have some, some sympathy for the Kenyans because they, they basically are being held hostage to Somalia's disorder, but there's no question whatsoever that yes, I mean, they have, they propelled troops into Somalia.
They did it without consent from the international community.
They were later allowed to join the peacekeeping forces.
They have set up a proxy administration, which is quite hostile to the government in Mogadishu that Washington is backing.
And they've behaved in, in ways that are really very problematic.
Um, they've bombed refugee camps allegedly by accident.
Um, they have engaged in charcoal trading.
Um, charcoal means you, you destroy masses of trees, which is basically what produced the terrible famine that Somalia suffered in 2011.
Um, Kenya didn't cause that.
Al-Shabaab's charcoal activities did, but Kenya came in later and jumped on the bandwagon and they're trading with Al-Shabaab, which is the group that they're fighting.
Um, and, and this sort of, this sort of thing will be familiar to folks who read about, um, US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Um, the, you know, the politics are very murky, uh, and the loyalties of, of people that we call allies are very murky in these situations.
And that certainly applies to Kenya and Somalia.
Well, yeah, I mean, and we can see, you know, especially Afghanistan is an example of where America's created a government that couldn't last one day without America there to prop it up.
But in the case of, um, uh, Somalia, it seems like if I remember the story, right, as the Bush administration was leaving in 2008, I mean, basically just because they were out of time, they went ahead and compromised with the former Islamic courts union.
And they let its leader go ahead and be the new president of Somalia.
As long as they wouldn't call it the Islamic courts union, they would have to basically inhabit the form of the government that the US had created for them.
But, uh, and I know that at that point Al-Shabaab said, oh, you guys are all a bunch of traitors.
We're going to keep fighting.
And, you know, that was the, well, at least one major point of split between Al-Shabaab and the rest of the ICU at that point.
But I guess what I'm trying to get at is the ICU was such a grassroots bottom-up support kind of a thing, as I understand it to be.
And as you characterized it kind of before, I think there, um, and how come the government in Mogadishu then is, you know, such a tenuous thing if it is more or less what the ICU used to be or what?
I mean, it's, it's a good question.
I think, um, you know, there's, um, there's many, many books that have been written about the failure of, uh, multiple administrations to take root in Somalia.
Um, personally, I think one of the main differences between the union of Islamic courts and the, you know, the current Somali government, um, is the fact that the Somali government is backed by the West.
Um, I think, you know, when you have a grassroots organization and you see this in Somaliland, which is an independent, uh, semi-autonomous sort of, it, it claims independence.
It hasn't been recognized by the international community, but it's a territory up in the North of Somalia that's self-governing.
Um, and it doesn't get any money from the international community really.
And because of that, it, it has to govern well because it relies on the consent of the people to stay in power.
And that was true of the union of Islamic courts as well.
If the people, you know, hated what they were doing, they weren't going to maintain control.
Whereas the Somali government now, it gets money from Washington.
It gets money from Brussels.
It gets money from London.
It gets money from Iran.
Um, it gets money from, you know, all of these, these actors and it's surrounded by a ring of foreign troops.
And so they really don't have any connection to the population and they're regarded as foreign.
Um, in particular, one of the things that the government's done that really drives people crazy in Somalia is that it has staffed all of the bureaucratic and political positions in the government with people from the diaspora.
So that instead of hiring, you know, impoverished Somalis who have suffered through the many years of war, the government goes and hires some guy who's been living in Minneapolis for the last 20 years.
Right.
That's the new president you're referring to, right?
Well, yeah.
Among many others.
Yeah.
I mean, they really did a big deal about, Hey, look, everybody, they held some elections in Somalia and don't read the fine print.
But in fact, the election was just a bunch of handpicked guys standing around in an airplane hanger.
It wasn't a popular election whatsoever.
It was not.
No.
It was like when the, when the Saudi princes have an election, you call that an election.
I mean, come on.
Yeah, that, that's exactly the thing.
I mean, and, and as, as I sort of implied over the years, you've had a lot of hype from Washington and you've had a lot of hype from the UN because they need to kind of continue justifying this, you know, outlay of money in this, this presence in Somalia.
But every headline you read about success is something that's just been sort of made up in an office in London or in Washington election.
They're not elections.
You know, the government's being recognized.
Finally, Somalia has a government for the first time in 20 years.
It really doesn't have a government even now.
It's just, you know, these headlines are generated on demand as the political times require them in Europe and in the U.S. So let's talk about the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command and the U.S.
Special Operations Command.
They got drones, they've got ships, they've got helicopters available.
Are, they have bases there inside Somalia now?
And, and to what degree are they using them?
Very, there's a great amount of activity in and around Somalia, clearly.
And in particular, I think the airport in Mogadishu is a site where you get a lot of, you know, a lot of international efforts are concentrated in, including the launch of some drones.
And they have had bases around the rest of the region as well.
The drones are active, you know, they have been for many, many years.
I was in Mogadishu back in 2010.
I was actually the first American who went into Somalia, apart from some Navy SEALs guys, which no one's supposed to know about, I think.
But, you know, I was the first American who went into Somalia after the rise of al-Shabaab.
And you could hear the drones flying around at night, even, even then, seven years ago, and the activity has escalated subsequently.
So, you know, if you're standing, you know, out in a cafe somewhere after dark in Mogadishu, you are going to hear the sound of drones overhead.
They are, they are very present.
And Somalis will tell you, oh, you know, that's this type of drone.
And oh, that's that type of drone.
They're, they're really quite expert in recognizing them.
It's just been such a feature of their lives for so long.
Well, you know, I'm going to try to get Sam Oakford from Air Wars on the show later today to talk about what's going on in Syria and Iraq.
And, but that makes me wonder, I'm trying to remember whether they keep track of drone strikes in Somalia.
I think they must, but do you have any idea of how frequently they actually kill people with these things?
You know, I have to say, I don't track them with great attention.
There are groups that do.
I think the drone, you know, the drone strikes are fairly common.
I would guess that they're about probably three or so a year, and they are usually pretty carefully targeted.
One thing that the U.S. has done well in recent years, and partially because of the very strong advocacy efforts by experts in the policy community, is they've realized that the Somalis don't like al-Shabaab and the Somalis don't like foreign radicals.
And that if the U.S. targets those people without hurting innocent Somalis, generally it doesn't trigger a backlash.
You know, in the early days of the Bush administration, for example, there were attacks in Somalia that killed civilians and it caused a huge uproar.
But subsequently, the U.S. has learned, don't hurt civilians.
And to be fair, and to give credit where credit is due, the United States is the only actor in Somalia that has built a reputation for not killing innocent people.
I was just going to say, what about the Ethiopians?
I mean, because when the Ethiopians abuse people, then that drives them into al-Shabaab anyway, right?
It does.
I mean, it's the catch-22 of this intervention as it's been structured.
You know, you have a massive group of people who are historically the enemies of the Somalis, like the Ethiopians and increasingly the Kenyans, you know, who are regional rivals.
And they're coming into Ethiopia and they're taking territory and they're taking charcoal and they're taking land and they're taking other things that the Somalis value, including their capacity to self-govern.
And they're perceived as occupying forces.
And of course, that triggers anger, which triggers recruitment for al-Shabaab.
And so it's this vicious cycle where, you know, the medicine in a sense is almost worse than a disease and there's no way to get out of it.
It's just this ever going downward spiral.
All right.
Hang on one second.
I got to do this.
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Okay.
Okay.
So do you have any kind of estimate of troop strength of al-Shabaab?
How many people are in that group at this point?
I think you said it's less than it was, say, five years ago.
It most certainly is.
You know, I think the estimates are roughly that there are probably about 5,000 fighters who we would consider to be fairly serious jihadis, people who've been through al-Shabaab's training camps, who are indoctrinated, who have a sense of religious purpose when they're fighting, on top of, you know, what motivates the vast majority of people who occasionally cooperate with al-Shabaab or call themselves al-Shabaab.
And those people are, you know, they're working with al-Shabaab because of, you know, clan rivalries.
You know, the group that they've been fighting for ages is getting backed by the government and is taking their cattle.
So they're like, okay, well, we're going to be backed by al-Shabaab so we can get our cattle back.
And it's nothing really to do with religion.
Because Somalia, obviously, like many other nations that we're fighting in, you know, there are complicated politics at play.
It's not really about religion most of the time.
Sure.
Well, and the Somalis never were, you know, I guess, Saudis when it comes to their Islamic beliefs and all of that.
I think, as you were saying before, the Islamic Courts Union, which the Bush administration treated like it was the Taliban in the service of al-Qaeda or whatever, that was really just the old men of the neighborhood.
And I don't know, I guess I read somewhere that they had shut down a couple of movie theaters or something, but they certainly didn't have even the ability to be an authoritarian state like the Taliban, even if they had had the motivation to be that bad.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I mean, the Somalis historically have been a very permissive society.
They're a very capitalist society.
They're very entrepreneurial.
They're not...
This is an African nation.
So if you go into a village in Somalia, you're going to see people who sacrifice animals to their ancestors.
You know, in a sense, if you're out in the village somewhere deep in Somalia, you're going to find a version of Islam that sort of looks like voodoo does compared to Christianity.
It's not the formal Islam that we encounter in the Middle East.
It's a very heavily African, it's a village sort of thing.
And the way that counter-terror analysts and officials back in 2006 sort of made assumptions about what was going on in Somalia based on what they understood from the Middle East was really disastrous.
You know, they didn't understand the terrain and they didn't understand the culture.
Yeah, well, and I remember back at Christmas 2006, when they launched the invasion, the Washington Post had it on good authority that there were three al-Qaeda guys who were wanted for questioning by the FBI because they had been indicted, or at least were under investigation for participation in the crimes of the Africa Embassy attacks, or was it the USS Cole or both?
And this was before Cheney had declared war and had put the indict and prosecute model aside.
And so there were literally three criminal suspects.
And the Washington Post with a straight face said, well, yeah, you see why we have to do this then.
Yeah, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
I mean, we launched an army, basically, because we were worried about three guys.
It's not a very good use of resources.
Yeah.
And now the worst part of this is the famine that you mentioned in 2000, I guess, what, 10 through 12 there.
So yeah.
And now, so you mentioned the charcoal part of it.
So I guess that's the part I know the least about.
Can you elaborate on that a little bit about how much that had to do with the famine?
Yeah, well, basically, you know, Somalia is, it's always tormented by drought.
It has a lot of great arable land, but the weather there is, is frequently very dry.
And one of the things that Al-Shabaab did in an effort to get money to conduct its war was to burn a lot of trees to produce charcoal, which they then sold on to buyers in the Middle East.
And the massive burning of charcoal that they conducted led to profound deforestation in Southern Somalia and soil erosion, which went then when Somalia was hit with, you know, one of these periodic droughts, it was dramatically aggravated by the fact that, that so much environmental damage had taken place at Al-Shabaab's hands.
Well, now they already had a charcoal industry before, but they just kept it renewable resource style, you know, as a business.
And yet, but Al-Shabaab just came in and slashed and burned everything.
Is that it?
Yeah.
They, they started operating at an industrial scale.
And that was why, you know, that famine, you know, it was also complicated by the fact that there was conflict and people had been uprooted from their homes.
There were so many IDPs.
But Al-Shabaab was squarely blamed for the famine by the Somali people because of that, that activity that they had been conducting with the charcoal burning.
Well, and yeah, and like you say, just the war itself meant that the entire country was unstable and insecure.
And so who can grow a crop or take it to market and who has any money to buy it?
The whole place was, had been turned upside down at that point.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I, I would certainly not say that the, the humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia is equal to that in Syria, but there is no doubt that, you know, but for the Ethiopian invasion and but for the rise of Al-Shabaab, but that famine would never have occurred.
And, you know, we have to understand the UN estimates that 260,000 people died from 2010 to 2012.
And one out of every five children who lived in Mogadishu under the age of five died as a result of that famine.
And can you imagine living in a city where one out of every five babies has died?
Toddlers has died.
It's the cost of, of the miscalculations that have taken place in Somalia are truly devastating.
And as you said, Scott, they just, they don't make the news.
What's the weather like there now?
Well, as you know, there is a, a horrific drought that's sweeping many countries in East Africa, including Somalia.
But also Ethiopia is hard hit by it.
And across the water, Yemen is hard hit.
It's a bad time.
It is a very, very bad time for the horn on top of the, you know, the massive political unrest that is, it's just embedded in every single country in that region.
You also have really devastating climate and, and drought events that are occurring.
And yeah, I mean, I don't know how many people are going to die as a result of it.
But the estimates are horrifying.
You have millions and millions of people who are at risk of starving right now.
Well, so you mentioned the water there.
That's the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
I'm sure I'm probably mispronouncing it there.
But the mouth at the gate of the Red Sea, a major strategic choke point for global trade and military power and everything else.
And isn't that what this is all about?
Rather than a bunch of nonsense about Al-Shabaab or anything else that America has to dominate at least one, if not both sides of that strait there?
Well, I mean, the US certainly has reason to be worried about the strait.
It, you know, it's the major choke point for all of the trade that passes between Asia and Europe.
And there's, I think about, if I'm not getting that estimate wrong, there's at least a trillion dollars worth of trade that passes through there every year.
And so it is an area that the US is profoundly concerned about.
But, you know, I wouldn't downplay the importance of terrorism to the United States.
And in particular, Somalia has, you know, since the Black Hawk Down incident, way, way back in the mid-1990s, the US has been really afraid of Somalia and the potential for Somalia to be a safe haven for terrorists who can threaten US interests throughout the region, including the strait.
And, you know, it's a Somali pirate epidemic that the world sort of struggled through a few years ago, and which is on the verge of recurring.
Yeah, that was another major concern for the US.
So it's a region that, you know, is very, very challenging.
And dealing with it has not, obviously, it's not been easy.
And I think the US has to do much better.
Yeah, boy, how frustrating was that during all the hype about the pirates and still no one would ever talk about George Bush's war there.
Yeah, I remember even on South Park, they had a great episode all about that ended with the poor little Somali boy explained that being a pirate isn't fun.
You know, I almost die every day.
And it's the only thing that I can do to stay alive.
And it's kind of like, wow, they're telling the story of what's going on there.
But yeah, no mention of America's role whatsoever.
It was just what a crappy African place to live.
That must be shrugged.
Yeah, yeah, I love South Park.
Yeah, me too.
That was why I was so disappointed, because I really thought that they had somehow stumbled upon the story there.
But no, they'd missed it too.
So, geez, there's so much here.
I guess, can we talk a little bit about Eritrea?
This is another of Ethiopia's enemies.
And for some reason, I'm not really sure Obama's cabinet really had it in for Eritrea, even more than Bush's, I guess.
But this is one of the reasons I was so interested to talk to you again is because if one searches your name, what we find is you saying, now, now, let's not get too carried away with all our demonizing of this country.
We don't control everybody.
And so I'm interested in hearing some of that, I guess.
Yeah, sure.
You know, Eritrea is a really challenging country.
If you do a search on Eritrea, the first thing you'll probably see is Eritrea is the North Korea of Africa.
Eritrea is a country that the human rights community is very, very concerned about.
There are allegations that the country is, you know, it's a slave camp, basically, and that the entire country is under military conscription and that the government is brutal and tortures people and locks them up.
And as a result, you'll read that there's 5000 people a month who pour over the border into neighboring Ethiopia and Sudan and eventually find their way to Europe.
So if you read about the migrant crisis in Europe and about the people drowning in the Mediterranean, very frequently, you'll read the people who are drowning are from Eritrea.
So Eritrea is, you know, it's a country that people have every reason to be concerned about.
It's a country that's been locked in a stalemate, a military stalemate with Ethiopia since 2000, basically.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a war over the border in 1998.
They came to a sort of negotiated ceasefire in 2000.
And then they went to court to sort of litigate the dispute.
And it was never really resolved.
Because Ethiopia has refused to honor the ruling, it's keeping its troops in Eritrea despite being told to get them out.
And the US has never intervened in that problem.
Because obviously, the US relies very heavily on Ethiopia for various services in the Horn of Africa, including, of course, its deployment of troops to Somalia.
So it's part of this whole mess that we've created in the Horn.
And to be fair, the US hasn't created problems in the Horn of Africa, they were certainly there to begin with.
But the US has jumped into those problems, and in many cases made it worse.
You know, I find Eritrea very, very challenging.
It is a country that certainly has profound human rights abuses that are taking place.
My beef with the way that the US treats Eritrea, and the way the human rights community treats Eritrea, is that frankly, it's not worse than any other country in the Horn, when it comes to the human rights situation.
You know, if you look at South Sudan, millions of people have been displaced, children are burned alive in houses, women are systematically raped, the government bombs civilians on a regular basis.
And of course, if you look at next door Ethiopia, we've talked about Ethiopian violence in Somalia, but locally, they are locking up tens of thousands of people who are protesting for democratic rights, and a wave of other abuses, including an absolute destruction of freedom of the press, and political freedoms, and everything else.
And we're not even going to talk about Somalia, because we've been discussing how bad the human rights situation is there.
So, essentially, Eritrea is a bad actor among many, many, many bad actors.
But the policy towards it is completely just out of touch with what we're doing in the rest of the Horn.
Ethiopia is described as a paragon of virtue, and we flood it with military and humanitarian and development assistance.
And Eritrea is sanctioned and isolated.
Okay, but wait a minute.
I mean, it's not like there's a Soviet Union that must be their patron in the bipolar world instead.
So, why can't the Americans just go over there and make a deal?
I mean, obviously, their problem is that this country is independent from their rule, but that's pretty easy to solve.
We solve that problem all the time here in the USA.
We have, you know, and part of the issue with Eritrea is, in all honesty, I know them pretty well at this point, and, you know, they're difficult to work with.
They are unbending, and they will not play ball.
You know, they simply will not play ball on any level.
And they are frequently insulting to people, including to Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor.
They just, they don't do themselves any favors.
And so, what's happened is that's led to a situation where Eritrea is isolated because of its politics, and that's really made it a target, a target for people who are looking for a human rights cause and a target for people in various administrations, U.S. administrations, who, you know, don't like the government and are very happy to see it isolated, and also a target for people who just appreciate what Ethiopia has been doing and want to give Ethiopia what it wants, which is for Eritrea to remain weak and isolated and unable to defend its border.
So, it's almost a perfect storm of problems facing this country.
But the bottom line is, the Eritrean people deserve better.
They deserve to have access to development.
They deserve access to trade and investment.
And as long as Eritrea is being isolated and painted with, you know, a scarlet letter, essentially, none of those things are going to happen.
And you're going to get this hideous stalemate in which there can be no progress and there can be no improvement.
And, you know, I find that really unacceptable.
It's another situation of unnecessary suffering.
Things could easily be much better in Eritrea than they are.
And it's, in my view, it's well within the power of the United States if we have a change in policy to help improve the situation.
And we're not doing it.
That's one of the things that always really drives me crazy.
When, you know, when things are terrible and they don't have to be and there's really no good reason.
In Eritrea, it's just, it's a phenomenal case in point.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, I'd like to ask you about South Sudan, but I'm already keeping you over here.
But can I ask you one more thing real quick?
Sure.
Can you talk about the, is it the Oromos, the minority group in Ethiopia?
Because I think I read that there'd been some trouble again there with the government persecuting them, or maybe it never did stop.
Yeah, I mean, Ethiopia, Ethiopia is very challenging.
You know, it is a country that is generally held up as a model.
Yeah, it's a stellar partner in the war on terrorism.
And this is, of course, the press, not my own personal opinion.
But it's also generally held up as a fantastic model of government-led development.
So if you look at Ethiopia, you know, 25 years ago, there was a communist regime called the Derg in power.
It was hideously brutal.
This government rose up and defeated it.
And it subsequently put Ethiopia on a track of economic growth and increasing political freedom.
Except starting, you know, about 10 years ago, when there was an election in 2005 that the government lost.
An enormous crackdown on the opposition and the human rights community and the NGOs, humanitarian actors began.
And Ethiopia has been in a downward spiral ever since then.
The government is controlled by the Tigrayan ethnic minority.
It's about 6% of the population.
And the Oromos, who you mentioned, are a group of approximately 30% of the Ethiopian population.
And the Oromos feel that, you know, that essentially, the government, and when they say government, they do mean sort of this ethnic minority, has taken more than they deserve and that they, the Oromo, have been systematically disenfranchised.
And it's not just the Oromo, the Amhara, who are up in the northern part, the Oromos are in the south and the Amhara are more up in the north.
They feel very disenfranchised as well.
They've historically been the rulers of Ethiopia, and they've been out in the cold for a while.
And the Ogaden, who are over towards Somalia in the east, they also feel disenfranchised.
And they've had a secessionist movement fighting for decades at this point.
And so if you look at a map of Ethiopia, I think you'll see that most of the region, including smaller little corners like Gambela, they're all up in arms.
They're all up there with the status quo.
It's amazing they have enough troops to invade Somalia with twice.
Yeah, they do.
I mean, the Ethiopian security apparatus is really massive.
I mean, if you want to talk about a North Korea of Africa, frankly, in my view, Ethiopia looks a lot more like it than Eritrea does.
Is it the 6% minority that makes up the whole army?
Or it's the other groups that make up the army that is used against their own people?
Yeah, I mean, this is one of the problems.
I mean, the officer class tends to be Tigrayan.
And there are special forces units who have conducted most of the human rights abuses in Ethiopia during the protest period, who also tend to be Tigrayan in ethnicity.
And I don't want to turn this into an ethnic thing.
It's not exclusively an ethnic problem.
It's a problem of distribution of wealth.
But yes, the majority of the foot soldier class in Ethiopia is composed of of Oromo, and also Amhara and other ethnicities.
So you can send them off to Somalia and then use the minority forces to keep the majority populations in check, I guess.
It is a really worrying situation in Ethiopia.
I am very concerned about the possibility of ethnic warfare occurring there.
I don't want to use the word genocide.
But you know, it's always a risk in Africa, because when you have a situation where people say, hey, you know, there's this government that's taking all of the benefits of development, and they happen to be one tiny ethnicity, a very, very small portion of the population, and the majority feels that they're not getting anything from the development, and in fact, their land is being taken from them.
It's very combustible.
And the Ethiopians have not managed it successfully on any level.
So the situation keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
Well, and this is the problem with American aid, say, never even mind, you know, the war in Somalia and them doing America's dirty work in that sense.
But really, whatever financial or military aid, or, you know, any aid we give their internal security forces or whatever, we're really tilting the scales there.
And making, you know, whatever progress could be made toward redistributing that power that much more difficult and making it that much easier for the minority to oppress the majority.
And so it ultimately, usually in this type situation, just make matters worse, but we kind of prolong the outcome.
And that's what makes matters worse, is the correction ends up coming, but it comes later and harder.
Exactly.
Well, and not only that, but quite honestly, you know, I've worked in Ethiopia for a long time, and I know a lot of people there.
I know all the leaders of the opposition, and I've been told by them so many times, you know, this is America's fault.
The Ethiopian government would not be as big as it is, would not be as strong as it is, we would not be having these problems, if American taxpayers weren't giving them all that money.
And when the Ethiopian government changes, and eventually it will, when the opposition rises, or when there's violence in the streets, the United States is not going to be regarded by them as an ally, or as trustworthy.
And one thing to keep in mind in Ethiopia is that these protests started with the Muslim community.
And all of the experts on Ethiopia that I know agree that Ethiopia is now a Muslim majority country.
And the Ethiopian government, because it wants to have an excuse for brutalizing these protesters, has been calling these people terrorists.
They've been using the language of the war on terrorism to crack down on them.
And the United States has remained silent, has continued to give the Ethiopian government weapons to do this, but has not defended these people.
And so we've given the impression that we, the United States, are actively cracking down on the Muslim community in Ethiopia.
And we know what that causes eventually.
It causes terrorism, which is self-defeating for our purposes, because we certainly don't want another front in the war on terrorism at this stage.
But it's very, very clear that that's what our actions are leading to.
I mean, honestly, I guess— Well, that depends if you're speaking for the American people and the national interests, or the interests of those who do the fighting.
Because it is in their interest to have more enemies to fight from now on forever.
Yeah.
I mean, my own view is this is incompetent more than anything else.
Well, I probably wouldn't dispute that either.
You know, there's nothing like, you know, government and especially the military for failing upwards and getting a promotion to solve the problem that you just created.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I really think one of the big problems is that we take a very short-term approach to tackling problems in Africa.
It's just crisis management.
And I think during the Obama administration, what occurred to them was, hey, let's get African troops to fight terrorists in Africa, because we want to put American boots on the ground, and that's great.
And then there was this whole rhetoric that sprung up called African solutions to African problems, where we celebrated the fact that we were empowering dictators to fight terrorism.
And we, you know, sort of said this is something about empowering African people, which is kind of the opposite of what it is in practice.
But yeah.
All right.
Well, that's Bronwyn Bruton.
Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
It's really been great.
Thanks.
Thanks, Scott.
Really appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
That is Bronwyn Bruton, again, at the Atlantic Council.
Pretty good, though, right?
All right, y'all.
And that's The Scott Horton Show.
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