04/12/16 – Bronwyn Bruton – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
All right, y'all.
Scott Horton Show.
I'm him.
Sign up for the podcast feeds, the interviews only, and the Just Me stuff at scotthorton.org.
Follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show.
All right, introducing Bronwyn Bruton.
And she is from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council.
And she's written this study, Somalia, A New Approach.
And a friend had sent the other day a video of a talk that she gave at the Cato Institute with Emma Ashford and some others on the topic of Somalia, which was really great.
So I'm very happy to have you on the show.
Welcome.
How are you doing, Bronwyn?
Great.
Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate you doing this.
And I'm kind of sorry to ask you this way, but would you basically give them the rundown the way you did at that talk at Cato and just sort of explain?
I mean, I know it's kind of a tall order, but you do such a great job of it.
And just that nutshell of the past 15 years of the USA messing around in this weakest, most helpless little country in East Africa, you know, it seems really important that people have a chance to really hear how this works sometimes, you know?
Yeah, sure.
Well, basically, you know, over at the Cato Institute, what we were saying was that in Somalia, it's a country that the U.S. has always been afraid of because, you know, a lot of you might remember that back in the 90s, there was an incident that we call Black Hawk Down.
The U.S. was involved in humanitarian work, and it went awry, and a lot of American soldiers were killed.
They were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
And ever since then, I think there's been a sense of fear and confusion around Somalia that we don't understand it and that they're hostile to us.
And after 9-11, there was a real fear, especially from Washington, that in the growing sort of terrorist threat, that Somalia would become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda in particular, because since 1991, Somalia had been an anarchy.
The government had collapsed, and it had never been reestablished.
And there is this sort of ideological belief in Washington, both on the Democratic and the Republican side, that any country that didn't have a government was basically a security vacuum, and any security vacuum was necessarily going to become a safe haven, particularly if you were talking about a place like Somalia.
So the U.S. intervened and tried its best, working with the regional countries, to build a government for Somalia.
But unfortunately, that had really adverse consequences.
Outside of Somalia, the country was actually on a good track.
It was a mess.
There was no government.
There was things like, you know, robbery and murders and kidnappings and theft, a lot of vulnerability for people who were not majority Klan members.
There wasn't a great place to live.
There was absolutely no terrorist threat.
Al-Qaeda had tried to establish itself in Somalia in the 90s, and basically, Somalia was so inhospitable to them that they ran away screaming.
There's hundreds and hundreds of pages of correspondence from Al-Qaeda operatives that you can read.
They're unclassified now, talking about how horrible Somalia was, how much they hated every single aspect of it.
And that correspondence had led the West Point Counterterrorism Center to decide that, when they did their analysis, that Somalia was, in their words, inoculated, basically vaccinated against Al-Qaeda.
It just was not fertile ground for them.
But unfortunately, you know, that message didn't get through, and when the U.S. tried to create a government, the locals reacted in a really harsh way.
They started assassinating people who were associated with the government, which in turn made the CIA think that, hey, this must be an Al-Qaeda move, you know, they're assassinating pro-Western people.
So then the CIA reacted, and they went into Mogadishu, and they hired the most despised and criminal and hated group of warlords they could find, unfortunately, to start nabbing these bad guys who were killing people associated with the government.
These warlords were not the right people to be working with, and they actually made their association with the CIA public.
They created a fancy name for themselves.
The Alliance for the Peace and Restoration of Counterterrorism in Somalia, or something like that.
And when the people of Mogadishu found out that the CIA was bankrolling these hideous warlords that they hated so much, they revolted.
And they threw the warlords out, and they created their own government, which happened to be a network of Islamic courts, because that was the only thing that was a government, or anything sort of like a government in Somalia at the time.
And then there was another counter-reaction, where the U.S. decided that those guys must be al-Qaeda, because, well, they must be.
And I can't be more specific than that, except to say that there was such a belief at the time that Somalia would be a haven for al-Qaeda, that any development was interpreted in that way.
And in order to deal with this threat, the U.S. unofficially green-lighted an invasion by Ethiopia, who went in and destroyed this nascent government that was actually doing some good things.
And once the government was destroyed, and Ethiopia had taken over the city of Mogadishu, that was when this horrible terrorist group al-Shabaab was essentially invented.
They had been running around in a small way before, but they became a national resistance movement because, and only because, of the Ethiopian occupation, which was supported by the U.S.
And so, essentially, we invented the problem, the terrorist problem, in Somalia.
And our various responses to it have caused incredible humanitarian suffering there.
You know, there was a famine in Somalia in 2011 that was largely man-made, and was created in large part because of al-Shabaab and their devastation of the Somali environment, burning down forests and the like.
But the chain goes all the way back to the fact that al-Shabaab was in power in Somalia because of all of the meddling that had been taking place largely at the U.S.'s behest.
So it's one of these cases where there's basically been a phenomenal amount of human suffering and a phenomenal amount of U.S. capital and international capital invested in first creating and then trying to repair a problem that never had to exist in the first place.
Just amazing.
Really is.
All right.
So now the follow-ups.
Plenty of follow-ups here.
You're probably aware of a statement made by Wesley Clark.
In fact, I have it right here.
It's really short.
Let me play it for you real quick.
This is him describing the days just after September 11th.
This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
Okay.
Well, that's the short version.
Sorry.
He explains he's at the Pentagon.
He's retired.
He's not officially a general anymore, but he's at the Pentagon after September 11th.
And someone calls him in, General Clark, you've got to see this.
And they show him that this is the agenda.
We're going after these countries.
So my question for you then is, as far as you're aware, is that because of this whole power vacuum theory that, oh, geez, as long as there's a power vacuum, it will be a safe haven for al Qaeda?
I mean, of course, you can't really look at Somalia on a map without noticing that it's a very important strategic location as well, at the gates of the Red Sea, et cetera.
So were they really just afraid or they were pretending to be afraid because they had an agenda for doing something to Somalia, installing some kind of new regime there?
You know, I can't speak directly to the thinking of General Clark, but I know that broadly, it's very clear that the U.S. and policy analysts and security strategists in the U.S. have a fear of failed states.
There's a lot of literature on failed states and the risks that they pose to global security.
And for a long time, it's been, you know, various presidents over the years, Bush, Obama, again, Republicans and Democrats alike, have said that they feel that failed states are one of the biggest threats to the U.S. security in the world today because they can be used by the bad guys, particularly terrorists, in the old days associated with AQ, but now with ISIS and others.
They're playgrounds where people can train and become indoctrinated and can launch attacks.
And that was why they were afraid of Somalia.
As I said, it wasn't that they could look at Somalia and say, look, there's this bad guy and that bad guy.
They didn't have hard evidence that Al-Qaeda was using Somalia as a safe haven.
They just thought that it would happen inevitably.
Yeah.
And it was the wrong call.
It's interesting, too, about the stateless situation as it existed in the country before.
For some reason, you know, there were, I guess, maybe three or four studies done by various institutes that said, hey, wow, look, this is the best the Somalis have ever been doing.
Economically speaking, there was no one to collect taxes at the port.
So there's all kind of trade in the port in Mogadishu and the cell phone industry was growing at a rate, you know, the highest, at least in that part of Africa and all these things.
And now that's actually even a joke among liberal activists when they mock libertarians that, oh, if you don't like government, just go move to Somalia.
But in fact, that was the best Somalia was ever doing after the days of communism and then all the fighting warlords and everything else.
Finally, everybody had basically just worn themselves out.
There was no one strong enough to really loot everybody.
So people were, you know, de facto free in a sense.
And it was working until America intervened.
Is that right?
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to overplay the idea that it was working.
I mean, if if if you are a poor minority person and someone comes to your house and rapes your family and burns your house down and steals everything you have, you didn't have a lot of recourse.
So, you know, there wasn't a functioning police force, for example.
So, you know, if you didn't have friends with thicker guns, you were kind of out of luck.
But at the same time, you know, the the Siad Barre regime, the military dictatorship that existed before was so horrible that most Somalis did prefer living without a government.
The governments that they'd experienced had been so violent and predatory.
And as you said, I mean, it's a regulation free environment.
The Somalis are incredibly entrepreneurial.
They're capitalists.
To the core, we actually have a lot in common with them in that way.
And they were building I mean, they were building the most amazing mobile network in Africa was faster and cheaper than anywhere else.
There were private schools, their private hospitals.
It wasn't you know, it wasn't a horrible place.
And the main thing was that whereas Somalia had had this the civil war where the clans attacked each other wholesale, when the U.S. intervened in 2006 with Ethiopia, basically, as you say, the Somalis were more or less at peace.
And on a very, very small level, they were they were reconciling, you know, they were making arrangements with each other, you know, business arrangement, water arrangement.
And they were starting to knit their the fabric of their community back together in a really slow way.
But it was an upward trajectory.
And I think that when Ethiopia invaded, that trajectory took a steep turn downward.
Lots of people got killed, thousands on thousands on thousands of people got killed in the famine alone.
They see 250,000 people died and most of them children under the age of five.
Oh, that's an important point.
Let me let me follow up on that and we can get back to it later, actually, too, if you want.
But Fusenet in 2013 said that 600,000 people had died, more than half of them children or I believe half of them children under five years old, they said.
Is that an overestimate, do you think?
Well, I mean, I think so.
The 250 number is for the year that surrounded the 2011 famine.
And Fusenet's talking about sort of probably, I would guess, the 2010 to 2013 period.
So it's a bigger period of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At least I think they are at least talking about a two year period rather than just one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, the point being that to me, I mean, you you have to think about this in human terms.
They estimate that in the city of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, one out of every five children under the age of five died.
So if you think about it, one out of five, imagine 20 percent of your kids kindergarten class dying in a year, the human suffering and trauma that's involved in that.
You never hear it on the news.
Nobody talks about this as being something that resulted in large part because of decisions made by U.S. and U.N. policymakers.
Nobody is talking about what impact this is going to have on the Somali people moving forward.
And we talk about you hear government officials in this country all the time talking about how, you know, this government in Somalia is the best chance that the Somali people have had, that, you know, we've we've done great things in Somalia and moving the country forward.
But we don't take responsibility for the horrible, horrible situation that we've created there.
I think if you look at 2009 and you look at today, you can say, yes, things are better than they were.
But if you look at what it was like in 2002 and compare it to today, it's a terrible night.
We've set Somalia back by decades.
All right.
Now, another thing I wanted to ask you about is.
Jeremy Scahill's book, Dirty Wars, on page 222, he explains that and I believe he quotes a State Department spokesman explaining that they didn't even really want to destroy the Islamic courts union with the Ethiopian invasion of 2006 that the US backed.
That what they really wanted to do was basically bring them down a peg that Sheikh Sharif, you know, was talking too much and we wanted to make sure that he knew who was boss and whatever.
And that they basically what what ended up being the compromise where in 2008 they let the leaders of the Islamic courts union or at least let Sheikh Sharif and some of his people go ahead and be the government as long as they would accept the form of the US and UN created transitional federal government there.
That that was really their plan all along.
And I wonder whether is that really right or do you know about that?
You know, I think I don't know exactly the reference you're talking about.
I've read Jeremy's work and he's really great.
I really admire the research that he's done.
I think one of the major problems that we've had in Somalia is the insistence that the US and UN have had that everybody has to be on the side of the government.
You know, if you're a Shabab, they say, you know, we will talk to anybody, but they have to acknowledge the government's authority.
And in 2006, when they were trying to negotiate with the Union of Islamic Courts, they were saying, well, you know, if you acknowledge the government's authority, then maybe they'll cut a deal with you.
And the Union of Islamic Courts is saying, wait a second, we control all the territory.
We have all the support of the people.
The government was created in Kenya and they can't even set foot in Somalia without international soldiers protecting them.
So why should we?
Why should we as an opening gambit in our negotiation agree that the this foreign government is is, you know, the legitimate authority in Somalia?
It's not.
And so that's always been it's always been a hurdle.
And I think you can parse things and say, well, you know, they were willing to work with the Islamic courts.
But that that condition was basically, you know, regarded by first the Union of Islamic Courts, later by al-Shabaab as basically total capitulation.
You know, it's just a refusal to meet them halfway.
And so it's always been a deal breaker.
And is that really where, you know, I'm sorry, because I'm going off the sketchiest information, trying my best here.
But my understanding is that at the point where in 08, when Sheikh Sharif and some others went ahead and made their deal with Condoleezza Rice, that that was when al-Shabaab really became a problem, because previous to that, they had been under the control of the old men who had founded the Islamic Courts Union.
But once the old man, quote unquote, sold out to the U.S. and the U.N. and al-Shabaab broke off, now there was nobody in charge except young hotheads.
Is that basically right?
Or is that too simple?
Yeah, I mean, so al-Shabaab back before the Ethiopian invasion, they were sort of the muscle of the Union of Islamic Courts and they were hotheads and they weren't liked by anybody.
So basically they were this fringe group of radicals that everybody was sort of looking askance at.
And then after the Ethiopians invaded, the courts were largely destroyed.
I mean, overnight they were destroyed.
They just disintegrated.
And al-Shabaab emerged as the only people who could counter the Ethiopians.
So they got just a ton of popular support, this wave of popular support for their activities, which previously people were looking at them and saying, you guys are crazy, you're radicals, you're so extreme.
You're not Somali.
We don't like you.
The Ethiopians came in and everyone was like, hey, you're our heroes.
We love you.
So we pretty much pushed the entire population into the arms of these radicals.
At the same time, there was a big flood of foreign terrorists because al-Qaeda saw what was happening and they said, hey, this is a fantastic opportunity.
And so they flooded Somalia with jihadi tourists who went to help al-Shabaab, which again, made al-Shabaab even more radical and more deadly because they were receiving training.
At the same time, the U.S. was trying to cut a deal to bring al-Shabaab into the fold, but they didn't want to deal with any of the more radical people.
And so they only dealt with the most moderate among the Islamist crowd in Somalia.
And what you were talking about did happen.
The people who are more moderate were sort of drawn away onto the government side of the equation.
And al-Shabaab was left with the most radical actors and their attitude was, look, we can't cut a deal, so we're just going to fight.
And it's one of the harsh lessons learned.
I think it's a mistake that we wouldn't repeat again if the U.S. were playing this out again today, because we've learned that you have to make a deal with the majority of the Islamist movement.
You can't cherry pick the ones you feel are moderate because they don't represent the worst.
They don't represent the majority oftentimes, and you need to bring everybody to the table or the deal doesn't work.
But that wasn't the thinking back in the old days.
OK, now, another thing is I spoke with an expert, a journalist, I forget if he was a professor, a journalist now, Francis Nesbitt, about Somalia back, I guess, a couple of years ago now, and he was talking about how al-Shabaab had lost the port town of Kismayo, where they were making a lot of money selling charcoal, et cetera, and that once the Kenyans kicked them out of there, OK, that was a strategic victory or a tactical victory, but a strategic loss because what it did was it it pushed Somalia deeper into the pockets of their Saudi financiers because now they're even more loyal to international, more dependent on international support and now more loyal to the goals of their international supporters, whereas before, you know, they were basically relatively contained and now matters are that much worse.
What do you say to that?
Well, you know, Kismayo is a is a real problem area.
It's it's the second major port in Somalia and it is the hub for the, you know, the charcoal industry, the illegal charcoal industry, and it's an industry that that deforested Somalia and created the drought that caused these famines that we're talking about.
The Kenyan government's capture of Kismayo has really done damage to the international cause, not least because they took over the international charcoal trade and they've they've been taking all the profits from it, except unfortunately, because of the rampant corruption on the Kenyan side, people estimate that Al-Shabaab actually now make more money from the charcoal trade dealing with the Kenyans than they did when they controlled the port by themselves.
So it's a disaster on so many different levels.
You know, the the Gulf connection to Somalia is problematic.
It's hard to know exactly what kind of money we're talking about because everything is so opaque.
One of the problems that the Somali government has is that the U.S. doesn't want to give them money directly because they did PricewaterhouseCoopers did an audit several years ago of government finances, and they found that of all the money that the international community gave to the Somali government, 96 percent was unaccounted for.
Ninety six percent.
Somebody gives you money and you can't say what you did with 96 percent of it, they're not going to give you any more.
So the Somali government basically had to turn to partners in the Gulf who are a little bit less particular about what they do with the cash in order to, you know, to grow and build capacity and also to feed their corruption.
And so there's been a real opportunity, I think, for for non-Western actors to gain influence because of that.
And, you know, it's it's you know, it's just the way the world is these days.
I mean, the U.S. is not the sole power any longer.
And there are other actors who who always step in to try to pursue their their goal.
But it's something that makes the situation in Somalia harder to deal with, for sure.
Yeah.
OK, now I won't keep you too much longer, but let me just ask you what to do now.
And I hope you say just quit.
You know, I don't think we should just quit.
You know, I I used to say that we should.
My advice to the the U.S. government has always been that it's too early to build a government in Somalia.
That the thing that we have in common with Somalis, as I said, is that they're capitalists and they're entrepreneurs.
And what we need in Somalia is to promote reconciliation among the various clans that have been at each other's throats.
And that's at the heart of all Somalia's problems.
And I've always said that doing development work and economic investment is the way to make Somalia a safer place for the Somalis and for the U.S.
And that going in and trying to pick political winners and losers is just going to create conflict and create openings for for radical groups and terrorists.
So I think we need I do think we still need to stick with that approach.
You know, we need to find a way to make Somalis feel safe, but to really concentrate on giving them opportunities to to grow, you know, to to grow the country economically.
It's harder to do that now because we've made such a mess there.
Now, when I was giving that advice back in 2009 and 2010, Al-Shabaab was still, you know, it was it was still a fringe group.
People were not very conservative religiously.
You know, they didn't like terrorists.
You know, Al-Shabaab, if the Somalis were left to their own devices, would have withered and died.
Now it's a harder situation because, as I've said, you know, so many children have died.
So many people have suffered.
There's radicalization that's taken place.
It's going to be a lot harder to reverse.
You know, I feel like we've we've made a problem there that's not going to be easy to disengage from.
I'm not sure that it would be responsible just to pull the plug and leave, unfortunately.
Well, now, you did say when you're talking about the era of statelessness there after the dictatorship, that it kind of took a while.
But what was happening before America short circuited it was that the the various factions in Somalia were really working out their natural amount of of relative power to each other.
They were basically finding their natural price level on the market of their power and authority, so to speak.
And what America did was come in and blow a giant bubble.
And then it popped and created a bunch of distortions in the market and all that kind of thing.
So the question is, how could I mean, even if it was you in charge of the policy over there, could you really figure out how from the outside, from an American point of view, to to try to sift this out and help those factions find their their real natural amount of power?
Or would it just be really not someone even as good as you picking winners and losers and picking wrong?
Because how else can they pick just because of the information problem?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, well, I think you put your your your finger absolutely on the crux of the matter, which is that what was what Somalia had working for it before was the fact that they were being left alone and there wasn't anything left to fight over.
And when the US comes in with its resources and with its ability to, you know, to play kingmaker, it's like it's like sending a rush of oxygen at a fire.
You know, it rekindles the conflict.
And what the US has to do is figure out how it can promote growth and reconciliation in Somalia without distorting the market, you know, without adding a whole bunch of resources that people are going to fight over without picking winners and losers.
And at this point, while also dealing with its counterterror concerns.
So it has to find a way to have good intelligence.
So when I when it identifies people who are bad actors, they can be dealt with appropriately.
But it also has to find a way to encourage the Somalis to get back to that small scale peace building investment kind of activities without worrying about, you know, this this government that might seize their land or the building of a national army and who controls it.
I mean, I think we could do a lot of good by just backing off this government, this idea of building a government and especially the idea of building an army that, frankly, Somalia is not ready for.
And not only Somalia, but the region, Ethiopia and Kenya are also really uncomfortable with the idea of of recreating a big government in Mogadishu.
And the US just has to get this message.
And people like me have been screaming it for years and years and years.
But the thinking is so ingrained that it's a failed state.
It needs the government.
It needs the government over and over.
And you just can't can't get through.
So I appreciate you.
You know, you're you're helping to do that with your show.
Yeah, well, it's a very important subject.
And as you were talking about earlier, the ratio between grief caused and attention paid is just it's completely insane.
In fact, it's sort of in the same cases as it's been with Libya over the last few years.
I'm almost afraid to draw attention to it because attention is always used as an excuse for further intervention.
And I just can't stand that.
But but to think that the most powerful nation ever can pick on the weakest nation ever like this without anyone even complaining, you know, that's intolerable to me.
So we've got to keep covering it best we can.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
No, it's a terrible, terrible tragedy.
And the fact that that nobody knows and that there's no accountability and no one no one will ever be held accountable for what has been done to that country.
Yeah, it's really sad.
Well, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your work on this and your time on the show today.
Thank you so much, Scott.
I really appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
That is Bronwyn Bruton, and she's from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council.
And she's the author of Somalia, A New Approach.
You can find it at CFR dot org.
Sign up for the podcast feeds at Scott Horton dot org.
Hey, y'all, a quick programming note from your host here.
The guest, of course, is absolutely right.
It was approximately two to two hundred fifty thousand people who died in the famine.
And as reported by Fusenet and in my article that I wrote for the Future Freedom Foundation, I got it right there.
I just screwed up the number here in this interview.
I'm not sure why.
I guess I was thinking of the number of people who had died in the Iraq war.
But anyway, of course, the guest is right, is two to two hundred fifty thousand civilians who died in the Somalia famine.
So there you go.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State and The War State.
Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War Two.
This nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone.
We are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon dot com and Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at Scott Horton dot org or The War State dot com.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
On average, how much do you think these interviews are worth to you?
Of course, I've never charged for my archives in a dozen years of doing this, and I'm not about to start.
But at Patreon dot com slash Scott Horton Show, you can name your own prize to help support and make sure there's still new interviews to give away.
So what do you think?
Two bits, a buck and a half.
They're usually about 80 interviews per month, I guess.
So take that into account.
You can also cap the amount you'd be willing to spend in case things get out of hand around here.
That's Patreon dot com slash Scott Horton Show.
And thanks, y'all.
Hey, I'll check out the audio book of Lou Rockwell's Fascism versus Capitalism, narrated by me, Scott Horton at Audible dot com.
It's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of liberty from medieval history to the Ron Paul revolution.
Rockwell blasts our status enemies, profiles our greatest libertarian heroes and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan.
Fascism versus Capitalism by Lou Rockwell for audio book.
Find it at Audible, Amazon, iTunes or just click in the right margin of my website as Scott Horton dot org.