07/29/15 – Sadia Ali Aden – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest today is Saadia Ali-Aden.
You can find her at internationalpolicydigest.org.
A few articles there about Somalia.
And she is described as a human rights advocate and freelance writer on the line from Kenya today.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm in Somalia right now.
Oh, you're in Somalia right now.
OK.
Yeah, yeah.
Good deal.
All right.
So you're in Mogadishu, the capital, then, or?
Yes.
And so I guess, let's see, there's so many different things to ask you about.
Obviously, the president was in town.
But I guess, first of all, overall, could you paint a picture of the strength of the Al-Shabaab insurgency in Somalia now?
How much land they control, how many members they have, anything, ballpark estimates along those lines.
Goodness.
Thank you so much for having me.
As you know, Al-Shabaab right now is taking from a lot of the land that they have controlled before.
But one thing that's happening that I think most of the media has been publishing, at least on this side of the world, is that when the African, the Amazon troops, the African troops that are in Somalia from neighboring countries, and Uganda, are trying to go into area where Al-Shabaab controls, Al-Shabaab usually just vacates the city or the village.
They don't even bother to fight.
So what they're doing is, it's more like a strategic retreat.
So they just do hit them whenever they need to, and of course, that we have seen what they're doing in the capital city of Somalia, Mogadishu, where the last week that we have seen that they have attacked the hotel, Jazeera, which is one of the biggest hotels and the most populated, most populous hotel in this area.
So it seems that they're losing a lot of land.
It seems that they're losing grip on the majority of the areas that they have controlled.
On the other hand, they seem to have still a lot of power because they're still creating a lot of insecurity in different places of Somalia, especially the capital city.
And now, it's been a couple of years since they actually controlled the capital of Mogadishu, correct?
Yes.
Yes.
Two years.
But remember, 2016, December 2016, when Ethiopians invaded, that is really when the whole craziness started.
Remember, al-Shabaab was the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts that was crushed by the Ethiopians.
And then ever since that time, Shabaab has become more of a militant, where they have hit on any foreign troops, particularly the Ethiopians.
And then after Sharif Ahmed came to power with a sort of agreement with the Ethiopian government, with the mediation of the international community, in 2009, they have become on their own, where they were detached from the Union of Islamic Courts, and ever since that time, they have been outliers, where they have been fighting.
And not only the foreign troops, but also the federal government, and anyone else who was associated with the federal government.
Now, I'm sorry, one slight correction, no offense, I just want to make sure that everybody's clear.
When you said 2016, you meant to say 2006, when Ethiopia invaded, when America was supported.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And it...
December 2006, you're right.
And I just wanted to emphasize what it is that you're explaining there for the people that the Islamic Courts Union, which was the government at that time, when America supported the Ethiopian invasion, that's what really turned al-Shabaab from this small marginal group within the Islamic Courts Union, to the terrorist insurgency that we know it as today.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
That was, I think, what we would say as the unintended consequences, the negative consequences of giving Ethiopia the passive support it has received from our government, yes.
And now, we can't let this go without saying either, I don't think, that on page 222 of Jeremy Scahill's book, Dirty Wars, he has a quote from a State Department functionary explaining that they always meant, from the beginning, to keep Sheikh Sharif to be the American puppet leader after the war.
And he was the leader of the Islamic Courts Union that they invaded to overthrow, that they had Ethiopia invade to overthrow.
All these people killed, and they wanted to keep him anyway, but Sheikh explained they just wanted him to be weaker.
They wanted to take him down a peg or two, but then keep him.
And then, but that was what really led to the break off of al-Shabaab, was when he fell in with the Americans in 2008, they said, oh yeah, well, we're still fighting, right?
Well, I don't know about the underlying relationship, but what happened did not turn out to be good for anyone.
So, I did not read the book, so I don't know.
Well, yeah, no, it's very important if you ever get a chance on page 222, that way it's easy to remember.
And it's just, in fact, I'll find it during the break, it's the most unbelievable quote, this candid quote of the State Department official saying that, you know, they never even really meant to get rid of Sharif, just the structure of the Islamic Courts Union.
They wanted him to be the leader under their transitional federal government that they had created instead, which is a pretty shoddy excuse for a war, if you ask me, but what do I know?
Well, if that's the case, then that would be very sad, wouldn't it?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I just, when I read that, I couldn't believe it, because I've been paying attention to this since 2005 and the lead up to the war even, the rise of the Islamic Courts Union, and when I read that, I just, I mean, anyway, I'm sorry.
Let me ask you about the famine there, because there's a group called FuseNet that is backed by the U.S. and U.K. governments, and they put out a thing in, I guess, two years ago now, saying that upwards of 600,000 Somalis had died in the famine, particularly in 2011.
And I wonder if you could talk about whether things have gotten much better since then, or what?
Well, both the humanitarian and the development are making a bit of a good progress.
That's what at least most of the international community that's supporting the current government would argue.
However, if you speak to the organizations that deal with the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, as well as with the refugees and internally displaced people and persons in Somalia, then one would say the humanitarian situation remains very fluid.
So it can, at any time, turn into a crisis.
So to say the humanitarian issue is getting better would not really be the truth.
In fact, it would be very sad to reach away from the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, because still so many people are displaced, internally displaced, even within the region today, almost a mere million.
Some organizations would say that, others would say between 300,000 to 600,000 are internally displaced in the capital city of Somalia.
And then you have many more in the outskirts regions of Somalia.
And then you have the Dadaab Refugee Camp, which is a home to now half a million refugees where the United Nations, UNHCR, is trying to help return those who want to voluntarily return to at least three cities in Somalia, such as Lut, Kisumaya, and the above all in the south-central region of Somalia, regions of Somalia.
So the humanitarian crisis is still there, even though right now it's not really being talked about as much as it should be.
Everyone's talking about the government, the federal government, the regional government, the election that's due in 2016 now that we found out the government state, the president just said today it's not going to happen.
One man, one vote is not going to be possible.
So everyone's talking about perhaps what the president and other stakeholders have in mind is to use the regional government elders to again select who's going to be running Somalia for the next four years after August of 2016.
So things are not really looking good.
Omicron troops were at 22,000.
And every time they liberate an area in Somalia from al-Shabaab, they leave the area.
If the Somali forces are not there and Somali forces are stretched, because they're not being trained, they're not being paid.
In fact, recently Somali forces have pulled out out of 13 villages, some towns and villages, and the Omicron troops, African Union troops that get paid much more than them, just followed them.
And the reason troops pulled out was because they said they didn't get paid for seven months.
And the payment that they normally receive is $100 per month.
The African troops receive about, depending on whom you talk to, $2,300 to $2,500.
All right.
Well, now, I'm sorry.
Let me put you on hold right here.
We've got to take this commercial break.
But we'll be right back in just a minute with more.
It's Saadia Ali Aida.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton wrapping up the show for today with Saadia Ali Aida.
Human rights advocate and freelance writer on the phone from Mogadishu, Somalia right now.
And just very quickly here, page 222 of Jeremy Scahill's book, Dirty Wars.
Assistant Secretary of State, Jendia, Jendia, something Fraser put it, it would be preferable to co-opt a weak Sheikh Sharif, Sheikh Ahmed, to prevent hardliners from rallying around him.
So this amounted to the excuse for the war was to keep the leader, but just to replace the government that he was ruling, I guess.
Strange enough.
So now where we left off, we're talking about the horrible famine, especially of 2011, but I guess it started before that.
And as you say, the problem is nowhere near solved.
And as I understand it, is it correct, Saadia, that actually the entire Horn of Africa underwent a terrible drought here, terrible weather for a couple of years, two or three years in a row there.
But Somalia, of course, was hit the hardest because they were in a state of war.
So whatever distribution channels and markets and whatever that used to function were no longer functioning.
So whatever food was being grown was not getting into the mouths of the hungry at all.
Is that basically right?
Absolutely, absolutely.
The food is there at times, even in some areas, but like you say, because of the conflict, the food was not getting to the people, the ordinary citizens, especially the weak and the remote areas.
But I just want to say a bit about the U.S. policy.
You mentioned what Jandaya said, but I hate to say that the U.S. policy throughout the entire region has been ineffective.
It's not dysfunctional.
Partnerships with Ethiopia and Kenya on the issue of counterterrorism have caused the U.S. to turn a blind eye on the human rights violations in both countries and also what's happening in Somalia.
So this policy really has to be revisited and reevaluated and come up with a better policy that serves all the people in the region and that helps these people to become more of a partnership with the United States rather than seeing America as an enemy.
Also for Somalia, I think one of the best things the U.S. can do and the American people can help is really to have a serious reconciliation for Somalia because Somalia has not had a serious reconciliation that was Somali-run, Somali-owned, that's supported by the international community, like South Africa, Rwanda, or Liberia.
Still hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
Many, many countries, I mean, so many people have fled to different countries, remaining refugees in neighboring countries.
There are large diasporas in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and still those people are not able to reconcile.
They are not able to come back and to claim their homes, their lands that belong to them.
So there needs to be reconciliation.
Without reconciliation, Somalia will never be the same again or better.
So the U.S. has the opportunity here to really play a positive role in building Somalia, not as a country but to be part of the nation-states, but also help the society reconnect, reconcile, and to become one people again.
Well, now, when Obama came to town, did that signify any significant change in terms of the AU occupation?
Because, well, and by the way, is it still Ethiopia, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda?
Are there any other countries, or have any of those gone home?
Sierra Leone has gone home because of the Ebola crisis.
There was a contingency that was supposed to come to its quotation, but there was an agreement to have that continue because of the fear of the Ebola and Somalia's weak health care system, well, the nonexistent health care system in Somalia.
But Ethiopia really has taken the lead on this.
They were not officially under the umbrella of AMISAN, the African troops, but they came with the help, well, it was invited by the Somali president.
From what I understand, the U.S. government, in fact, did not agree to that particular issue.
But now, of course, I was surprised when Obama said, you know, you know, the AMISAN troops are doing a good job.
And one statement that he used was, So saying that about the involvement of these neighboring countries in Somalia will not help anyone.
That was a surprise.
What he should have done, if anything, was try to visit Somalia, and get close to maybe South Sudan to help these people and to provide some hope.
But rather say, Ethiopians are good fighters.
I don't know what that meant when he said, I don't know what he was thinking about.
But it sounded more like, you know, continue what you're doing with human rights violations.
The African troops, the AMISAN, have in fact committed very serious crimes against the people of Somalia, especially women.
If you have been following the Human Rights Watch, have, you know, published the reports on the rape that took place in Mogadishu, where the AMISAN troops, especially Uganda and Burundi, have raped the Somali women, the IDP women, who were very vulnerable minority groups.
And it was very sad.
So the President's statement really, it made me very sad.
I voted for him.
I voted for him again the second time.
I wrote an article about him.
And every time I hear him now, it just breaks my heart.
Because I think he just missed the point.
He missed the opportunity to help these countries come out of the chaos and the crisis they're still in.
Well, we already talked about, you explained how the Ethiopian invasion the first time.
We're now talking about when Obama told him to go back.
But when Bush had him go in Christmas 2006, that was what really turned al-Shabaab from nothing into a real problem here in the first place.
So them being good fighters really only, you know, the better they are, the worse it is for the people of Somalia.
The more enemies they make, it seems like it's been counterproductive all along.
And I guess the question now is the policy, is the policy simply that Ethiopia should stay until al-Shabaab is gone?
Like they must defeat al-Shabaab before they leave?
So in other words, you know, they must stay indefinitely?
Is that the policy right now?
Well, that's what it seems.
The UN has just renewed the mandate of the Amisan troops for another 10 months.
So they're staying until May of 2016.
That means then they will stay.
If I can read, you know, write the way things have been, that mandate will be renewed again.
So that, of course, is exactly what it means.
They continue staying in Somalia, chasing al-Shabaab until al-Shabaab is eliminated, which is something that's not going to happen, because if that is something that's even visible, we would see it in Afghanistan where all the NATO troops went in and still Taliban still exists.
In fact, the international community starts to negotiate with them.
So that should have been a learning lesson for us, where we should consider starting some sort of negotiations regardless of how we do it, because fighting and counter-fighting and bringing in more troops and not training Somali soldiers and not building the Somali security forces and having all these foreign forces and private security and all these other unknown groups in Somalia will not help anyone.
Eventually, the U.S. would have to fix this mess, but it's better to do it now than later.
Well, I don't know about fixing it.
I just ask them to buzz off and hope the Somalis can fix it themselves.
As long as the Americans aren't paying for the foreign occupation, it'll dry up quick enough.
But I see what you mean.
Certainly everything that they're doing sure seems counterproductive.
What about Somaliland and Puntland?
I guess for people not too familiar, we're talking about the Horn of Africa here, Somalia, where the nation is sort of shaped like a number seven in a way.
And that top bar, that's Somaliland and Puntland.
They've had for a long time some sort of kind of semi-autonomy from the rest of Somalia.
So are we even really talking about them at all here, or are they an entirely different story, or how does that work?
Well, those two are the most stable areas.
Even the meeting that's taking place today in Mogadishu that opened up, the federal government and the U.N. and the African Union are saying that 40 countries have some representatives.
Puntland and Somaliland are not participating.
In fact, they rejected it.
And also Juggerland, which is another region which is closer to Kenya, also rejected it.
So you have a big conference taking place in Mogadishu where all these foreign ministries or foreign representatives are coming, and you have three of the biggest self-ruled authorities.
I shouldn't say really that for Juggerland, but for Somaliland and Puntland are not participating yet.
Everyone is expecting, including the U.N., something positive to come out of it.
So those areas that we discussed, of course, they exist, and they're very peaceful, and they're doing amazing things.
But, of course, everything is in Mogadishu.
In fact, a lot of people have proposed the capital should be shifted to the north rather than the south because this has been 24 years and nothing really is happening.
Nothing much is happening.
Things are improving a bit, but nothing compares to what's expected with all the money that's being put into the south.
All right, Saadia.
Well, thank you so much for your time on the show today.
I appreciate the chance to talk to you about all this.
Thank you, Scott.
Thank you for having me.
All right, y'all.
That is Saadia Ali Aydin.
You can find her at InternationalPolicyDigest.org.
InternationalPolicyDigest.org.
She's a human rights advocate and freelance writer.
And that's it for the show.
Thanks, y'all.
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