Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had, you've been took, you've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, we're killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Catherine L. Besteman.
She is the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College and is an expert on Somalia, has a great many papers going back many years on Somalia.
And there was this article in The Guardian, when is America going to end its shadow war in Somalia by Stephanie Savelle?
And I tried to get her on the show and she said, no, you want to talk to Catherine.
She's the one who talked to me.
So here we are.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm well, thank you so much for having me.
Well, I'm very happy to have you on the show here.
And I really appreciate your attention to this issue, not just Somalia, your interest overall, but America's war there and really regime change and aftermath since 2006.
And I don't know how much you've written about the war going on there since 2001.
But anyway, I'm happy to give you a chance to explain as much as you can to the audience here about what is going on with the war there and America's role in it and up to and including the current day and whatever you have to say, please.
Okay, thanks so much.
Well, my interest in Somalia started in the late 1980s, because I lived there.
I'm an anthropologist and I did my fieldwork there in the late 1980s, just as the then government under the dictator Siad Barre was beginning to bomb and strafe Somali communities in the north of that country that were beginning to protest his rule.
And I think an important counterpoint to this is recognizing that Somalia was seen as a key ally during the Cold War.
So initially, Somalia had been allied with the Soviet Union and then switched sides in 1977 and offered to become an ally of the United States in return for significant military and economic aid, which the United States was quite happy to provide.
And so over the course of the 1980s, Somalia became the second largest recipient of US foreign aid in Africa, second only to Egypt, and built the largest army in Africa, receiving over the course of the 1980s, perhaps as much as a billion dollars in US foreign aid.
And much of that aid went to keeping in power Siad Barre, the dictator during that time.
And so with the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a recalibration in the US Congress about the US's commitment to maintaining a dictator who was ruthless and was killing and murdering his own population in power.
And the Congress voted to withdraw aid to his government in December of 1990.
And within four weeks, January of 1991, his government collapsed.
So there's a direct relationship between the US and Somalia that precipitated the collapse of that government in 1991, and the period of chaotic statelessness and violence that followed.
So in response to the tragedy of the various Klan-based militias that began fighting against each other for control of the state in 1991, the US led the first military mission of the United Nations in an intervention in 1992 that was built as an effort to try to stabilize Somalia and confront what was becoming a massive famine.
And of course, we all remember how that ended ignomiously in 1993 with the Black Hawk Down incident and the withdrawal of US troops.
And from that point until 9-11, the US, its appetite had really dimmed for trying to intervene militarily in places like Somalia.
But that changed in the aftermath of 9-11, when various analysts and members of the Bush administration began redefining places that they characterized as stateless, as safe havens for terrorists.
Now, there was no evidence that Somalia had terrorists.
There's no evidence that Somalia was a safe haven for terrorism, and there's no evidence that anybody in Somalia was interested in launching terrorist attacks against the United States.
But part of the recalibration of post-9-11 political geography defined places as friendly towards or hostile towards terrorism.
And Somalia emerged as an insecure space that was imagined as being able to offer safe refuge and shelter to terrorists.
And so that's a little bit of the backstory.
So I'll give a break to see if you have any questions about that before we then move on up to the present day.
Sure.
Yeah, just one follow-up question there about the end of the 1990s and the beginning.
Well, actually, two questions there, but one about this era.
Is it right?
Is it your understanding that during this time when, well, I guess, first of all, is it right that the warlords had essentially exhausted themselves and that there essentially was no central government?
And then secondly, is it right that that was essentially working out for the people of Somalia and their economy was doing okay?
The port was humming with no one to tax and tariff everything and shut trade down.
And the economy developing right as America came and pulled the rug out from under them.
Because certainly there were some studies done back at that time that said, hey, listen, letting the Somalis go about their essentially traditional anarchist ways here, if you can call them that, seems to be working out very well for them.
Especially compared to the previous state of the way things had been under the communists.
And then, as you described, the civil war that broke out after the fall of the regime.
I think there's no doubt that the history of US intervention in Somalia has precipitated disaster.
I mean, so that's one answer to your question, is that what the US has done there has not helped anything and it has brought enormous egregious harm.
As to whether in the absence of US intervention, things were going very well for everybody, that really is debatable.
And that depends on, I think the answer to that question depends a lot on who you ask.
There was considerable concern that Somali minority communities were suffering and were not able to achieve recognition or legitimacy or self-protection or self-autonomy within the crucible of the nation state during that era.
And a number of them, the refugee camps in Kenya certainly were still full of people who felt that they were unable to return to Somalia because of profound insecurity and lack of safety.
Now, had the US not intervened with Ethiopia in 2006, would things have improved?
I mean, Well, wait, hold 2006, because what about their intervention beginning in 2001, where George Bush dispatched JSOC and CIA immediately to Somalia before the new year?
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Bad idea.
No?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Gee, I'd certainly read that numerous times.
Okay, so when did the special operations forces and the CIA arrive for the first time, post 9-11?
Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
The US had embarked on a mission post 9-11 of trying to target and assassinate people identified as terrorists.
They created their terrorist watch list.
They immediately put one group on it that hadn't been operative since 1997 and was certainly not engaged in any sort of violence whatsoever.
They put the Somali money transfer organization on the terrorist watch list, which had been the lifeline for Somalis to receive funds from their relatives living outside of Somalia.
That was a disastrous move that again, later by 2006, I think was demonstrated to have been a complete hubris.
There was no relationship between that money transfer operation and terrorism in Somalia.
So those immediate moves were destructive and absolutely unnecessary.
They also began working with various warlords to target for rendition, perhaps as many as 50 individuals, religious scholars who were disappeared from Somalia.
I don't know what happened to them.
There doesn't seem to be any agreement about what happened to them.
Of course, the creation of the combined joint task force Horn of Africa with its base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti was established right after 9-11.
So there were these various prongs US military intervention post 9-11.
But I think the biggest issue was the decision to support the Ethiopian invasion in 2006.
I'm sorry to interrupt you again, because I really do want to let you get to that because of course it's very important.
But is what you just said different than what I said, that JSOC and CIA were hunting down and killing people there, and we're supporting guys to help hunt them down?
I'm agreeing with you.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
I just want to make sure I was getting it right.
You're the expert, and I'm just the radio show host here.
But I didn't mean to say a full scale invasion or anything.
I guess my understanding was that really, from the very beginning after September 11th, the more the CIA were propping up these warlords to hunt down these supposed Islamists, the more those warlords, of course, abused their power.
And that was what really had led to the rise of the Islamic Courts Union to defeat those warlords in the first place.
And then that was what led to US support for the Ethiopian invasion of 2006.
That's correct.
And the warlords, I think, again, scholars who study this are pretty much in agreement that the warlords were really quite strategic in tapping into the war on terror rhetoric for their own purposes, as was Ethiopia.
And so understanding the significance of that rhetoric and its power in the context of US foreign policy was really beneficial to warlords who were using that rhetoric for their own political purposes.
Yeah.
And of course, that makes sense, right?
The more enemies they make, the more they come back to the CIA and say, boy, it's even worse than we thought, all the terrorists out there that we have to face, right?
And the CIA guys say, here's another pile of money and some more guns and go make it worse for us.
That's pretty much the feedback loop that was operative.
Yeah.
And then culminating in this absolutely well, you characterize it, the invasion of 2006.
Right, which was just a cataclysmic disaster.
The Islamic Courts Union that had begun to establish peace, had begun to open the ports again, establish transport lines, begun to establish some security measures that would allow commerce to start up again, had begun to establish legal systems through which people could begin to articulate their grievances and hold each other accountable.
All of that was swept away with the Ethiopian invasion of 2006.
Yeah.
And then can you talk about what happened and what was the American role in that invasion?
Well, the American role in that invasion was a supportive role.
So it was the sharing of intelligence.
It was providing military technology and intelligence.
The US was keen not to be perceived as being the invaders, but rather playing a supportive role in enabling Ethiopia to invade.
And at the time, I remember the reports of C-130s, the special operations forces flying their C-130s and blasting people.
And there were all kinds of renditions and torture and massacres of civilians and all kinds of stuff, right?
That's my understanding.
And of course, a flood, another enormous exodus of refugees fleeing from the violence back across the border into Kenya.
Kenya attempted to close its border.
It didn't want another surge of refugees.
That was, of course, in contravention to international law.
But Kenya is another security partner with the United States and receives a lot of funding to participate in the US-led war on terror.
And so they accepted unwillingly the people fleeing from the violence in Somalia.
It was just a disaster all the way around.
And Ethiopia remained occupiers until about 2009.
And that's a lot of what prompted the formation of al-Shabaab as a militant group opposed to foreign intervention, opposed to foreign occupation.
In other words, well, and is it right?
My understanding was they were essentially the smallest and weakest group that was a member of that Islamic courts union, 13 groups, and they were the youth.
And so the least influential until the violence came.
And then of course, they're the young men who grabbed the rifles and do the fighting and then grow in prominence.
Yeah.
And since then, as I talk about in my papers, I'm sure you're very well aware, the more prominence al-Shabaab was given as a combatant in the war on terror, the more they grew.
And Somalis were quite understandably outraged by the Ethiopian invasion and interested in supporting homegrown efforts to push back against that.
Al-Shabaab was not interested in attacking the United States.
They were an organization that was about defending the rights of Somalis to determine their own future.
And then you're saying that America targeting them actually more than it hurt them in terms of the violence that they felt, it gave them a public relations boost that helped really build their prominence in the country.
Right.
I mean, so the U.S. puts them on the terrorist watch list, identifies them as terrorists, begins orienting their attacks against them, starts assassinating people, rendering people in greater and greater numbers.
So in response to their placement on the terrorist watch list, al-Shabaab says, okay, fine, we'll join Al-Qaeda.
That's, again, a response to U.S. action, not prior to the U.S. naming them as terrorists.
It was in response to that.
I think Francis Nesbitt had said that even then, it was after the Kenyans had forced them out of their control of the port city of Kismayo in 2012, that then they found themselves out of money.
And so they were forced to turn to the Saudi princes as long as they would declare loyalty to Al-Qaeda.
So that was even six years into the war before they declared their loyalty to Al-Qaeda.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that's interesting.
I think the dates that are given vary somewhat about the nature of these alliances.
But also just within Somalia, al-Shabaab controls the sugar and coal trade, not coal, the charcoal trade in contravention to the prohibitions on that, in alliance with business and political elites.
Al-Shabaab is not an organization that exists solely under rocks in the bush country.
It's an organization that is deeply implicated with Somali business and political structures.
And so that makes the ongoing efforts of the U.S. to wield assassinations and renditions nonsensical.
Right.
In other words, this isn't some small band of Arab Al-Qaeda fanatics hiding out in Somalia.
This is part of the population of the country that is refusing to give in to the control by the central government.
More like the Taliban than Al-Qaeda.
Yeah.
And if you imagine what it's like to live in a country where drones are constantly flying, foreign drones are constantly flying overhead, you hear their buzz.
And then strikes come out of the sky every so often.
And of course, there is the proof that civilians are killed in these strikes as well.
I mean, you can imagine the sense of outrage that another country has the ability to do that to you and to your neighbors, to your loved ones.
It's not a policy for effectively routing any group.
Right.
And yet for some reason, we're never even asked to imagine what it might be like.
I don't know what the percentage is of Americans who even know that we've been at war in Somalia, at least this sort of leading from behind proxy type war there for all these years, but I'm sure it's less than 10%.
I would agree with you.
Yeah.
Hang on just one second.
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Let me ask you this.
At the early part of this decade, 2010, 11, 12, there was a really bad famine in Somalia.
My understanding was that essentially the whole horn of Africa, including Kenya and Ethiopia and Eritrea and everyone were hit by the same drought, but that the famine really hit Somalia because of the chaos of the war.
I think FuseNet had reported that 250,000 people had died.
Of course, most of those being children under five years old.
I just wonder, I'm checking all my facts off here today and make sure I'm right about all this stuff.
Are you asking me about the scope of the famine?
Yeah.
And the cause and the role of the war in helping to make the weather that much worse, so to speak?
Yeah.
I think Somalia's got the double whammy of the impact of climate change and then what a war context enables and disables.
It certainly disables people's mobility.
It disables people's ability to feel secure in going to relief centers and moving goods around the country.
And it redirects, of course, national resources towards war efforts and securitizing efforts and away from the sorts of things that actually do sustain and nourish people and allow them to be fed and flourish.
So there's no doubt that a war economy is really, really bad for health.
I mean, obviously, and a war economy in the context of a drought is absolutely devastating.
So yes, of course, the drought was magnified who knows how many times by the existence of such insecurity as caused by the war.
All right.
Now, so we're about two and a half years into the Trump administration here, and there've been some reports that he had sent even infantry, not just special operations forces in, although I'm not sure if they're training or what they're doing there.
Do you know much about the last couple of years of the war there?
All I know is I'm an anthropologist.
So my focus is really on how are the people who I know living through this period on the ground in rural parts of Southern Somalia.
But I do know, and the people with whom I work are living under the areas controlled by al-Shabaab right now.
So they are really quite affected.
They're living in the zones where drone strikes are regularly happening.
But what I understand is that, yes, I mean, of course, the US is involved in both with boots on the ground from our own forces, but also hiring private militia mercenaries, we could call them from countries around the world to provide training to Somali police forces and the Somali defense forces.
So there's that sort of thing happening as well through private military contractors funded by the United States.
And then, do you know, I mean, it's amazing, you're talking to people who are living in those areas, is the violence overall has increased very much or not?
Do you know?
As compared to what?
I don't know.
Late Obama years, for example.
I mean, again, Trump has sent infantry.
So for all I know, that means some giant campaign, because again, there's such a media blackout, who knows what's going on over there.
So I don't know if things have really changed very much, or if it's the same horrible status quo as before.
Yeah, I haven't heard anything about US-led military forays or incursions or a US-led military front in Somalia.
I haven't heard anything about that.
But it's more the use of funding to train Somali police forces and defense forces who are themselves often operating in conjunction with Al-Shabaab around commerce.
And so who are the losers in that?
Well, the losers are unarmed civilians who live in zones that are under the thumb of Al-Shabaab, who do use them for conscripted labor, for conscripted wives, as food producers whose harvests can be taxed.
And so, you know, they feel that very acutely.
So in other words, just like in Afghanistan, America's war against this group is actually helping to sustain them directly.
Absolutely.
And not just indirectly in terms of their public relations win, but because the guys we're paying and training end up under their control and serving them.
Yeah.
And we're working in collaboration with them to serve their mutual interests.
Incredible.
Now, one thing that, oh, I got one more minute according to this clip.
All these conversations exclude Somaliland and Puntland.
So what's going on up there?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I'm afraid I can't answer that.
You know, my focus is so much on Southern Somalia.
They really are sort of separate countries, huh?
Yeah.
Well, that's interesting itself there, as far as separate as it is, huh?
Well, I mean, there's relationships going on.
You know, the UN has built a prison.
This was back in the era of piracy.
And there's various relationships that are maybe not so legible that are funding various initiatives in those places.
And there is a robust international movement between especially Somaliland and Europe, not here, of course.
But I can't really speak with any sort of authority about those relationships or the sorts of policy relationships or political relationships or military relationships that might be strung between the United States, Europe, Somaliland, and Puntland.
Yeah.
It was really kind of strange, wasn't it, to see, especially someone knowing as much as you know about all this, to see all that kind of hype about the pirates with none of the context about how anyone could be so desperate and how things got to be that way.
Well, and without any context of, you know, when the pirates first started operating, my Somali friends would joke that they were known colloquially as the Somali Coast Guard, because they were attempting to protect the long Somali coastline from fishing poaching by ships coming in from a wide variety of other countries, using the lack of a really authoritative state in Somalia to enable them to come steal Somalia's resources.
And so part of the initial creation, the emergence of piracy was confronting those incursions.
It turned into something else, but I thought that was amusing, calling that the Somali Coast Guard.
Yeah, absolutely.
A whole important truth buried in that little anecdote there, that colloquialism of theirs.
Is that something that I can read about in one of your essays, by the way, or your studies here?
But, you know, I can, if you would like, Zoltan Blok has written quite a bit about piracy, G-L-U-C-K.
I would recommend you to his publications.
Again, I don't work in that part of Somalia.
And so that's not something I write about, but I read about it because, of course, I'm interested.
So you're saying the piracy was really based more out of the North then, rather than Mogadishu?
Yeah.
I see.
Okay, great.
Well, listen, I'm sorry, I'll let you go, but it's been so great to talk to you today.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thanks so much.
Take care.
Thank you for your interest.
Yeah.
Okay, everybody, that is Katherine L. Besteman, and she is a professor of anthropology at Colby College.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
