For Pacifica Radio, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
It is Anti-War Radio, here on the Pacifica Radio Network.
I'm Scott Horton, and our guest tonight is Francis Nesbitt.
He is a professor in African politics at San Diego State University, and is author of Race for Sanctions.
He writes for Foreign Policy in Focus, and we're running his latest at AntiWar.com in the Viewpoint section.
It's called History Repeats Itself with Somalia Invasion.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Francis?
Thank you.
I'm doing well, thank you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here on the show.
It's a very important article you've written concerning the ongoing Kenyan invasion that began just two weeks ago.
But I was wondering if you could first fill us in on a little bit of that history that's repeating itself, American intervention in Somalia over the last ten years.
Maybe you want to go back further than that to catch us up to how we got where we are now, where the government of Kenya thinks it needs to invade Somalia in order to fight this group al-Shabaab.
Sure, yes.
Well, the United States has been involved in the Horn of Africa region for a long time, all the way back to the Cold War.
The U.S. supported Seyed Barre, who was the dictator, a military dictator in Somalia throughout the 1960s and into the 70s.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union both have a history of supporting military governments in the region.
The Soviet Union supported Ethiopia, and the United States supported Somalia, and then they exchanged.
The U.S. went to Ethiopia, and then the Soviet Union, Somalia.
So there's a long history that goes back to the Cold War of U.S. intervention in the region.
Now, more recently, the United States has been involved in the war against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that are active in the region, and in Somalia in particular.
And in 2001, after the bombing of the World Trade Towers in the United States, the Horn of Africa region was immediately identified as a problem region, partly because of the large Somali diaspora in the United States and in Western Europe.
So the U.S. got involved, as you know.
Also, I should go back a little bit to the incident that led to U.S. invasion of Somalia in 1992, which was billed as a humanitarian intervention.
In 1992, there was a huge drought and lots of deaths in Somalia, and the Bush administration, the first Bush administration, sent in Marines to Somalia in a military invasion.
That ended very badly, as you know, and it's chronicled in the Hollywood movie Black Hawk Down, the book which became the movie.
So it's been a long involvement.
More recently, as I was saying, we have the war on terrorism and war on terrorist organizations that again brought Somalia into prominence in the United States.
And mostly, in this case, there's a fear that the Somali diaspora, members of the Somali diaspora in the United States, might be radicalized and go to Somalia, get training from groups like Al-Shabaab, and then come back to the United States and commit terrorist acts here.
I think just very recently, a couple of days ago, there's a fear that a U.S. citizen, another U.S. citizen, a couple of years ago there was another U.S. citizen who was the first U.S. resident to die in a suicide attack in Somalia.
The FBI is currently investigating whether another U.S. citizen has died recently in an attempted suicide bombing of the African Union headquarters in Mogadishu, Somalia.
And the same is occurring with Britain and other U.S. allies who are concerned that there are large numbers of Somali residents in those countries may be radicalized and perform certain terrorist acts in those countries.
So in the case of the United States, after 2001, the U.S. Bush administration attempted to use initially proxy military forces, in particular some warlords and some clan-based militia in Somalia to overthrow an Islamist group that was about to take power in Somalia at the time.
Use of these proxy militias failed, although the involvement of the U.S. led to the arming and destabilizing of Somalia.
It failed and therefore the U.S. turned to Ethiopia, which has had a long history of tense relations with Somalia.
And Ethiopia invaded Somalia at the time in 2006 with the support of the United States, open support of the United States.
This intervention also failed terribly, led to further destabilization, further militarization of Somalia and the region.
Ethiopia then pulled out in 2006, after which the United States supported the formation of AMISOM, which is the African Union Mission in Somalia, which is supported also by the United Nations.
Now this AMISOM currently has about 9,000 troops, mostly from the region, from Uganda and Burundi.
However, it is financed mostly by the United States.
The United States also supports the transitional federal government, which was established in 2004 and which is currently supported by AMISOM.
In fact, it would not exist if it weren't for those 9,000 troops in Somalia.
The transitional federal government has not managed to control even the capital city of Mogadishu.
Currently there have been certain advances, but they are stuck in lockdown in the capital city of Mogadishu and have not been able to extend their influence to other parts of the country.
Therefore, the United States and its NATO allies, in particular Britain and France, have been supporting Kenya since around 2004, which Kenya's plan is to create a buffer zone.
It's also Ethiopia's plan, but in the case of Kenya, Kenya gets a lot of support from the US, as does Ethiopia.
They want to create a buffer zone along the border region, about 100 miles into the Somali territory, to stop the incursions of militants into Kenya.
Kenya has had a long problem with militants crossing the border and committing acts of terrorism, kidnappings, killing of civilians in this border region.
So the plan has been for a while to create this buffer zone.
Initially, the US and Britain in particular supported the Kenyan military efforts to train plan-based militias across the border.
So they would bring in Somali youth from this region, it's called the Jubalan region, bring them to Kenya and train them in Kenyan training camps with the support of the US.
They are British forces actually training Somali youth in Kenya and then have them go back into Somalia and strengthen the plan-based militia, who it is hoped then would block the incursions of militants into Kenya.
This plan has not worked either, and therefore Kenya felt that it would have to actually invade or at least form an incursion into Somalia in order to enforce the formation of this buffer zone, sometimes called Azania.
There are plans to create an independent region similar to Somaliland and Puntland in the north, which are autonomous regions within the former borders of what we know as Somalia.
So the plan is to create another autonomous region on the Kenyan border that then will hopefully stop this incursion of militants into Kenya.
Of course, this is highly problematic and I highly doubt whether they would be able to do so.
The Kenyan army, which is one of the best trained in Africa, receives a lot of support from the United States, NATO and other European Union countries, will quite easily take Kismayo.
The goal is to take a port on the Indian Ocean coast called Kismayo.
They will most probably be able to do that, but the problem is stabilizing the region after that.
I think it's a political question.
Simply invading the country and taking over a couple of ports or creating this buffer zone by military means is not enough.
They have to establish some kind of political system there from scratch and that will be extremely difficult.
So basically, that's the outline of why Kenya decided to invade Somalia using the military instead of their former tactic of just using proxy militias in this region, in this border region.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
I'm talking with Francis Nesbitt.
He teaches African politics at San Diego State University.
And that's a pretty good summary in a short amount of time about this very complicated story about the proxy war, the American proxy war as it's been unfolding in Somalia, especially the part over the last few years.
And Jeremy Scahill, he's written two extremely important stories in the nation.
The first one is called The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia.
It's about a JSOC CIA torture dungeon beneath Mogadishu.
And then his second and I think more important story is called Blowback in Somalia where he goes over some of this same history and I urge people to look that up.
The way Scahill tells the story in the nation is that what we now call Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group that includes, as you talked about, apparently Americans have gone there and participated in suicide attacks as part of this group, that they were the smallest, weakest, least influential group of the Islamic Courts Union, which was a union of about 13 different groups and they were the least of them.
But when America supported the Ethiopian invasion, they were the youth, Al-Shabaab, the youth.
They were the ones with the rifles who did the fighting, who did the defeating of the Ethiopian army.
And then when Condoleezza Rice basically cried uncle and said, OK, Islamic Courts Union, you can be the government of Somalia as long as it's within the form of our government.
Al-Shabaab said no to that deal and basically considered the Islamic Courts Union, the old men that they had just fought for, traitors to the Americans and have continued their war ever since.
So this whole Al-Shabaab problem only exists.
Now maybe there was a suspect in the coal bombing running around somewhere, something like that.
But the problem with Al-Shabaab never existed before 2006, before the Ethiopian invasion at the insistence of the United States.
Is that correct?
Yes, that is correct.
Al-Shabaab was a small militia associated with the Islamic Courts Union.
It was sort of the armed wing.
But it really grew in strength and power after the Ethiopian invasion.
After the Ethiopian invasion of 2006, that's when Al-Shabaab became a major force in Somalia.
And so Al-Shabaab is not, first of all, they're trying to promote a form of Islam that is not acceptable to most Somalis.
You know, Somalia historically has had a more flexible form of Islam.
You know, they did not enforce Sharia law up to the extent that Al-Shabaab wants to enforce Islamic law.
So it was not likely that Al-Shabaab would have grown to its current strength without this invasion.
And the problem is today this further invasion now by Kenya is likely to strengthen militants further.
I mean, Kenya and Ethiopia are different, first of all, because Ethiopia has had a long history of problems with Somalia.
Kenya has played more of a supportive role.
I mean, Kenya currently hosts over 500,000 Somali refugees, lots of Somali businesses.
Some say most are actually based in Nairobi rather than Mogadishu.
So we have very strong ties with the Somali people, particularly the people of Southern Somalia, where Al-Shabaab is currently based.
So there are certain differences between historically the invasion of Ethiopia and the current invasion of Kenya.
But if this incursion goes on for a long time and there continues to be civilian deaths and destruction of property and the escalation of militarism in the region, historically Somalis have fought each other for long periods of time, but whenever a foreign army invades, they get together and fight the foreign army.
Now this is historically what has happened even if you go back to the British attempts to colonize Somalia.
So this is the problem with this military invasion, this militarism that's going on, encouraged by the United States and its NATO allies.
And as you say in your piece here, again it's called History Repeats Itself with Somalia Invasion.
We're running it at antiwar.com.
It's in the viewpoint section there.
And you talk about this New York Times article where the Kenyan government admits outright that yes, this is just a pretext for war.
We've wanted to invade and create this buffer zone for whatever reason before al-Shabaab ever existed.
Correct.
Kenya has wanted to create this buffer zone.
Kenya has had a problem, what we call the shifter militia in Kenya, which was coming in across the border from Somalia during the 1970s immediately after independence.
And this idea was brought up then.
It didn't work, but it's escalated since 2001 in particular when they finally got the military support, the financing, the training from the U.S. and from Britain and other Western nations in order to make it possible for Kenya to actually create this buffer zone by training this plan-based militia.
The problem is, of course, that this didn't work.
Ethiopia has tried that before.
It didn't work.
So finally it led up to this invasion, yes.
But clearly the Kenyan officials admitted that this military invasion had been in plan for months before the pretext.
And the pretext was the capture and kidnapping of a British woman and a French woman, one of whom died after their capture.
So they immediately used this as a pretext because Kenya, some tourist paradise called Lamu, is right next to the Somali border.
And Kenya depends on tourism from Western nations to get its foreign exchange.
And therefore this was a pretext to go after Al-Shabaab militarily, using the Kenyan armed forces instead of using the proxy militias, clan-based militias in the Jubaland region.
Well, and they've announced now that there's an upcoming invasion of a major port town that Al-Shabaab has taken over.
Yes.
Yes.
Al-Shabaab was pushed, many of its fighters were pushed out of Mogadishu by the African Union troops.
They're under pressure in Mogadishu, which used to be their base, under, by the African Union troops.
They've had certain successes in the recent months.
And many hundreds of fighters have then moved into southern, further south to a port called Kismayo.
Kismayo is a port on the Indian Ocean that is the major source of funding for Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab gets its funding primarily from trade at this port.
They, through extortion of businesses, through taxing these businesses, that many of these businesses export charcoal to the Middle East, to the Arabian Peninsula.
They tax these businesses.
It's also a port that is known for arms smuggling, cross-border smuggling across the Kenyan border, both towards Kenya and towards Somalia.
And the United Nations actually estimates that Al-Shabaab gets between $70 and $100 million a year from this port.
And so this is a major issue for Kenya and for the United States and the international community.
And so the goal is to capture Kismayo.
The Kenyan military has stated openly that its goal is to capture Kismayo and make that the base of this new autonomous region called Jubilant, or Azalea.
So yes, Kismayo is an extremely important port in that sense.
And it's also highly problematic in the sense that these business people, many of whom are based in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and of course Nairobi, are the ones who are financing Al-Shabaab.
I think the port alone brings in about $50 million, and then there are two more smaller ports called Brava and Merca, which are also bringing in money to Al-Shabaab.
So Kenya wants to capture this port and push Al-Shabaab out of this port and ensure that these businesses are not taxed by Al-Shabaab.
The problem, of course, is that the transitional federal government in Mogadishu has done no better in terms of corruption, in terms of extortion, and in terms of using businessmen to finance their other shady operations.
So in fact, what has happened with both the transitional federal government, which has been set up, as I said, with U.S. support, and Al-Shabaab is that both of these entities are turning into businesses.
Instead of focusing on governing, they are focusing on developing business and extorting businesses.
So in fact, the United Nations has stated that one of the recommendations of dealing with the problem without military means, without militarization or over-militarization, is to use sanctions against those individuals, organizations, and businesses that are financing Al-Shabaab.
The problem, from my perspective, is that the same thing is happening in Mogadishu with the transitional federal government.
Of course.
Well, and now, as far as Kenya invading Kismayo and seizing the port, I guess that makes sense that their conventional forces would be able to do so.
You say they're some of the best trained military forces in all of Africa.
But the thing is about Al-Shabaab is they're an insurgent group.
And like the Taliban, they just melt away.
They just go home, put their rifle in the closet, and wait until it's a good time to hit and run, attack again, right?
So do you have any reason to believe that the Kenyans would be any more successful than the Ethiopians in terms of dealing with this group?
All the Ethiopians did was increase their power by 10,000%.
Yeah, exactly.
That's the problem.
I don't think that the Kenyans will be able to control this port and this region for a long period of time.
I'm sure they can capture the port and the other smaller ports there.
That is, I think, given that they can, in fact, get that far and capture the port.
But then the question is, can they hold it?
They don't have the resources to hold this port for a long period of time.
I mean, they would have to hold it for years in order to build some kind of political governing structure from scratch.
And further, even worse than that, is the fact that the clan structure in Somalia does not lend itself to a stable governing structure or a state such as exists in the West.
These are clans that are very used to operating independently.
Sometimes they fight against each other.
Other times they come together in unity.
And so it will be extremely difficult for the Kenyan forces to hold Kismayo and this so-called Juba land region for any period of time.
And therefore, it's likely to degenerate into attacks, into warlordism.
By financing these clan-based militia, we are returning to the old warlordism of the 1990s that we saw, where warlords would control different areas.
Or the early 2000s when the U.S. CIA was supporting these warlords.
That only exacerbated the problem.
Because once you leave, you're leaving that country with highly-armed and trained warlords running clan-based militias that will then turn against each other or even turn against you.
All right.
Now I have two more questions, but very little time.
So let me try to make this quick.
You point out in your article, again in reference to this New York Times article by Jeffrey Gettleman, Kenyan motives in Somalia predate recent abductions.
That a big part of this is trying to build a pipeline from landlocked and oil-rich South Sudan and Ethiopia.
How important do you think this is in terms of the decisions surrounding all this American intervention over the last few years?
Is that what this is really about?
Is now that we've succeeded in breaking South Sudan off from Sudan, that we're going to build a...
Some of these guys have some dream of building an oil pipeline out of there, perhaps checking Chinese power in the region?
Yes, you're absolutely right.
We could talk some more about it, but China is certainly involved.
The inspector of China is involved here.
There is this dream of building this oil pipeline, not from Kismayo, but from Lamu, which is a port just across the border inside Kenya.
They want to build a huge port there with support from...
They're trying to get Chinese support, U.S. support, and some support from the Arab states to build this pipeline, railroad, and roads to Southern Sudan and to Ethiopia, and also to Uganda, all of which are landlocked, and all of which have discovered large deposits of oil.
Uganda also, in the last two weeks, Obama announced that he sent the special operations guys into Uganda in the name of hunting this death cult there.
Yes, it comes conveniently when Uganda has started producing large amounts of oil, when they're sending these troops, these 100 troops to hunt down Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army.
Yes, so this port is a very big regional project.
The problem is that it goes along the Kenya-Somali border, and the pipeline would have to go right along the border, and this is in the northeastern province of Kenya, which is a region that has been destabilized for a very long time by insurgents from Somalia.
So that is definitely one of the reasons that Kenya, with the support of its Western allies, has decided to become much more aggressive, militarily aggressive, in Somalia.
Well, and if the history of the last 10 years is any indication, it's only going to make matters much, much worse, and the possibility of ever building an oil pipeline through there more and more impossible as time goes on, due to that very destabilization you're talking about, which leads to my last question, or my last point I'd like you to address, and that is the horrible famine going on in Somalia.
The best I can tell, it's the worst humanitarian crisis on earth right now.
If news talks about Al-Shabaab, or any of this stuff at all on TV, it's always in a vacuum, and never in the context of hundreds and hundreds of thousands.
I think in your article you say today that there are a quarter of a million people ready to starve to death in Somalia right now, obviously due to America's long-term intervention there, and complete disruption of any of their means of distribution.
Correct, yes.
There's a humanitarian disaster ongoing in Southern Somalia, in particular this region that we're talking about, and this incursion simply complicates matters further.
It makes it much more difficult to distribute food, provide arms instead of food to these warlords.
It supports these warlords by providing them with arms and financing.
What you're doing is supporting these warlords instead of using that kind of funding to do something about this humanitarian disaster.
The UN says that this military incursion will do nothing to help those who are starving in Somalia.
In fact, it's likely to make things much, much worse there.
So we've already seen the disruption of humanitarian aid to this place because of the war.
It's very difficult to distribute food or to provide relief due to war.
And as a result, as I say in my article, Kenya has seen over 1,000 refugees crossing the border a day since this humanitarian disaster started.
So it's a really highly complex and terrible situation in that region.
And the military incursion simply exacerbates this problem.
Well, and I think, you know, other than a drone attack, a specific drone attack on a family in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia for that matter, I think just in terms of wars between states, when we look at how all these, you know, neighbors' invasions have really been at the hands of the U.S., this really is the least fair fight ever.
I mean, this is the most powerful empire in the history of the world picking on the weakest country, the weakest people that they could possibly be killing.
It's just absolutely unconscionable that this goes on and it goes on completely unreported outside of Antiwar.com and Chris-Floyd.com and of course, as I mentioned, Scahill's couple of great pieces in The Nation.
That's it.
Yes, this is going on under the radar.
I mean, people in the West don't know that there is this huge disaster there that's ongoing, not even in the making, it's already ongoing.
And, you know, it's unconscionable, as you say.
And I would say the media is to blame in many ways by not holding the United States accountable in this case.
All right.
Well, I sure appreciate you helping me do my part for my little corner of the media anyway.
Thank you very much for your time on the show.
Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
Everybody, that's Francis Nesbitt.
He's a professor at San Diego State University and he's got a piece at Antiwar.com in the viewpoint section called History Repeats Itself with Somalia Invasion, the most recent Kenyan invasion.
And the piece is also reprinted at Foreign Policy in Focus where you can also find a piece by Rob Prince about how the WikiLeaks reveal that the Bush administration forced Ethiopia to invade in Christmas 2006.
And again, I wanted to mention Jeremy Scahill's great pieces in The Nation, The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia, and Blowback in Somalia.
I beg you to read that last one.
That's it for Antiwar Radio this evening.
Thanks very much for listening.
We'll see you next time.
